The most recent example comes from the gaping maw of Elie Mystal on MSNBC, where he claimed that, like everything else in this country apparently, the Second Amendment is the creation of long-dead, racist white supremacists who supported it for the sole purpose of putting down slave revolts keeping the enslaved populations in bondage. Of course, there is as much “truth” to that as there is in the 1619 Project. Progressives use such revisionist history to discredit the founders so that they can dismantle the founders’ republic.
The basic history lesson the Left seems to have missed while being indoctrinated in our schools is this: the founders believed in natural inherent rights—ones that were given to human beings by their Creator. As these were rights given by a transcendent source. They understood that no earthly power—say, a despotic British empire—could legitimately take them away. Among those rights were life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and property, but that was just a start to their list. In fact, Alexander Hamilton didn’t think a Constitution could ever be written that could fully enumerate all human rights.
In this discussion of rights, understand that the founders also viewed as inherent the right to property. As Madison wrote, “There is a right to property and a property in rights.” These beliefs informed the founders’ construction of the machinery of government in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which are really nothing more than an attempt to spell out and codify higher, transcendent law so it can be formed into a workable form of earthly government. Because of that, the founders also believed that a free populace had the right, if not the responsibility, to protect their God-given rights with anything and everything at their disposal; to not defend their natural rights was to shame their Maker.
It was to that end the Second Amendment was written. When all arguments and words failed in the defense of natural rights, the last defense is an armed one. The Second Amendment is for when the talking is done and the shooting begins. A “well-regulated militia” did not mean, as Progressives insist it does, some formal government entity, the membership of which is determined by the government. The founders simply meant that citizens needed to have the right to possess weapons sufficient to organize themselves into militias. In no way did they imagine government regulation of who gets a gun or who doesn’t.
The founders defined a well-regulated militia as one well armed with the best muskets, supplied with copious amounts of ammunition, and regularly drilled to maintain proficiency with those weapons. Again, revisionists want to define words in terms suited to their altered telling of history, but that’s antithetical to the historical method, real history, and the founders’ use of the terms.
All of which is to say that I am pretty sure the founders would have advocated Stingers, Javelins, and machine guns (and, yes, even tanks) for private citizens to use in defense of their rights today. They were all for the people being as well-armed as any government in order that they would serve as a bulwark against the government becoming despotic and attempting to take away their rights.
Case in point: When the founders were confronting an increasingly draconian British government, and all attempts at dialogue with the Empire failed, they were simultaneously and actively smuggling and stealing cannons and gunpowder; dare I say, actively smuggling and arming with “weapons of war.”
So all this talk from Progressives about why the Second Amendment is really just a well-regulated, government-sponsored militia can be summed up in one word: gibberish.
What the un-American Left really wants is to destroy the American people’s right to self-defense. Why? Because it’s much, much harder to send people to reeducation camps where “conscience reformation” can happen when those people are shooting back at you.
In watching recent events unfold, I’ve concluded the irreligious, un-American Left simply hates you and your rights. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they don’t, that somehow they’re rational human beings who can be reasoned with, or that ultimately they want what’s best for the American people. If they did, then Joe Biden would never have just admitted that his administration had no interest in hardening schools against potential attacks in the future. They want to take away your rights and your ability to defend yourself. Period.
If you want to ignore what is happening and where it will ultimately end if we’re not careful, it’s a free country and that is your prerogative. Just don’t whine when the country is no longer free and they come knocking at your door and you have no means of resisting them when they tell you to get on the trains headed to reeducation camps.
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Ned Ryun reports for American Greatness.