“According to a TV news report the AK-47 and other semi automatic guns can be owned legally. If this is true why is this possible? If there is such a law, then this asinine law should be repealed immediately! Surely we do not have such goofs in the State legislature and Judicial system who permit such stupid and cruel practices ... or do we?

“Sadly I believe that this is almost a nation-wide problem!

“To those people who champion selling of these weapons to the public ... we can invite them to answer the police calls, face such guns themselves and if they survive such an encounter we could be sure that the law would change immediately. ...

“We must support Sheriff Bill Young in his evaluation and quest to arm all officers with assault rifles ... at City or State expense.”

Note, in passing, the capitalization of “City” and “State,” as entities apparently worthy of worship.

A brief letter opens by calling for a civilian ban on possession of semi-automatic rifles -- and ends by calling for all civilian police to be armed with them.

Which way does the lady want it? And how would this combination of outcomes be possible, in a nation where all rights begin with the people, who then delegate to the government only that limited, partial subset of their powers which they see fit to entrust to their employees?

Our frenzied letter-writer wants the Second and 14th Amendments “repealed immediately,” oblivious of the fact that the entire constitutional structure would be null and void if any substantive element of the Bill of Rights were repealed. A contract cannot stand if one side attempts to unilaterally reduce only its own obligations, or to impose new, limiting conditions only on the party of the second part.

Or does the writer actually believe that the state legislature has “passed a law” which “made it legal” for Nevadans to own modern firearms? What, pray tell, was the legal status of such firearms previous to the enactment of this amazing state law? Did Kit Carson and John C. Fremont ride this way armed only with slingshots?

Has the legislature also passed laws which make it legal to breathe, and to eat asparagus? Let us kneel and pray they do not unexpectedly repeal any of those, lest we strangle in our sleep, or find ourselves in handcuffs as we reach for the hollandaise.

Alleged woman-beater Amir Crump killed one officer on Feb. 1, and wounded another. He scattered approximately 50 additional rounds around the neighborhood, apparently taking out no other targets of value.

Don’t look for any defense of his actions, here. But on balance, would we rather he’d been armed with a single-shot, bolt-action hunting rifle with a telescopic scope? I submit it as a reasonable probability that anyone who’d taken the time to learn to use such a bolt gun properly might very well have killed more people on Feb. 1. Far from making strutting gangsters more deadly, the false confidence they gain from the large magazines of famously inaccurate weapons like the AK may be a blessing in disguise.

Are police safer -- has crime dropped, in general -- in jurisdictions which have attempted to ban such weapons only for the peasant class, but not for our government masters? Dianne Feinstein’s so-called “assault weapons ban” reduced crime not one whit. Meantime, John Lott in his book “More Guns, Less Crime” has demonstrated just the opposite -- crime rates drop when the government “allows” more common folk to carry more weapons.

To have any instructive value, the experiment which the lady proposes would have to be more along the lines of “To those people who champion disarming the citizenry ... we can invite them to answer the knock on the door late at night like Europe’s Jews after the Kristallnacht, waiting to find out if it’s their night to be loaded on the box cars, or like the Armenians in Turkey in 1915, waiting to be sent to the ‘work camps’ that never existed (since they were never meant to arrive), after THEY had been disarmed by the fiat of the ‘Young Turks.’ Let them face such government guns themselves, naked and helpless, and if they survive such an encounter we could be sure the law would change immediately.”

Except for the darndest little problem. Whenever a populace has said, “You know, this police state of yours just isn’t working out so well for us; we think we’d like our combat rifles back, now” ... governments have proved exasperatingly slow to comply.

Which may be why Tench Coxe, noted federalist and friend of Madison, found it necessary to assure us, in his defense of the proposed Constitution in the Pennsylvania Gazette of Feb. 20, 1788: “Their swords, and every other terrible instrument of the soldier, are the birth right of an American. ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”

Molon labe, ma’am. Molon labe.

Anyway, Metro police already deploy semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15. When Metro cop Brian Hartman shot Orlando Barlow -- an unarmed black man who had surrendered and was kneeling in a front yard -- to death with just such a semi-automatic rifle in 2003, I don’t remember any wave of radio or TV hosts squawking that we need to take such weapons away from the cops, asking what police officers “need” them for.

A number of callers after the death of Sgt. Prendes did indeed ask “Who needs a gun that can hold 50 rounds?” (The magazines of these semi-automatic AK-47 clones generally hold 30; Amir Crump apparently changed magazines several times.)

It’s an interesting concept -- that we should prove a “need” to exercise any basic, human, constitutional right. Can you prove a “need” to attend your church, mosque or temple this weekend?

What’s that? Religion doesn’t kill people? Even ignoring what the radical Islamicists are doing with their homicide belts and the shish kebabs now being broiled over the occasional Danish embassy, do I really have to catalog Jonestown, Sept. 11, and the Holy Inquisition? I bet we could cobble together a darned good “pragmatic” case for requiring a government-issued “freedom of religion permit,” if we went to the trouble.

Thank goodness we have never fallen into the trap of trying to prove we “need” to exercise any other human, civil, and constitutional right. We should never endeavor to do so. Each American has a right to buy a fully-automatic .30-caliber Browning machine gun to protect his or her life and family and property, and if this makes government bureaucrats cautious about trespassing on our property without politely knocking on our doors and letting us read their warrants, so much the better, and that’s plenty “need” enough.

This right to self-defense is inherent in all men from birth. No law or constitution can “grant” it, though it is their foremost duty to protect and guarantee it, and any system of government which ceases to do so needs and deserves to be changed.

At first glance, freedom rarely appears the most convenient system for the police. Though I’m told that back before 1933, when there was hardly any “gun control” at all, America was so safe and peaceful that no one even locked their doors.