Dear Editor:

Setting the domestic police on a war footing, as demonstrated with the news coming out of Ferguson, is setting off alarms among those of us who value our liberty.  But the police reaction, in hindsight, is understandable.  With the country awash with unregulated weaponry, some in law enforcement might take a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later stance.

This is the cost to our society when we take to heart and practice slogans such as “I’ll give up my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands.” This is the talk of a loser. That guy is cold and dead and the winner is going to write history his way. This slogan is morally equivalent of Allāhu Akbar.

Relying heavily on violent force to resolve societal problems only creates more violence. But, don’t get me wrong, I believe a strong military is a good deterrent. And I wholeheartedly support the Second Amendment’s right of the people to bear arms; especially the well-regulated part.

But when police react with fear and violence to common police situations due to the prevalence of liberal gun laws in this country, there will be a lot of prying guns out of cold dead hands to go around. And the government will always have the bigger guns. Each pair of cold dead hands will have brothers, sons and uncles to renew the cycle of violence. And each escalation of violence will tighten like a noose around the throat of liberty and civil society.

That is why I say Allāhu Akbar is the moral equivalent of the “cold dead hands” slogan. And that is why we must find other more effective ways of dealing with problems and divisions within our society.