In his Maine Compass on March 9, Roy Matthews argues, “… don’t limit the [gun] rights of law abiding Mainers … stricter gun laws would … be punishing law-abiding gun owners.”

He fails utterly to recognize our rights generally are guaranteed, regulated and limited by government. We have driver testing and speed laws preventing chaos on the streets. We have drug testing and dispensing laws protecting us from all manner of poisonings and health scams. We have fire protection regulations limiting construction methods and building crowding.

I will not feel punished, rather protected, by gun regulation. We do not now have effective gun laws. Instead, we have killing numbers unheard of in the rest of the civilized world.

AR-15s and the like are called assault weapons for a simple reason. That’s what they are. They have nothing to do with self defense, merely the Rambo fantasies of men who have watched too many mindless Hollywood shoot-’em-ups. These men never mention the Second Amendment’s first words, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”

The Constitution’s authors knew a gun to be a single-shot muzzle loader. Those ancestors could not imagine the guns of today.

Phillip Davis

West Gardiner