Letter: Choose life, liberty, happiness over guns

We are not supposed to "pay the price" again.

But we are. Again and again and again. We won our freedom from Britain with the blood shed by brave American Revolutionaries. Their bravery and sacrifice won us our freedom from tyranny.

They fought for and won our rights to life, liberty, and happiness. They paid the price so we, their children's children, wouldn't have to. And so now we, as they so dearly wanted, should be enjoying those freedoms and rights.

But horrifically, one of those freedoms, the right to bear arms, is taking away our other freedoms and rights. Schoolchildren are paying the price with their lives again, and again, and again for just one of our freedoms, the right to bear arms. And so are college students, religious people, people who are shopping, people out for the night at the movies and concerts and nightclubs, people who make their living serving other people as doctors, cashiers, and receptionists, and children sitting in their parents' car at McDonald's.

That's pretty much all of us. All of us are paying over and over and over again with our blood and the blood of our precious children for that single freedom, the right to bear arms.

More than enough blood has been shed by all of us for the right to bear arms.

I choose life, liberty, and happiness over guns. I choose life and happiness and liberty for my children and grandchildren. Not guns and certain death.

Mary Hahn

Arlington Heights