I have spent a lot of my lawyering years practicing and teaching civil rights. The Second Amendment is something I know a great deal about. That the Westmoreland County commissioners, or any county commissioners, should pass a resolution in support of the Second Amendment strikes me as a rather meretricious vote-fishing endeavor (“Commissioners to declare Westmoreland a ‘Second Amendment County’ in favor of gun rights,” March 16, TribLIVE).
No government entity wants to take away anyone’s rights under the Second Amendment. What is at issue is the Second Amendment’s true and intended scope and reach. Its language is not absolute and never has been. Like all other amendments, it is subject to reasonable restrictions, and even Justice Antonin Scalia, considered by many to be the patron saint of gun lovers, acknowledged that such weapons as assault rifles could be lawfully banned.
Such silly resolutions as proposed by the county commissioners only serve to embolden the misguided who think that no one can constitutionally take away any of their beloved killing machines. Perhaps the commissioners would do well to think of how such meaningless resolutions only lather up the gun lovers’ mistaken Second Amendment notions rather than promote respect for the law and its real meanings.
David Millstein
Naples, Fla.
The writer is a Greensburg native.