Instilling Fear…for the Right Reasons

“THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE”

by Don Fredrick, ©2013, blogging at The Obama Timeline

(Jan. 12, 2013) — With the threat of additional gun control measures and perhaps even gun confiscation the topic of many discussions across the nation, the text of the Second Amendment is worth reconsidering:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Note that the Second Amendment emphasizes the “security of a free State,” and not the “United States.” This nation consists of a collection of individual sovereign states. The federal government’s purpose is only to address those functions the states cannot readily perform individually, such as national defense, a supreme court, and handling disputes between the states. The sovereignty of each state is further emphasized by the Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Despite the thousands of instances in which leftist politicians and members of the media proclaim, “No one is talking about banning hunting,” the right to bear arms is most certainly not for the purpose of protecting squirrel hunting or deer hunting. That is absurd. Hunting was engaged in by almost everyone in 1789. No one would have considered it necessary to proclaim a “right to hunt” in the Constitution, just as no one would have argued that a “right to go fishing at the creek” needed to be declared in that magnificent document.

The right to bear arms was, is, and should continue to be to ensure that the citizens will always have some manner of protection against an abusive government—state, federal, or foreign. That is the purpose of the Second Amendment. To argue otherwise is intentional distortion.

Those who argue, “You don’t need a 30-round magazine for deer hunting” are naive fools. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with downing four-legged animals. It is for the purpose of stopping two-legged thugs from abrogating every other right enshrined in our Constitution. It is for protection against the government—which means law-abiding citizens should be free to own as many rifles, shotguns, handguns, and rounds of ammunition as they want.

Those who argue, “That’s silly. You have no reason to distrust the government” are even more naive—or are despicable liars who want everyone defenseless.

Those who ask, “What good is an AR-15 against a tank?” need to explain why Hitler and Stalin, who had tanks and artillery, felt it necessary to disarm their citizens. (If they had tanks, why were they afraid of farmers with rifles and pharmacists with pistols?) They also do not understand warfare. How were goat-herders in Afghanistan able to defeat the Soviet Union? How have the Taliban and al-Qaeda been able to resist the U.S. military for 10 years? There are more than 250 million weapons in private hands in the United States, and construction and farm equipment galore that can also be put to good use, as well as millions of cars, buses, and trucks. If a thug in the White House were to order military action against the citizens, the troops would be vastly outnumbered, even if they could somehow be persuaded to fire on their fellow countrymen—which we can hope would be inconceivable.

The military could most certainly be defeated, unless perhaps it brought out the really “big guns.” But it is one thing to envision members of the military being used to restore order in a big city after food riots, and entirely another to imagine an American fighter pilot agreeing to drop bombs on Staten Island or Chicago’s west side.

Most would agree, “Oh, that would never happen,” but if it would never happen it is only because we do have the right to own weapons. The right to bear arms is not to instill fear in the minds of squirrels and deer. It is to instill fear in the minds of Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, and Barack Obama. It is to remind them that the purpose of the Constitution is to limit their actions, not ours. And make no mistake, the purpose of gun control is not to protect squirrels and deer—or even school children; it is to protect the power of elected officials and their bureaucrats.