Columnist Walter E. Williams is right when he states that the Founding Fathers never mentioned hunters as constitutionally protected to bear arms. May I assume that he would then go along with the confiscation of all weapons used exclusively for hunting?
He also quotes Noah Webster, explaining why the government could never enforce unjust laws: "The whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops." That may have been true in an age of muskets and horse-drawn cannons, but it now only proves that the framers of the Second Amendment never envisioned an age of armored tanks and F-16s firing computer-guided missiles, much less a time when children routinely took guns to school and shot up their classmates.Thanks to Mr. Williams, though, for illustrating the danger of such absurdly literal interpretations of the right to bear arms. They may seem reasonable to him, but to the rest of us everyday citizens they explain the NRA's chronic inability to compromise on even the most common-sense proposals. Any parent who truly kept a gun for his own or his family's protection would welcome legislation requiring devices like trigger locks and fingerprint sensors designed to prevent children from accidentally killing themselves, or thieves from using a weapon on its owner. Anybody else can only be viewed as extremist.
William Brough
Sandy