To the Editor:
I just wrote a check to cover the cost of The Catholic Messenger and was going to put it in the collection basket this Sunday. After reading The Messenger editorial in the Jan. 24 issue, I was stunned. Your editorial attacks my right to own a gun and you called we who debate this right “ignorant!” You stepped over the line. Your argument about the so-called assault weapons that are only good on battlefields where mass killing is expected and have no place in civilian life is absurd. What do you have to fear from a law-abiding practicing Catholic owning such a firearm?
Our forefathers declared that this right should not be infringed. Thank God the patriots who gave us this liberty were armed well enough to destroy a totalitarian government. If we choose to arm ourselves with a weapon that equals the force a tyrannical government would impose upon us, that is our right. I would think after President Obama’s actions over the last four years against our religious rights, your paper would understand why we fear a government that imposes its will on our freedoms.
You are a Catholic news source. You have no business encroaching on people’s gun rights. Your argument that these types of guns are for killing people, not for hunting food, proves to me that you do not understand the Second Amendment’s purpose. It allows us to own guns that are capable of the force that will be necessary if and when our government turns on us.
I probably should have waited awhile before addressing your editorial, but I needed to inform you that you have cost my parish $29 because I have no intention of supporting your bias against my rights.
Jim McInteer
Wever
