Edward Hum – 4/19/09

This page was last updated on October 1, 2009.

Cars, AK-47s and Ben Franklin; Edward J. Hum; Beaver County Times; April 19, 2009.

Mr. Hum was a regular contributor (at least 28 letters) from mid-2004 through September 2007. After about 10 months, Mr. Hum came out of “retirement” to bash President Bush’s Air National Guard service with two letters in less than two weeks. Mr. Hum concluded 2008 with a total of six letters, only about two-thirds of his previous yearly average. It will be no surprise most of Mr. Hum’s letters have been no more than exercises in bashing President Bush and/or other Republicans. I wonder what Mr. Hum will do now that Barack Obama has become President. Mr. Hum’s letters are also flame-throwing exercises. I don’t know if Mr. Hum actually believes what he writes, or if he simply likes to stir things up to call attention to himself.

Mr. Hum is one of a group of local Republican impersonators (The group also includes Messrs. William A. Alexander, Arthur Brown, William G. Horter, and George Reese.) who write claiming to be disgruntled Republicans. You have to give Mr. Hum “credit,” however, for going the extra mile to further his impersonation. As of September 2006, Mr. Hum was actually registered as a Republican despite the fact he’s no more a Republican than is Dennis Kucinich.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Every day about 60 people die by gunfire in the United States.”

[RWC] Mr. Hum appears to be taking a hiatus from his usual “Fellow Republicans” greeting.

If you’re actually interested in the “facts” Mr. Hum cites, I suggest you do some due diligence.

“If there were a headline event every week in which 30 people were killed in one day at one location, it would only be 1,560 more deaths a year.

“This would raise the daily average from 60.1 to 64.9.

“We have shown we can live with 60 to 65 gunfire deaths a day, including a police officer being killed every fourth or fifth day.

“However, the question is what the founding fathers would think. They were pretty smart guys who knew there was a lot of evil in human nature.

“That’s why we have so many checks and balances in the Constitution.

“What if we could bring Ben Franklin back, explained automobiles and AK-47s to him and asked him what he thought of them.

“Franklin would say, ‘Those automobiles look pretty dangerous. Maybe we should license them and drivers to make sure none of those nuts out there use them improperly. Those AK-47s look dangerous, too. Let’s license them and their ammunition.’

[RWC] It’s interesting Mr. Hum believes he knows Ben Franklin well enough to know how he would react. Cannons of the era were “pretty dangerous,” yet the Second Amendment didn’t/doesn’t prohibit their civilian ownership.

For someone who apparently believes he knows enough about history to know how Ben Franklin would react, Mr. Hum doesn’t appear to know the reason for the Second Amendment. Mr. Hum was right, however, when he wrote the Founding Fathers “were pretty smart guys who knew there was a lot of evil in human nature.” That’s the reason for the Second Amendment; it is for the citizens to protect themselves from the government. Read the Constitution and most of our founding documents and you find our Founding Fathers were very distrustful of what government could become. That’s why the powers granted to the federal government are explicitly enumerated and all other powers are “reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people” (10th Amendment). Our Founding Fathers also knew the American Revolution would have been impossible had the British prohibited civilian gun ownership.

“How does this end?

“The lobbyists would be throwing copies of the Second Amendment, wrapped around bricks, at his head as he rushed back to the 18th century.”