Was it irony or poetry that resulted in Hyrum Anderson's letter "Gun logical fallacies" being placed on the page adjacent to Michael Gerson's column about the recent exposure of IRS abuses of power ("IRS abuses bring out the libertarian in each of us," May 14)?
Anderson is right as far as his stating that "tyrannical oppression is not the inevitable outcome of background checks." However, it is a possibility that cannot be discounted. Given the recent trends toward abuse of power in a number of areas by our federal government (at least three in today's paper) and the historic record of many governments which have moved from firearm registration to confiscation, Anderson certainly cannot refute the possibility. Nor can he dispute the historic record of citizen disarmament by rising tyrants.
Anderson's slippery slope is not inevitable but it remains a realistic possibility too serious not to be guarded against. The old advice that when dealing with certain people one should, at least mentally, keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your gun remains true. But what happens to your wallet if you have no gun?
Thomas W. Brown
Murray