State Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, is sponsoring a couple of bills that have significant implications for the general health and safety of Maine citizens. The first, LD 112, became the lead story in the Sun Journal on Feb. 28 — “Freedom at a high cost.”

While Brakey acknowledges that seat belts do save lives, he feels that drivers older than the age of 17 should no longer be required to utilize them. At that rate, why should we be required to strap in our children or to insist that seat belts be worn during driver education classes?

Maine’s first seat belt law was enacted by a referendum in the 1990s. The public, not the government, thereby enacted this granny state rule. It seems that a generation or two of drivers had seen the light and favored the requirement.

Brakey’s second initiative, described in the Sun Journal on Feb. 27, would do away with permit requirements to carry concealed weapons. That would apply to anyone who already legally possessed a firearm.

The senator said that the bill “restores our Second Amendment rights.” Just where in the Second Amendment is there language about concealed weapons? The Bill of Rights was crafted in the days of muskets and flintlocks, not Glocks and Berettas.

Far from there being a “slippery slope” where one “gun control” law will immediately disarm all Americans, there is an ever increasing stream of laws that favor the shooter and LD 535 continues this unhealthy trend.

Edward Walworth, Lewiston