Your Readers’ View section on March 3 had two letters advocating new gun control laws. I must disagree with both.

The first, from Kerrigan Stevens, refers to the event at the Florida school as “gun violence within schools” (“How is now not the time to act on guns?”). What is occurring in our schools, night clubs, concert venues, and inner cities is not gun violence, it is murder. To call it anything else is to ignore what is actually happening. Evil people are perpetrating the crime of murder. Disarming law-abiding citizens is not going to deter murderers.

The second letter is from Harold Nilsson (“There’s no blanket right to bear arms”). He states that the Second Amendment was drafted “for minutemen with muskets in order to maintain an army.” That is incorrect. If you read the Federalist Paper 29, Alexander Hamilton wrote about the government forming an army of any magnitude “that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people.” He further stated, “This (an armed population) appears to be the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.” So the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not about maintaining an army, but the people being able to defend their own rights should that army be used against them.

So many of these evil actions have the common thread of occurring in gun-free zones. Some of the worst murder rates are happening in cities with very strict gun control laws. In my opinion, we would be far better off with armed school personnel; bad people are not a likely to start shooting if they know someone is going to shoot back.

Paul Anderson

Augusta