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July 29, 2024
Editor, The News-Gazette: Guns have never been sanctioned to engage in aggressive actions. Not appropriate in free societies. Guns are for self defense. Shooting out somebody’s tires is not an act of self defense, it’s an act of aggression. Prior to the American Revolution, the British government engaged in confiscation of privately-owned firearms. Their actions failed. The colonists ignored the King’s order for them to turn in their muskets. The Dead White Guys included the Second Amendment to insure no government could “ever” engage in arms confiscation. They knew that if the “authorities” could outlaw and confiscate the colonists’ guns, the British could exercise total control over their futures. When a population loses the right to self defense, they lose the right to live their lives on their own terms.
If you review the long political history beginning in 1215 with the Magna Carta, humans were entitled to three basic rights: Life, Liberty, and Property. But it wasn’t realized in the world until the Constitution was authored. Many people believe that a government “grants” us our rights. Not so, in America. In America, citizens “retain” certain rights and have put the government on notice that our Retained Rights lie entirely outside of the powers of governments.
In contrast, many governments do not honor the Retained Rights specified in our Constitution. Our neighbor, the government of Canada, “grants” rights to its citizens. And in Canada, what the government “grants” it can take away. A recent example took place on the border a couple of years back where the truckers, on strike, were stripped of their Granted Civil Rights and jailed for their strike conduct.
That would not happen here. (Which is why it doesn’t happen here.)
The Bill of Rights in our Constitution is unassailable … because those rights are not granted by the government, they are “retained by the people.”
“We the people do ordain and establish … ” In the vernacular, we are saying that we are willing to submit ourselves to a certain amount “of control” and governance in return for the guarantee of security and safety, which is the government’s primary obligation to each of us. But, let it be known that our government has no powers to usurp our powers to retain a litany of rights which we will not surrender at any price or for any practical convenience.
“Don’t tread on me” is not a slogan, it’s a warning that we will not, ever, surrender our lives, our liberty, or our tangible and intangible “property” (which Thomas Jefferson defined as the “pursuit of happiness”) just for the opportunity to have the likes of governors Biden and Trump try to tell us all what to do.
If we enter an era in which survival is based upon the necessity to resist the marauders and looters who will comb the countryside looking for “our stuff,” each of us will have to make a choice between our families and friends personal safety and well-being or submitting to the loss of our homes and lives. I suspect you will wish you had that musket and dry ammunition. DON HENKE Goshen
