Take a Letter, Mr. Postman, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

June 1, 2013 Martha Thomases 2 Comments

As I write this, there appear to be several people sending letters to public officials that contain ricin, a deadly poison.  At least one of these senders is motivated by a passionate commitment to his interpretation of the Second Amendment. 

While there isn’t a lot of information available to the public on the suspects, we’ve been told that one of them sent a letter that says this:

 

 

 

“You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”

This is stupid on so many levels.

First of all, when you send mail to the President of the United States, the Mayor of New York City, and the head of a multi-million advocacy group, you can’t assume any of these men open his own mail.  They have people for that.  It’s not just a security issue, but also a status issue.  The president of DC Comics didn’t open her own mail, either.

So there was no chance the poison would reach its intended target.  Instead, the worst that would happen is that a low-level staff person would get poisoned, a working stiff, the kind of person with whom the sender presumably identifies.  And what seems to have happened in fact is that reasonable security precautions prevented a tragedy.

But also, what if it worked?  What if sending poison through the United States Postal Service is a more effective means of taking down an opponent than a gun.  What good is your gun going  to do you?  Do you really trust government agents to carry out your plans?

Lastly, of course, it’s not just stupid but immoral and illegal.  But thinking that the Second Amendment protects you from criminal prosecution when you break the law brings us back to supid.

Duh.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases finds that smart people tend to remain smart, even after they are gone.