Letters to the Editor

Fischbach contradicts her claim of supporting legislation to protect human life

To the editor:

Our U.S. Congresswoman Michelle Fischbach has written, "The United States Constitution is unambiguous: our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period."

The final interpreter of the Constitution is the Supreme Court, not Michelle Fischbach. In the majority opinion of the 2008 Heller case, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative Reagan appointee, wrote "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." In 1991, retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Nixon, called the gun lobby's reading of the Second Amendment "the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen."

For the decade that the federal assault weapons ban was in effect (1994 to 2004), 89 innocent people died in mass shootings. In the decade after the ban expired (2004 to 2014), mass shooting deaths more than tripled to over 300. From 2015 to 2022, 719 innocent people have died in mass shootings in America, more than eight times the number killed in mass shootings during the decade of the assault weapons ban.

This is not a choice between unlimited gun rights and gun confiscation, as the gun lobby and Michelle Fischbach want you to believe. Law-abiding citizens can and should be able to have guns for self-defense, hunting and sport. Michelle Fischbach supports an 18 year-old being able to buy weapons of war that can kill 19 children in four minutes. This contradicts her claim to "always support legislation that protects innocent human life at all stages."

Justin Vorbach

Marshall