By Jon Ward

While I am not a huge proponent of the social media platform so many people use these days, I did happen to see an interesting post recently that got me thinking about the gun control issue.

What I saw was a picture of a politician that is very vocal about wanting to take our guns away. The funny part about the picture, though, as well as the caption that came with it, was that he was being protected by security forces that carry guns to protect him. What makes it worse is that those security forces are paid for by the very tax dollars paid by the people he is trying to take the guns away from.

Now I had to stop and think to myself how ridiculous this is. Why is it that guns are good enough to be used for politicians’ protection, but that those same politicians still want to take your gun rights away? Even the recent rally in Richmond showed us how our elected leaders jumped the gun (pun intended) and tried to make a spectacle where there wasn’t one to be made. Our governor chose to put up a fence and barricade protesters without guns inside of it out of fear. He also chose to have a large amount of police presence there to maintain security! And what I find strangely funny is that the safest place to be was on the outside of the fence among many like-minded people standing up for their rights. In short, good people of good conscience chose to do something by standing up against tyranny.

We really need to elect leaders that will honor and uphold our rights and liberties. The very debate in regards to guns and gun control show how we currently have a majority of elected leaders that are willing to use fear and trample our most sacred values. They are choosing to ignore and sell to the public a warped view of our Second Amendment instead of upholding our rights, history and sacrifices made for those rights.

I’d like to pose a question to everyone, and it does not matter which political affiliation you are: “Are you OK with your government taking your hard-earned money (in the form of taxes) to make new legislation to take away your constitutional rights while simultaneously using your money to pay for others (police/security) to use the same rights they are taking away from you?”

Seems like political hypocrisy to me!

Jon Ward is a Suffolk resident. Email him at Jon1974Ward@aol.com.