Dear Mr. Editors,

From a young age, growing up in the backwoods of western [REDACTED], my father taught me the basic skills that every young outdoorsman learns: how to safely disarm a pathogenic bioaerosal canister, the proper way to jerry-rig a common hand grenade for dispersing mustard gas, never to cross-contaminate virulent bacterial strains in the field. These essential staples of chemical and bioweapon safety are more than just a sacred code; they represent the American way of life.

Countless hours I spent with my father in those days, stalking through the buck brush, breathing in the autumnal chill through my old ABEK-P3 gas mask filter. My fondest memories of childhood inevitably return to the magnificent swirl of napalm, the smell of game fowl incinerated in a white-hot cloud of otherworldly fire in the early morning stillness.

The right to bear firearms and weaponize stockpiles of biohazardous material is not about politics; it’s about a proud culture of responsible hobbyists. Everywhere in the media we see the overreaction of city-folk who fear something that they flatly refuse to understand. As a result of their ignorance, I may never have the opportunity to pass on this time-honored tradition of safely disseminating invisibly transmitted contagions (the mutagenic and carcinogenic effects of which often manifest only many years later) to my own son.

BW and CW don’t kill people. Like any other tool with the sole function of inflicting violence, it’s simply a matter of careful handling. Is there really such a difference between a child’s rudimentary chemistry set and a bunker laboratory full of chimeric virus strains? The problem isn’t that a few bad guys use these otherwise completely neutral tools for their own sick purposes, it’s that we stigmatize good guys who simply want to learn the responsible method for triggering thermal delivery systems of broad-spectrum infection.

A firearm with the safety engaged is not a liability. The real liability is the soft, fragile body that finds itself on the wrong end of that discharged weapon. Similarly, there’s nothing potentially threatening about a tightly corked vile of anthrax. It’s the careless elbow that knocks the vile to the floor that should be blamed.

Patriotically yours,

Willie Pete