Utah, guns, and 1860 | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I attended the recent March for the Second Amendment rally on the steps of the state Capitol on, appropriately, March 2. It was short on substance, but long on irony.

One featured speaker roused the rabble to defend themselves against an intrusive, tyrannical federal government that was trampling upon the constitutional, God-given rights of the citizens of our sovereign state.

The crowd of predominantly while males, armed to the teeth with very unconcealed weapons of every description and capacity, was lapping it up. Right in the middle of it all waved a Confederate battle flag, with a high-capacity assault rifle boldly printed across the flag middle with the words, "Come and get it," prominently below it. South Carolina, 1860, anyone?

I thought of how Southerners unsuccessfully and wrongly told the Union that it couldn't be told what to do with their slaves, and I wondered if anything else was going through the mind of unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Mia Love, a descendant of black slaves, as she delivered her "we love our guns, and you can't tell us what we can and can't do" spiel?

Tracy Wise

Salt Lake City