To the Editor:The Newtown Bee recently referred to as "common sense gun legislation" is a curious phenomenon. If we for the moment relinquish all suspicions of hidden agendas and ulterior motives, we can assume that to The Bee and others in town, the term "common sense gun legislation" carries a legitimacy in its implied self-evidence… it means what you think it means.

The ongoing effort in this country, to enact what

Presumably, the frustration among those working to enact such measures is that we should all agree on these simple, non-contentious, well intentioned suggestions… but we don't. This fundamental disagreement embodies the essence of a powerful and growing cultural divide. The folks wanting guns more controlled place their trust in the state… in the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and John McCain. To this faction, it's a good bargain to trust Washington and Hartford to eventually do the right thing.

To others, myself among them, this is insanity. To accept anything that liberals would define as common sense, when absolutely nothing they believe is grounded in any sense whatsoever, is truly an act of delusion. And in today's Washington and today's Hartford, the majority of legislation is statist, leftist, freedom killing gibberish. This is not overstated. Absolutely nothing done by government officials is optimized for benefit to the American people… absolutely nothing.

Through some bizarre, malevolent societal mechanism, the vast majority of the folks sent to represent us either arrive as or become amoral swamp creatures. They are incapable of honesty, unwilling to act nobly, focused exclusively on growing their wealth and power. No amount of money and power is too much as they consume our freedom.

Given these pillars of virtue filling the seats of Congress, why would we entrust even the slightest additional gun rights restriction to them? Contrary to many misconceptions, the 2nd Amendment is in place to empower us against acts of tyranny by our government. These are the folks who have brought us $20 trillion in debt… who loaded the Supreme Court with activist judges to codify the legalization of taxpayer funded abortion clinics, based on nonexistent words imagined in the 14th Amendment…. who lied to us countless times to sell a scam health plan… who invented the gerrymander, who claim illegals don't vote, who fight efforts to secure our borders. Everything they do is further destroying this country.

Liberalism is an impossible sell by an honest salesman. Tell people the truth about the corrosion and destruction that liberalism propagates and you'll never get it passed. You need to lie and swindle and deceive to sell liberalism.

Common sense gun legislation is a myth, another lie. It truly doesn't exist. When they tell you they're not interested in taking everyone's guns away, what they actually mean is they're very interested in taking everyone's guns away.

Brendan Duffy

4 Chestnut Knoll Drive, Sandy Hook        June 1, 2017