To the Journal editor:

Recently those of us who tune into the media have been unable to escape the scenes out of Lansing of fellow Michigan citizens protesting for “liberation!” liberation from medically sanctioned and recommended isolation and social distancing to “help save lives.” Thanks to my isolation I have been on email and Facebook with my international friends more than usual and I have noticed a theme in my correspondence with the more curious and pensive among them, namely, what do guns have to do with peaceful protest?

All of my friends know that in the U.S. peaceful assembly is a constitutional right and many of my friends have participated passionately in one or more civil protest in Leipzig, Berlin, Washington, Capetown, Beijing, for example … Most of these friends, and I suspect many of their friends (and their friends, and their friends, ………….!), ask, “Why guns?”

Such a curiously American juxtaposition, peaceful protest by people armed to the teeth!

Intelligent, well-informed, peaceful people around the world would really like to know!

BILL WATERS

Marquette