Dear Editor:

I wonder if our neighbor whose sign greets us as we come into Boothbay Harbor knows where MOLON LABE comes from … Well, yes, it is said to have been the words of King Leonidas of Sparta to King Xerxes of Persia when Xerxes asked them to lay down their weapons at Thermopylae and Leonidas refused. “Come and get them.”

This, however, ignores the fact that Leonidas was a tyrant, an absolute ruler in a military state and that, as in the other city-states in what we know as Greece, he controlled completely the majority of the people. Except for a very few who were in power, most were subjugated and many enslaved. All able-bodied men had to do as he said. There were no individual rights, much less the right to bear arms! In this context, Molon Labe seems, perhaps, the opposite of what our neighbor means to say. It was merely the invitation to take on the troops assembled by the dictatorial tyrants. These men, there by no choice of their own, numbered in the thousands and were not limited to the Spartan 300 commanded by Leonidas.

In the U.S. we individuals do have “the right to bear arms,” i.e. have a gun for hunting, for self-protection, maybe even for the pleasure of owning a beautiful object. I doubt, however, that the “Founding Fathers” imagined the possibility of the guns that have been developed for modern warfare. Each of us, as an individual, has the right to say that those guns should not be in our hands. Perhaps we could lay down our weapons and save a few lives.

Betsy Wing

East Boothbay