Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, was wrong in his implication that the "true purpose" of the Second Amendment is protection against the United States government ("First, remember the Constitution," Feb. 12).
The Second Amendment never was, is not now and never will be an invitation to treason. No matter how many times some say so, it's not intended to protect the people from "tyrannical government." Bearing arms against the United States government is treason. The founders would never have put that in the Bill of Rights.
The Anti-Federalists included the Second Amendment because they feared a peacetime standing army. Instead, they imagined citizen militias in the states, composed of farmers and tradesmen with muskets over the mantel.
It is the only amendment that begins with an explanation of its purpose: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state... ." It's about militias, and it says so upfront.
The first test of militias came with the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, when a group of anti-tax insurrectionists not only refused to pay the whiskey tax, but some even ambushed, humiliated or tarred and feathered the tax collectors. One can easily imagine that they considered the tax as an action of a "tyrannical government."
President George Washington raised a militia and marched against the rebels, who surrendered without a fight.
It doesn't take much reading of history to know that the founders would never have included an invitation to treason in the Bill of Rights.
Mr. Gottlieb should know better.
J. MICHAEL MALEC
Albany