Congress and the NRA

John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, President Ronald Reagan and James Brady. These are just a few of our leading citizens killed or wounded by a person exercising his constitutional right to bear arms. Now our government, as pressured by the National Rifle Assn., wants to make it even easier to purchase a handgun. The NRA again uses the Constitution as a front for its own selfish goals. If the NRA members indeed wish to uphold the Second Amendment, they would keep those weapons in storage only to be brought out to hunt food to feed their families, in times of a direct attack on their families by a repressive government, or in case of an attack from a foreign power on our soil. After all, times were different at the time our Constitution was written. Or were they?

As an 18-year-old who has not yet had the opportunity to cast her first vote in an election, I am already discouraged by the fact that our elected representatives in the Senate and House of Representatives can be more influenced by a group of people who care only about their weapons of destruction than by the police forces they hire to keep law and order in this country. I mean, does that really make sense?

I am even more discouraged that the leader of our country, a man who has been shot at and wounded, a man whose friend was shot and maimed for life, a man who claims there is no place for terrorism of any kind in this world, can tolerate, condone, and actually use his influence to help pass legislation that will ensure the loosening of laws that help fight the type of terrorism for which handguns are used.

JENNIFER DOHERTY

San Clemente