i've been entering letters to the editor i've had published in the past 2 years, and it's quite a trip down memory lane. i find myself wanting to resume the arguments and win them! i want to prove my point beyond doubt, to convince every reader of the rightness of my opinion, and -- i will be fully honest here -- crush all doubt and dissent.

i want to be right, and i want everyone to confess that i am write.

i realize how vain this desire is when i read the comments to a letter i wrote about guns. (yes, the more astute among you will have noticed a slight error: i wrote about guns. this is only asking for trouble, no matter what i say.) my original point is that as little as i trust people who are granted licenses to drive cars, why should i trust the licenses granted for carrying guns? this, to my mind, is a perfectly reasonable perspective. few drivers actually know what they are doing. most people in and near cars survive by sheer luck; there is clearly some law of the universe we have yet to codify that insists that if enough bad decisions are made simultaneously within a limited physical distance of each other, they will cancel out each other. how else to explain how so many awful drivers do not slaughter far more than they do?

this line of reason, sound as it is, did not sit well with at least four noble citizens; these were the four the Gazette-Times printed, two each for two consectutive Sundays (and after ganging up on me like that, would the paper allow me a rebuttal? oh no! i think i know where they stand on this little matter). i am sure one or two or twenty thousand other people in the neighborhood agreed. those who adhere to the flawed interpretation of the 2nd Amendment (flawed in that no court has ever upheld their view, not even the mostly ardently conservative) that we have a god-given right to bear arms -- these people simply do not take well to contrary statements. that is how righteous they are: this is not a matter for debate. it's a matter for shouting-down of views like mine, which is that the Founders were actually talking about militias when they wrote, in the amendment, about militias. "militia" was not a code word for private citizens who wanted any kind of lunatic weapon they could get their hands on, including massively powerful automatic weapons using teflon-coated "cop killer" bullets. read enough of their views, including the Federalist Papers, and the idea of a individuals with that kind of firepower would scare the shit out of the most fervent believer in individual rights.

it's a hopeless debate. thankfully, as i noted above, the courts have never held that the 2nd Amendment is carte blanche for toting. in fact, the right of governments to limit possession has never been sustained. no right is absolute, not privacy nor speech nor the perceived right to own guns. every right has its limit under state power, otherwise the state has no power at all. but the Righteous Believers have little time for the reality of law, and any attempt on my part to state my opinion, much less argue it against theirs, is a fool's errand. i'm just thankful that however little regard they have for the rule of law when it comes to the 2nd Amendment, they at least give heed to the one that says they can't shoot me for being wrong.