Requiring background checks is not a socialist plot

To The Daily Sun,

In his letter of Sept. 10, Harry Accornero (of Front Royal, VA) claimed that leftists want to repeal the second amendment and “take our guns” in order to transform America into a socialist country. Most gun owners are responsible and support reasonable gun safety regulations, a far cry from Mr. Accornero’s wildly extremist accusations.

His attempt to link people who support reasonable gun regulations with Nazi Germany is beyond the pale. The “National Socialism” of Hitler was opposed to socialism, and by the late 1920s Hitler and his wealthy industrialist allies pursued openly anti-socialist policies. Hitler’s Third Reich was fascist and dictatorial; under it members of the Communist Party and Social Democratic Party were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps.

The argument that there are “good people” among the new Nazis of America comes not from the left, but rather from President Trump, following the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally and murder.

Harry Accornero may have left New Hampshire for Virginia, but many will still remember what an embarrassment he was to the Republican Party and the State of New Hampshire in 2011 when, as a N.H. House Representative from Laconia, he led a mob of unruly legislators trying to deny Obama the right to be on the ballot. Both the Attorney General and the Speaker of the House initiated investigations into his conduct. He also became a subject of national ridicule later that year when he asked the U.S. Congress to bring a “Commission of Treason” against President Obama.

As Harry Truman stated in 1952, “Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.” To claim that requiring background checks is a socialist plot is nonsense, but well in line with Mr. Accornero’s history.

Ruth Larson

Alton