I read a lot of op-eds relating to the right to keep and bear arms, and as soon as I saw Forrest Peterson’s opening paragraph in column entitled “Distortion of 2nd Amendment creates the need for a Wear Orange Day,” I knew I was in for a treat.
The orange hunting vest hanging in my basement hasn’t been used in years. Alongside hangs another vest, khaki-colored, its ammo pockets still holding shotgun shells, 20-gauge, no. 6. They’ve been there for years, probably since the last time I went pheasant hunting with our golden retriever at the time, Molly.
Peterson wants readers to know that he’s not opposed to gun ownership. He’s not out to take your guns. Oh no, he’s a gun owner himself… just one who’s in favor of a few “common sense” restrictions.
We greatly appreciate the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment. Yet, most reasonable Americans would acknowledge the vast distortion between the constitutional right to bear arms, and the deadly level to which that now exists. I am content to have a single-shot, 20-gauge shotgun, and a single-shot .22 caliber rifle. I have no use for a handgun or AR-15.
I can accept Peterson’s statement at face value. But can he accept that there are tens of millions of Americans who see semi-automatic handguns and rifles as more useful than a single shot 20-gauge shotgun and a single-shot .22 rifle?
The Second Amendment does not require that Peterson arm himself with an AR-15 chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor, a CZ Scorpion, or any other firearm. How many guns he chooses to own and what type are entirely up to him.
And it’s my choice, and your choice, to decide how many we own and what make and model they might be. Peterson, though, would like to change that.
All of the arguments about mental health, school security, and background checks fail to compensate for the simple fact that firearms beyond those needed for gun sports and hobbies should be banned or tightly regulated. I fail to fully understand the thought — or lack thereof — behind the desire to own an AR-15 or something similar.
There are plenty of AR-15s and other semi-automatic firearms being used for “gun sports” and plinking, but according to Peterson, those aren’t “needed.” So what is? Apparently only single shot .20 gauge shotguns and .22 caliber rifles.
Peterson believes that if you and I were to just sit down and listen to the parents, siblings, spouses, and children of those killed in mass shootings we’d change our mind… unless our hearts are too cold to take in what they have to say. Peterson mistakenly believes that every person touched by a horrific tragedy is of like mind, when the truth is that there are plenty of people who’ve lost a loved one in a shooting who don’t blame the gun or think the answer is more gun control.
Do their voices and opinions not count? Are the only folks who can speak with personal authority on gun control the ones who support it?
Peterson claims that it’s a distortion of the Second Amendment that leads to “gun violence”; that if we just rendered the Second Amendment meaningless that we could become violence-free. Not only is Peterson indulging himself in a childish fantasy, he’s ignoring what’s actually happening in the United States right now, where violent crime has dipped to historic lows.
Washington, D.C had 192 homicides in 1977, the year its handgun ban took effect. Murders peaked more than a decade later, with 482 reported in 1991. Since the handgun ban was undone by the Heller decision in 2008, D.C.’s deadliest year was 2023, when the District recorded 274 murders. Last year the number was 127, and this year the District could see fewer than 100 homicides for the first time since 2012.
What about the 10-year ban on “assault weapons” that ran from 1994 to 2004? Homicides were already trending down nationwide when the ban took effect, and that trend continued during the ban and after it expired. Despite a huge spike in homicides in 2020, we’re now living in perhaps the safest time period in U.S. history, with just 4 homicides per 100,000 people in 2025, according to preliminary FBI data. That’s less than half the 10.4 per 100K recorded in 1980… a record that will hopefully never be matched.
It’s Peterson himself who’s distorting the right to keep and bear arms, which was never about protecting the firearms used in “gun sports and hobbies.” Defense, both personal and community, is at the heart of our Second Amendment right, and if we could offer one of the Founding Fathers a choice between Peterson’s single-shot .22 rifle and an AR-15 chambered in .223 with a 30-round magazine, I have no doubt which one he’d pick, and it wouldn’t be the one that Peterson chooses to keep in his home.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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