text: You bring, as always, a reasonable and thoughtful perspective on topics and events, Elise.  I've read and enjoyed your columns and letters for many years.  Thank you!
  
  I do feel the need to expand on one of your thoughts here, though.  As much as the Founding Fathers might look askance at the current debates over gun ownership and use, I strongly suspect that they would be vastly more horrified by the expansive behemoth which the federal government has become, as well as appalled at how little most Americans take for granted, if not dismiss, disparage and even often repudiate, our legacy of limited government and individual freedom (which is really the only kind of freedom).  
  
  It would not surprise me if many of them, being able to see what the USA has become today --- a bloated, bureaucratic and imperialistic welfare/warfare state --- would have given up in disgust and declared the Revolution a failure before it had even begun.