Letters
Help for caregivers
“The Sandwich Generation” (August 4) was a welcome addition. Many adult children are overwhelmed caring for an aging parent(s) and often are unprepared to take on mounting responsibilities. Given that so many adult children are caring for aging parents with Alzheimer’s or a form of dementia, it would be extremely beneficial to include information on the unique challenges resulting from cognitive impairments and strategies to address these challenges.
Having worked in the dementia care field for more than 25 years, I know that caregivers often feel alone and engulfed with caregiving responsibilities and worries. Yet there are dementia-specific strategies, guidance, and a variety of community resources to support caregivers and their parents.
Vivian Green Korner
Demarest
The right to bear arms
I feel that too many people are using the term “fake news” to point out ideas that they disagree with.
In “Fake news about guns” (July 21), Sophie Heymann writes, “One of the greatest and most damaging lies being perpetrated right now is the interpretation of the Second Amendment to our Constitution, which claims that it authorizes personal use of guns and other weaponry.” This is a straw man constructed to argue against those claiming that the Second Amendment gives them the right to own guns. The amendment states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This appears to me to be very clear: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” One has a legal right to own a gun as long as one is doing it legally.
Ms. Heymann condemns two justices of the Supreme Court for using the phrase “stand idly by” when writing that they objected to a state denying citizens the rights guaranteed to them in the Second Amendment. It is a motto, according to Ms. Heymann, used by a gun control group, therefore according to her, only that group can in good faith use it. How she stretches the words of the justices to teaching murder via Leviticus 19:16 may also be considered “fake news.” She writes, “Leviticus 19:16 … was intended to teach compassion, not murder.” Leviticus 19:16 states that one should not stand idly by the blood of a neighbor, one should render assistance. Murder is not referred to.
The 1938 National Firearms Act was designed to establish licensing requirements on gun manufacturers, the selling of firearms, and to make it illegal to transfer firearms to certain classes of people. It was not just to cut into the profits of gun manufacturers, nor did it negate the meaning of the Second Amendment. This law was repealed and replaced by the Gun Control Act of 1968. More “fake news”?
She ends her article with a quote from a government printed booklet to further her argument. Her quote (in her added italics for emphasis), “The amendment does not say that everyone has the right to use guns.” No, the amendment does not, but it does not negate the stated “the right to keep and bear Arms.” Does her use of this quote constitute “fake news”?
Howard J. Cohn
New Milford
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