No Right to Bear Arms . . . Blood-Soaked Streets

By Louis J Beradi


Illinois stands alone in two categories: the city with the most blood-soaked streets and the only state that denies the right to keep and bear arms.

I would like to point out the obvious fact that Chicago has some of the most restrictive firearms laws in the country, yet criminals, for some reason, do not seem to obey those laws. Criminals by definition do not obey laws.
The letter writer takes the position that because criminals commit crimes with firearms, Illinois is justified in denying law-abiding citizens their Second Amendment rights. Let me extend his logic to other rights. Because some people abuse their First Amendment right of free speech by practicing hate speech, we are justified in prohibiting him from ever writing another letter to the editor and he must close down his blog forever.
Law-abiding Americans should never be denied basic constitutional rights because criminals abuse those rights.

The letter writer points out that Illinois stands alone in denying its citizens the basic human right of self-defense because otherwise we would have blood-soaked streets. Let me point out two truths: 1. Every state that passed right-to-carry legislation, despite predictions to the contrary, saw violent crime either go down or remain the same. 2. Every Monday morning, the Tribune tells us that the streets are already soaked with blood and it is only getting worse.

The Chicago anti-gun policies have proven to be a deadly failure and it is time to join the other 49 states in the 21st century.

Letter to the Editor - Chicago Tribune

People's Republic of China Bashes U.S. 2nd Amendment as Human Rights Violation

by John Haughey


According to the faceless, monolithic regime that rules the People’s Republic of China, the United States is a flagrant abuser of human rights because its Second Amendment allows ordinary rank-and-file citizens to bear arms.

The Orwellian irony of criticizing Americans’ constitutional guarantee of unalienable gun rights as a human rights violation elevates hyperbole to new levels of looking-glass blatherspeak.

The PRC issued a report entitled “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011,” a day after the U.S. State Department published its annual update on human rights abuses in mainland China by the Communist leadership, which regularly "disappears" critics, prohibits free exercise of religion, tortures dissidents and their families, forces women to have abortions to enforce its "one-child policy," censors the Internet, harvests body organs from opponents, and on and on.

Those aren't human rights violations by China's standards, but your Second Amendment right to own a weapon is.

“The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens' lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership,” the report says. “The U.S. people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world's civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns [and] 47 percent of American adults reported that they had a gun.”

Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Chairman Alan Gottlieb called the Chinese "a laughing stock."

“Perhaps what offends them most is that our Second Amendment was authored to prevent this country from going down the same road toward totalitarianism that rulers in the People’s Republic have embraced," Gottlieb said. "We are not like China, and we will never be like China so long as American citizens retain their right to keep and bear arms, and they know it.”