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I have been following the comments made by President Barack Obama and his nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general as pertains to gun control, and I find an alarming trend. If they continue on the path they have taken, we are headed for perilous times.
At my last read, something like 17 states are planning to or have already introduced legislation to restrict the sales of guns or ammunition, or have imposed some kind of controlling mechanism pertaining to possession and use of firearms or ammunition.
While I have no problem assisting law enforcement efforts to solve crimes, I believe we must be careful in how that is implemented. The Second Amendment and a bunch of other freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution are under attack. We need to rally both our state and national representatives to our concerns.
National registration is the prelude to regulation and then confiscation; after that is subjugation. It has occurred in too many places and crime rates have risen dramatically as a result; witness the UK, Canada and New Zealand, and those are the "good results." The "bad results" are those that happened in Germany, Italy, Russia and China.
This is now occurring at the state level, but not yet in Georgia. It must be stopped before it gets to the national level. I love my country, but distrust my government.
What folks don't seem to understand is that guns don't kill people; people kill people. Seventy percent of violent crimes are not committed by people using guns; if someone wants to commit a crime or harm others, they will find a way to do so. But we cannot open up a "killing field" that permits them to do that anywhere and anytime they choose.
Criminals have always been able to obtain guns or knives or whatever means they choose and most of those acquisitions are done illegally. These proposed laws will not keep that from happening. The criminals will find a way around whatever laws are on the books, just as they are doing now and have always done.
We must retain a capability to support and defend our Constitution against "... all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same." I took an oath of office many years ago that contained those words and I subscribe to them now just as fully as I did then.
I am a Constitutional conservative and don't believe anyone in government has the right to tell me that I can't maintain the means to defend my loved ones and myself, as the Founding Brothers so simply stated in the Second Amendment.
If you share these beliefs, I urge you to let your duly elected representatives at the state and national levels know that you do, and sooner rather that later.
A.R. "Mac" McCahan
Gainesville
Roe v. Wade has led to dehumanizing choices
This year marks the 36th anniversary of the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion on demand. This is the worst decision since the 1857 Dredd Scott decision legitimizing slavery.
Three hundred or so years ago, a plantation owner in Virginia or Carolina decided he could prosper by using slaves to work his farm. Soon, many others made the same decision and the slave trade developed as tribal leaders in Africa found they could get rich by selling captives from their own and neighboring tribes to slave traders who shipped them to slave factories and auctions in Cuba and the Eastern U.S.
The private decisions of a few multiplied to become a trend, a custom and a culture, and led to untold human misery, suffering and degradation to all who were involved. Can we ever remove the stain from our nation?
The price we are paying in race relations, cultural divisions and social and economic expenses far exceeds any benefits or profits from slavery. The profits are "gone with the wind," but the costs reach from here to eternity.
Some women in our society, having an unwanted pregnancy, make a "private" decision to abort their unborn child. These individual private decisions, made for reasons of convenience, career or choice, have multiplied to become a trend, a custom and a culture. The abortion factories, making billions in profits, are happy to encourage and provide abortions on demand.
Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, more than 40 million people have been killed. Some 12 to 15 million of these, if they had been allowed to live, would now be 20 to 30 years old entering the work force, paying Social Security taxes and providing goods and services to our society. Is it just a coincidence that this number is close to the number of illegal immigrants to our country in the last few years?
Those of you who make individual private decisions to abort your children and those who provide the abortion services are no doubt very intelligent and sophisticated, but God is replacing you and your aborted child with an illegal immigrant. God is not mocked. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind!
The moral implications of abortion on demand are even more horrendous than the social and economic issues. Can we ever remove this stain from our nation? Just as slaveowners rationalized their choice by dehumanizing blacks, so the pro-choice advocates dehumanize the unborn. In the aggregate, the private decisions we make in our homes, our doctor's offices and our businesses have far-reaching, even eternal consequences.
Jimmy Echols
Alto
Senator spreading mistruth about law
This week I received Sen. Johnny Isakson's constituent newsletter and I am appalled to read the outright lies contained therein. He says the Employee Free Choice Act would "eliminate the rights of workers to participate in a secret-ballot election in order to certify the creation of a union" when the EFCA would only allow the employees to bypass secret ballot elections, by their own choosing, by using a card check instead.
Under present law, employees must go to the employer first, not the National Labor Relation Board, to ask for acceptance of their chosen representative. This is what allows intimidation of employees to begin before the NLRB knows anything about requested representation.
Is my senator just trying to confuse me or does he just think I am so ignorant that I will buy this lie as truth? I am so tired of politicians that keep repeating lies in order to make the public believe they are truth. Enough already!
Sue Harmon
Oakwood