When it comes to freedom from government oppression, the First Amendment gets all the credit. When it comes to those liberties we all readily enjoy – speech, religion, assembly, petition and press – there is such a strong and unified understanding in America that these are inalienable rights that they’re hardly ever questioned.
Yet when it comes to the Second Amendment and what should be an inalienable right to bear arms, the concept of personal independence is suddenly lost on half the population.
This Independence Day, let’s re-examine that concept.
The Second Amendment states, “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.”
Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, these words are clear and their intent is simple: to protect personal liberties. Independence Day doesn’t just celebrate America’s independence from Britain, it also celebrates the liberation of a people. America’s citizens can proudly say they live in a country founded on the principle that each has the right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Speech” Patrick Henry said, “If we would be free, if we mean to hold inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have so long contended, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble cause for which we have so long endured, and to which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest should be obtained, then we must fight! I repeat Sir, we must fight! A call to arms and an appeal to the God of hosts is all that we have left.”
Two centuries after our first Independence Day, America is again in the fight of its life.
On foreign soil, we fight terrorists that would rather see our nation succumb to a fanatical theocratic ideology, and again, the majority of us agree that we have a right to defend our nation from these attacks. But when it comes to each of us individually protecting our own lives, our own homes, our loved ones – our so-called “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – too many Americans are still confused on what should be a clear-cut answer.
Just as we as a nation have a right to defend our country, so do you as an individual have a right to defend yourself and your property. An unarmed citizenry is an open door to a tyrannical government, and you need look no further than the many nations around the world who have fallen under the rule of dictatorships after giving up their right to bear arms.
The Soviet Union established gun control in 1929 and proceeded to kill 20 million unarmed dissidents over the next 44 years. Hitler did the same in 1938 and exterminated over 13 million unarmed Jews and others until the end of the second world war.
History is rife with these examples, repeated over and over again in nations where guns are forcibly taken from the hands of citizens: China, Turkey, Guatemala, Uganda and Cambodia have collectively killed millions of people after stripping them of their right to bear arms.
In America, gun control proponents have attempted to misconstrue the Second Amendment in an attempt to deny us our constitutional right to bear arms. But there’s no questioning how our founding fathers felt about this inalienable right.
“The advantage of being armed the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation is that the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms,” James Madison noted.
War, violence and murder are atrocities, but guns are merely props for the people who commit them. It’s when those of us who believe in peace and civilized society quietly give up our right to defend ourselves that the criminals and terrorists gain the upper hand. Personal arms keep the government in its proper place: subservient to its citizenry.
“And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms,” Thomas Jefferson said.
As you sit back to enjoy the fireworks in Morro Bay or Pismo tomorrow, take a moment to appreciate every facet of what comprises your freedom. The Constitution may well be the most beautiful document every written; it guarantees your right to a fair trial, to speak freely and to own property. Just as importantly, it guarantees your right to defend yourself from any government or mob that may come to take those other freedoms away from you.
Marlize van Romburgh is a journalism senior and the editor-in-chief of the Mustang Daily.