Letter to the Editor ...about Fear and Guns

   Dear Editor:

   I;ve held my tongue during this time of 5 and 6 year olds being riddled with bullets, and now I'm speaking my mind.

   If you are old enough to remember when the Black Panther Party formed in the late 60's to try and stop the violence against black youths by white police officers, you know that the white Republicans were terrified and did something about it.

  The Panthers were legally carrying loaded weapons on the streets and fear of blacks in general among white authority figures was still such that the legislature passed aa law in California to ban the carrying of loaded weapons by anyone other than police.

   That law, the harshest violation of the 2nd Amendment to that date, was signed into law by none other than Governer Ronald Reagan, worshipped as a "god" of the Republican Party.

   Now the table is turned. The white tea party types are again worried because they can see the writing on the wall; that minorities will be in power in this country before too long and I feel that is why they are over-arming themselves.

   However, now the moderate Americans, who don't want to see anymore children killed by young whites with guns, want new laws passed to protect us from these white, predominantly Republican extremists with guns.

   Have you heard them talk about their paranoia of possibly becoming the minority? It's enough to scare any normal person.  These white male extremists are the ones we now need to pass laws to protect the rest of us from.

   And that's how I feel. Please print this. There has been enough killing and enough extremism and  racism in the last four years to last  a lifetime.

          J.S. in Calaveras County