To the Editor:

To read some of the “Letters to the Editor” regarding the SLC judge primary election, you’d think that Second Amendment infringement was the main concern. Rejecting the idea of registering guns strikes me as an overreaction since we live in a regulated society where you must get a license for just about everything. People are allowed to have guns and no one is going to take away a gun unless that privilege is abused.

I don’t understand these gun owners who think that the Second Amendment is there to enable them to bury arsenals of guns in their backyards in the event of an imagined civil war. A person can own a gun for self-defense but a person stockpiling weapons in preparation for combating or antagonizing the government has always been defined as an anarchist not a patriot. We fund our sophisticated military to be our patriots.

We are fortunate to have freedoms and rights. However, a democracy doesn’t entitle citizens to unrestricted privileges without regard for how certain actions will affect society as a whole. Our Constitution and courts were specifically designed to examine complex issues in order to maintain a society that thinks of others; not just one’s own absolute rights.

Those who get all worked up about their “rights” are conveniently ignoring that a democratic America means regulating our country for the many; not the few who’ve decided that their interpretation of freedom is “no interference by the government”. And it’s a fundamentally flawed concept for any judge to be aligned with people who resent the constitutional limitations inherent in our government.

Martha Hodges

Massena,