Only an Armed Populace Can Defend Freedom
by Raynor James
If Congress keeps messing around passing unconstitutional gun laws that infringe on we the people’s absolute, infinite right to keep and bear arms, they are very apt to cause an unintended consequence they don’t want. More and more of our citizens who have here-to-fore obeyed the law will refuse to obey the new infringements because we will recognize them as infringements!
We’ll say to ourselves, those laws are unconstitutional; therefore, I’ll not obey them. They are null and void on their faces and therefore, they are not laws at all. We’ve read the U.S. Constitution (many times); we’ve read the Federalist Papers (or summaries of them), and that’s how it works. Our founders knew God gave us the right to defend ourselves from all who would mistreat us, including a corrupt government. When that government makes moves to disarm us, we know where that’s going, and we’re not going there.
Of course, it won’t be clean and simple like the above sounds. Either attempts to take arms from us will be met with gun fire, or the left will resort to the corrupt court system as is their habit. Perhaps they’ll take the constitutionality question to a “packed” US Supreme Court, and insist that its opinion is the final answer. No, it is not. The final answer is what we the people insist that it is. We know the Constitution was written by representatives of we the people (choosing from among ourselves, I might add) in language that the average citizen of the time could read and understand well. The only aids needed to understand it are what the drafters had to say about its meaning and what words meant at the time. For example, “to regulate” meant “to make regular.” Isn’t that a far cry from the way bureaucrats interpret it today? Where does that leave the idea of “president” which the left seems to cherish so? Flat out in the cold. Why should we honor and revere a mistake someone made years ago? If we revisit a question today, there is a reason. The courts should look at it with fresh eyes focused on the contract the sovereign states made in order to create a national government, and they should ignore the opinions of their predecessors in black robes except perhaps for evaluating the logic of their arguments as they relate to the document itself.
You’ll have noticed I said that “the final answer is what we the people insist that it is,” and I mean that most sincerely, but there will be a tug of war. The left believes in “experts” who give us all our answers; there’s no need to think for ourselves. Left to our own devices, we’d be in trouble in no time flat. Hog-wash! We are a free and independent people, and when we live that way, we do very well for ourselves, and enjoy the thrill of figuring out how to get where we want to be in life. We like to live life as we choose. Some of us love hard work and want to “get ahead.” For others, free time (to hunt, fish, whatever) is more important. Fine. Whatever floats your boat!
However, we’re faced with a nasty government that is trying to take away the one thing that stands between us and total government dictation of how we shall live. It’s time to say, “No,” and mean it. As our founders wrote in The Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It goes on to say that when a government does not serve this purpose, it is the duty of the people to take corrective action.
Now is such a time. We need to restore our representative republic to something closely resembling its original design. We need to abide by our founding documents as written. I am not advocating taking up arms against a corrupt government, but I am saying that if we are not willing to take up arms as a last resort in order to keep our freedom, our freedom will be lost. I am also saying that it is necessary to maintain our rightful, unfettered ability to protect ourselves with arms against any enemy foreign or domestic who would encroach on our freedoms for the same reason. We can only keep our freedom if we insist on it and if we maintain the ability to fend off those who would take it away.