Here is my letter to Maura. Feel free to use any of it.
Dear Ms Healey,
On January 21, 2015, you took the oath of office to become the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You said, among other pledges, and I quote, “I, Maura Healey, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States.” A generation earlier, my father swore a similar oath. In his case, however, he meant it, and lived by it. In your case, you seem to have treated your oath as a suggestion, subject to the fickle winds of politics, and to be interpreted in whatever way may best support your political ambitions. My dad would never have suggested that you didn’t have the right to choose whom to marry, or what political positions you could support, regardless of his personal beliefs. He laid his life on the line for your freedom to make those decisions.
On July 20[SUP]th[/SUP], you used the power of your office to try to solve a problem that does not exist and declared tens of thousands of your fellow Massachusetts citizens to be unindicted felons, while making it clear that you reserve the right to make them indicted felons at your whim.
I know that you are an educated woman, so I assume that you are familiar with the concept of tyranny of the majority that was well discussed by Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and of course in Federalist 10. Because you think that you have majority support, you have decided that your position allows you to redefine by fiat laws that have been in common definition for many years, which of course suggests that you have the right, in the future, to redefine any Massachusetts general law.
Two hundred and forty-one years ago our forebears confronted similar tyranny—it began with a little tea, a little tar, and a few feathers and resulted in the greatest experiment in freedom that this planet has ever seen. The concept that was self-evident to them seems to have been lost on today’s politicians—you work for the people, not the other way around. Jefferson said, “That government is best which governs least.” Today it seems that our elected officials think that we are sheep to be herded rather than that we are the sheepdogs herding them.
This isn’t about “assault weapons”; we all know that fewer than one person a year is killed by any kind of rifle in Massachusetts. This is about political power and to whom it belongs. If you reread the Constitution and rethink your oath, the answer is clear.
