Such extreme paranoia is dangerous 

The letter from Mr. Ray David (“Learn from Our History of Violence,” Jan. 24) is an interesting document. He equates the U.S Constitution and Bill of Rights with the Bible, insisting that no changes should ever be made. If I recall my high school civics correctly, the whole point of having a Bill of Rights (and its additional amendments) is to keep our constitution current and relevant. In order to insure our freedom, our nation’s laws must be allowed to evolve and change when necessary.

Mr. David precedes all of this with a lengthy defense of the second amendment. He does this by tracing the violent history of white Americans and their oppression of non-white Americans, blames all of it on the government (particularly, for some reason, the current government, which is supposedly training the evil United Nations to patrol our streets), and insists the answer to all this is to arm everyone to the teeth with weapons designed for war. It is this sort of extreme paranoia that is far more dangerous than any law regulating these kinds of assault weapons. There is absolutely no logic here.

How many more innocent children (and adults, for that matter) have to be butchered in the name of the Second Amendment? The regulation of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines is long overdue and does not eliminate our right to bear arms. Our citizens need to learn to take care of each other, without having to be afraid of each other. If Mr. David is so fearful of our current government, then he should work to legally vote in a new one, rather than trying to instigate his paranoid revolution. That is called democracy.