One of the things that impresses me about today's American society - and not in a good way - is the lack of knowledge we as a group have of our own country, its beginnings and history, and why things were set up the way there are. We have become so far removed from the actual events due to the passage of time that we are now attempting as a nation to second-guess the decisions made by the people who actually lived through the events which led up to the creation of our country. We now seem to think, in our infinite wisdom, that we know more than those who actually experienced the tyranny of the Crown, the occupation of colonial cities and towns by the Redcoats, the taxation without representation, the lack of voice in government, and the seizing of powder, shot, and musket by the same troops occupying the towns when things started to get really intense.
All of these events, plus many more, were the foundations of the ideas that led to the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. You have to take into consideration that our Founding Fathers, the men who lived through the times and had the balls to stand up and do something about it, were all educated men, not simple farmers, and when they sat down and drafted the Bill of Rights they did it with a purpose. And it is my humble opinion that they listed the rights in a specific order, with the most important right - the one the Crown denied them the most - being listed first, the right to freedom of speech.
Right behind that, they listed the right to keep and bear arms because their experience had shown them that when the government chose to rescind that first right, the very next thing the government was going to do was take away your means to resist by seizing all of the populace's firearms.
And here's where we get into the part of American history that we Americans are sadly unaware of.
In colonial times there was no regular standing army or police force to protect the towns dotting the land, and until the unrest over the Crown's rule began there weren't very many British troops in the country to help protect the citizens. The countryside was still occupied by the folks that were here first as well, the American Indians, and some of them still weren't too happy about us being here at all. For those reasons the town relied upon the militia for protection, and many towns kept a common stock of gunpowder, lead shot, and muskets available for the militia's use. These items were kept in a building located in the center of town called an armory, and when the call went out for the militia to form all of the members would go to the armory and be issued a musket with enough powder and shot to put up a fight.
When the tensions really got high in the year prior to the start of the American Revolution and the people started to demonstrate against the British rule, the King issued two orders: arrest and lock away all of the ringleaders, and seize all muskets, powder, and shot from the armories.
In other words, silence the people and then take away the people's means to resist.
Therein lay the roots of the Second Amendment, the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Before anyone starts using the tired old "militia" argument, I suggest that you look up the term for what it meant in 1787 when the Bill of Rights was drafted and then move on to something else because that's an argument you are going to lose.
So the simple, basic fact that the American people have forgotten and that our national leaders choose to ignore is this: the Second Amendment doesn't exist to protect our right to protect ourselves from muggers, thieves, and murderers, although this is how the Second Amendment is applied these days. Oh, no, it's much more than that, so much more!
The Second Amendment was written to protect our right to protect ourselves from our own government.
As much as I despise some of the liberals in our government, I will state that none of them are ignorant or stupid people. All of them are college graduates, a hell of a lot of them are lawyers, and you don't earn either of those titles by being the village idiot. So I must conclude that their interpretation of the Second Amendment and their drive to deprive us of the right to protect ourselves from them is driven by a much deeper, darker reason. Maybe they just like being in control and don't like being told 'no' by those they think they control; maybe they have this marvelous idea of a Utopian society where everything is rainbows and unicorns - hell, I don't know.
All I know is this: our Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights not to "give" us our rights, but to list those that we already have simply by existing and to state that no one, no person or no government, can take them away from us. And the Second Amendment is there to protect our right to defend ourselves from our own government should it choose to try and do just that.
In my opinion, anyone who takes an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and then mounts an offensive against my Constitutional rights is a traitor to that oath and an enemy of both my nation and the people.
I will fight that enemy with every fiber of my being, and I will fight until the day I die. I took that same oath for the first time in 1975 and repeated it every four years until 1998. I believed it then and I believe it now.
And I won't turn my back on my oath or my country. Ever.
MOLON LABE!
IHC
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