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Community Corner

Firearms to Deter Speeders: A Local Issue Gone National

During the last election cycle here in Wayne Township I pressed the two mayoral candidates Mrs Hutchinson and Mr Vergano to articulate their position on illegal guns at the League of Women Voters sponsored candidates forum and I asked whether or not they would sign on to the Mayors AgainstIllegalGuns.org.   Mrs Hutchinson flatly stated without hesitation or equivocation that she was against illegal guns but she deferred on signing on to Mayors Against Illegal Guns.org because she had not heard of the initiative and wanted to review it better.   Incumbent mayor and candidate Vergano declined to sign on to the initiative saying that it was his position that illegal guns was a national issue and not a local one at all, and as Mrs Hutchinson expressed her opposition to illegal guns, as an after thought the mayor interrupted her saying that he too was against illegal guns.   In recent days it has been widely reported in the local news that a property owner and father in Wayne posted a sign warning drivers who were speeding through his neighborhood that if they hit a child, they were not going to need a lawyer, with an accompanying picture of a semi automatic handgun. Since then that story has been nationally circulated with a featured space on the home page of AOL.com.   While we can all agree that speeding cars racing through our quiet streets threatening the lives of young and old alike is a legitimate concern, perhaps the greater question is that of and when something tragic like an injury or death might occur do we as a society advocate that in response an angry father has the right under the second amendment to come out blasting and emptying a gun at any vehicles errant driver in the instant of any such scenario as the sign states?   And as you ponder the ramifications of such a scenario, perhaps the mayor and his supporters might ponder that ironically, a local issue just went national instead and that the sitting mayor Vergano did not align himself with over 1100 other mayors when he had the opportunity to do so then and since. 

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