Letters to the editor: Misleading 2nd Amendment argument; laying groundwork for preserve

Manipulating the 2nd Amendment

Re: George Maguire’s June 30 letter, “2nd Amendment refers to people”:

It is shameful that Mr. Maguire and those seeking less gun control, including current Justice Clarence Thomas, try to mislead us and manipulate the context of the Second Amendment. Have they no respect for facts or the Constitution as stated?

The Second Amendment clearly states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Second Amendment, as some would try to make you believe using trickery by deleting the first 13 words, is not the following: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Everyone knows that none of these violent shooters represent a “well regulated Militia.”

It is also questionable to manipulate the intentions of highly conservative, responsible gun owner and hunter Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when he has already ruled, like previous justices, on this issue with the following words supporting a majority opinion, District of Columbia vs Heller, 2008: “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Most of us want to make decisions based on real facts, not partisan propaganda fed to us by those trying to divide and mislead us.

Jim Matlock, Ventura

Preserve made possible by others

Re: your July 10 story, “Ventura Land Trust purchases Mariano Rancho”:

The recent triumph of the Ventura Land Trust in securing funds for the Mariano Rancho Preserve, some 1,645 acres of hillsides right behind the city, deserves our praise and gratitude. That takes expertise, environmental savvy, organizational persistence, and uphill battles against entrenched interests (puns intended).

We must not forget the hundreds of earlier activists who worked hard over many decades just to save the hillsides from development, so these same hills can now be preserved. The Citizens for Hillside Preservation and Save our Agricultural Resources (SOAR) advocated both specific and general preservation of the hills, open space, and ag land, keeping them as natural and undeveloped as possible.

Then the Ventura Hillside Conservancy increased attention to saving the hills with its hundreds of members, connections to environmental groups, and alliances with office holders. Its Music Festivals and Wild and Scenic Film Festivals and its biannual Outlook newsletters kept the community connected to the land and efforts to seek funding for saving it. It is natural that the Hillside Conservancy morphed into the current Ventura Land Trust with an even broader mission of preserving river parkway land as well as our cherished hillsides in order to promote recreational open space.

The Thomas Fire in December 2017 brought an infusion of new citizens committed to keeping the hills from being developed for new housing, exposing existing houses to the threat of fire, and the Crimson pipeline oil spill in July 2016 brought even more attention to the inadvisability of houses on the hillsides, another blow against development. We can say the forces making the Ventura hillsides available for preservation came into alignment from both positive and negative energies. With the Ventura Land Trust, we have an organization to make that preservation all positive for all in perpetuity.

Robert Chianese, Ventura

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Letters: Misleading 2nd Amendment take; laying groundwork for preserve