Senator Edward Kennedy: Free at last

August 27, 9:24 AMBoston Gun Rights ExaminerRon Bokleman

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Second Amendment Community, known better as those that can actually read and comprehend the United States Constitution, seem oddly split on the news that Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has passed on.

Discussion forums nationwide have blossomed into very long and heated threads on the pros and cons of the late Senator.

Many feel that writing anything negative before the man has even been buried is cruel and callous treatment of a "great man". And unfortunately some of these discussions have stooped to new lows in the use of the English language - supposedly among like minded friends.

While the mainstream media has surely rushed in to point out what they and many perceive to be his positive attributes many of us (possibly in the minority) in the United States and in (definitely in the minority) Massachusetts do not share this view.

Some worshiped him as a God given to humanity, others voice mere contempt, and most probably lie somewhere in between. This is appropriate given his record, but after all he was a man and man is after all imperfect.

However, a couple of things that the media will not remind you of are:

• In Massachusetts, the attempt by Ted Kennedy in 1976 to ban all handguns in Massachusetts which thankfully failed miserably as a State-wide referendum.
• In the United States Senate there was never a vote where Senator Kennedy supported the viewpoint that the Second Amendment "shall not be infringed".

Yet oddly these things were not to be his undoing as Massachusetts continued to vote him into office term after term after term.

Is it any wonder why then that he's so controversial? Perhaps, but in the Second Amendment Community where the proper focus should be on the Senator's lack of support (bordering on a blatent violation of his oath of office) for the United States Constitution, he should have no support whatsoever.

While some are surely in mourning and rightly so, there are those who feel otherwise about this controversial political figure and to them I offer the (consolatory) words of a much greater man, Dr. Martin Luther King:

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"