In response to:
From Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all...
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is
During a recent gun violence prevention public hearing in Hartford, Connecticut, Bill Stevens, a father of a Sandy Hook student who survived the massacre that took place in December, testified. Stevens explained why his daughter is safer at home than she is at school because "911" and "lockdown" are not enough to protect her from an evil person. Stevens also defended the right to bear arms which is not only written in the Second Amendment, but in the Connecticut constitution as well. He argued gun owners shouldn't be turned into suspects no matter how many firearms or rounds of ammunition...
It is remarkable that the President and some members of the legislature believe that we should not have the protection of guns, while at the same time surrounding themselves, at taxpayers' expense, with armed guards. For the President, this protection will extend throughout his life. These gun control laws are unjust. We will ignore them if they are instituted.