Joe Moran: Civil liberties vs. gun deaths

I was heartened by Kevin Lee’s June 26 Point of View “Selfishness over safety” and for the June 26 Sunday Forum focus on “The NRA and gun control.”

Puzzling is the fact that the courts of the land have forgotten the hierarchy of inalienable rights laid out in the preamble of our Constitution. First and foremost comes the citizens’ right to “life;” only then come our civil “liberties.”

We are at the point when we need to choose the sanctity of life over the Second Amendment, whether one interprets that amendment as meaning a well-regulated militia or whether one asserts that it’s about an individual’s right to own and carry a gun.

The sooner our national and state legislators get on board with the public’s growing outrage over lawmakers’ perennial obeisance to the NRA, the safer our communities will be.

There is not a single civil liberty that justifies the gun deaths of seven young children a day in America.

This story was originally published July 2, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Joe Moran: Civil liberties vs. gun deaths."