We must be able to defend ourselves

Here is the article I wrote for Saturday's Kenosha News-

My original plan for this article was to write about the tax increases. However, due to the events of this past week, I felt it was important to send out my heartfelt sympathies to all of the families and friends who lost their loved ones this past week.

After witnessing the mass murder of 32 innocent people, we begin questioning ourselves to find out what we could or should have done better.

The liberals were demanding to know why murderer Cho Seung-Hui was able to easily purchase the weapons needed to commit mass murder. Conservatives, like me, were demanding to know why those sitting in the classrooms were denied the right to defend themselves. Any of us could find statistics to support or counter each side of the argument.

However, the reality is, the evil people in our society ignore the gun laws and are determined to kill anyway.

Would they all have died if one of the professors or one of the students in the classroom carried a personal weapon?

Would Cho have even attempted something like this, knowing that perhaps someone in that building might be carrying a weapon?

We can ask “what if” questions until we are blue in the face. What we know is that our own US Constitution gives every single American the right to “keep and bears arms”.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1791. Since then, the debate on gun ownership has rambled on.

Why would our forefathers give us the right to keep and bear arms?

I am certain our forefathers realized that we would need this right so we can defend our freedoms.

In fact, Thomas Jefferson went so far as to say that Americans need to be able to protect themselves from a out of control government. Jefferson said, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

Thomas Jefferson also recognized that the only people that were protected by laws against weapons were the criminals, not law abiding citizens. Thomas Jefferson quoted Cesare Beccaria in his Commonplace book “False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”

We, as citizens, must have the right to keep and bear arms so we can protect ourselves.
It is time for our state legislators to once again pass a “conceal and carry” law for Wisconsin residents. Moreover, when Governor Doyle vetoes it again, our legislators need to override the governor's veto.