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Candidate needs US civics lesson

To the editor:

Rather than “Gun Showdown Vow” a more appropriate headline for your Oct. 22-23 weekend edition should have been “Ontonagon Sheriff Candidate Doesn’t Understand the US Constitution.” Perhaps Mr. Utecht is genuinely unaware of the steps required to repeal an amendment to the constitution. Most high school students in Mr. Utecht’s county know from their civics classes that such a repeal requires that both houses of Congress propose an amendment with a two-thirds vote or that two-thirds of the state legislatures must call on Congress to hold a constitutional convention. Then three-fourths of the state legislatures must approve of the amendment proposed by Congress, or three-fourths of the states must approve the amendment via ratifying conventions. There is probably a greater threat of a zombie outbreak in Ontonagon County than the invasion of zealous federal government agents who are intent on confiscating guns. Alternatively, Mr. Utecht may have been employing an effective logical fallacy known as an argumentum ad baculum, namely appeal to force, where force, coercion, or the threat of force, is given as a justification.

The important issue here isn’t the far-fetched dystopian fears of a local politician trying to drum up votes, but rather the blurring of the lines between the “tinfoil hat” type stories found in Breitbart News or Infowars versus professional journalistic standards. During this post-truth election cycle, a host of conspiracy theories have become accepted as legitimate facts by many media outlets. In an age when the federal lawmakers take years to pass an annual budget, it is disappointing that the Daily Mining Gazette ran a story that did not critically question an implausible scenario involving the repealing of the Second Amendment.

Adam Wellstead

Hancock

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