Bath should address its ’embarrassment’ of a rail crossing

Now that we have all this free money from the government for transportation it is time for the city of Bath to demand that whoever owns the railroad crossing on Centre Street gets it fixed now. The money should be available to get the proper engineers to fix that crossing once and for all. It is an embarrassment to the city of Bath that this problem has been allowed to continue to exist for years and years. Driving across those tracks is and has been a nightmare. So whoever in the city of Bath is responsible please get this action going now.

John Heppell,
Bath

Better leaders, not guns, will ensure our freedoms

There is a recent YouTube video with an excerpt from a House Judiciary Committee hearing showing an exchange between Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) who were debating semi-automatic weapon ownership. The tone was calm, respectful, and uncontentious, focusing mostly on Mr. Roy’s statements.

For the most part, Rep. Roy’s comments centered on the usual references to the 2nd Amendment including the typical argument related to possessing weapons for self-protection, even against American soldiers if that ever became necessary.

I support gun (rifle/pistol) ownership for sport, hunting (not my thing) and personal protection, in a much more controlled and licensed environment than we have now. However, I am continually bemused by 2nd Amendment supporters who point to the need to freely own arms of all types as relevant protection against a potential tyrannical U.S. government.

The 2nd Amendment was crafted at a time when, as far as I know, there was much less disparity between the official “government” military and local citizens/militia. Presumably, they each had some amount of rifles, pistols and cannons. Today, that parity has long since gone. If the government shows up in your driveway to take away your guns, with a platoon of soldiers, M1 Abrams tanks, Apache helicopters and F-35s flying overhead, I don’t think one would have much of a chance to defend themselves. If individuals were allowed to purchase this same weaponry there might be parity. There is a slight affordability issue however, an F-35 is $78 million, a tank is $9 million and our government has thousands of them and other military ordnance. David Koresh saw how much parity there was in Waco, Texas.

A better protection overall would be not electing Presidents, politicians and other officials who deny or try to change election results or carry out an insurrection in our Nation’s Capital. That will most certainly result in the inception of real tyranny and the loss of our Democracy and 2nd Amendment rights. Demagogues like absolute power.

Jeffrey Runyon,
Brunswick

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