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.
Ah, the Second Amendment. Once again the debate arises. Once again the gun control folks don’t get it. And amazingly, the anti-gun control folks don’t get it either.
The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. It isn’t about protecting your home, family or property from criminals. It isn’t about protecting our country from foreign invaders.
The Second Amendment is about protecting ourselves from our own government. Period.
Remember that we had to battle the British Army to break away from their control. Had we not had weapons at least equal to that of the British, we would have remained subject to their tyranny.
Our government is the people. Anything the government has, we have a right to have. Like it or not, physical strength is power. Weapons are power. If we relinquish our weapons, or stength, to the government, we relinquish power. We will no longer be the government.
Rather than looking at Virginia Tech as an example of why we need more gun control, go back several decades. Look instead at Kent State in Ohio in 1970. The Ohio National Guard opened fire on college students during protests against our involvement in Viet Nam. The nation was outraged. Songs were written about it, movies were made. People stood up and the outcry became even louder. And Nixon began pulling troops out; by 1973 most American troops had left Viet Nam.
Without the Second Amendment and our right to govern ourselves, things could have been much different. The Kent State tragedy could have been just one of several such incidents from a too-powerful government. In fact, some would argue that other incidents, such as Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidians, are leanings in just that direction. I say that as long as we hold our Second Amendment rights dear, these examples of government missteps will remain widely spaced and the exception rather than the rule.
I realize the events at Virginia Tech recently and Columbine (and other schools) previously are tragic. We are all outraged at this kind of evil and we all want to fix it. Destroying our Second Amendment rights, though, will not fix it but rather will create an entirely new set of problems. And these new problems will be even more tragic as we lose our right to govern ourselves, if not in my lifetime then surely in my granddaughter’s.
We must never allow fear to motivate us to give up our rights. That is a form of terrorism.
