Second Amendment | The Right to Bear Arms
Believe It or Not, Guns are Your Friends Josh Westerlund, Staff Writer Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People. — Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Delegate to the Continental Congress, 1788-89
Dear fellow citizens, this may be hard to read. As I write this there is a congresswoman laying in a hospital bed in Arizona, a federal judge, a nine-year-old girl and four others are dead. This is a horrible tragedy, and to make it even worse there is now a massive cloud of political bickering and finger pointing. I will say this, while there was no time to stop the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, had one or more courageous citizens in the crowd been exercising their right to be armed then perhaps other lives could have been saved. Instead of encouraging citizens to be armed, there are now calls for more restrictive gun control laws. Guns are not to blame. Firearms bring peace. Yes, you read that right, firearms bring peace. Any place where law abiding citizens are freely able to be armed, the crime rate falls. Those citizens who choose to legally carry a firearm are far less likely to commit a crime than those who do not. The shining example of this does not even occur within our borders, but in the nation of Switzerland. Every male goes through a boot camp and upon completion is given a fully automatic rifle and ammunition to keep at their homes. With all those military grade weapons do you think there is an increase in gun crime? No. There are still crazy people who use their guns, but the majority of gun crime in Switzerland is carried out with illegally owned weapons. Even that pales in comparison to the number of people killed with bladed weapons, which is over five times the number of those killed with firearms. There is one truth that has been proven over and over throughout history and all over the world. The more law abiding citizens are armed, and the better they are armed, the lower the crime rate. Consider this: if a would be rapist knew that there was a 75 percent chance that his target was armed and prepared to kill him, would he still go through with it? If every convenience store had a 12-gauge under the counter, would as many stores be robbed? Let’s take this one step further, drawing back to the founders and
the true meaning of the 2nd Amendment. While defending ourselves against criminals is an important aspect of being armed, the founders wrote it for one purpose alone, to ensure the people could use violence to fight back against out of control government. One other thing history shows us; well armed populations are never exterminated by their own governments. Every genocide in the 20th century was perpetrated against unarmed (some recently disarmed) populations. The 2nd Amendment reads: “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.” Why this is misinterpreted I do not know. It is clear as day that the right to keep and bear arms by the people is subject to no government infringement. Infringement is any law, any regulation, or anything else the government may pass to restrict the use of a weapon. The only restriction that should be placed on weapons of any kind is that the person bearing it can have it for legal purposes only. We currently have more than 16,000 people permitted to carry in El Paso County. That’s roughly one in 25 people that is permitted to be armed. That is simply not enough. How many murders and rapes could have been prevented in this city if the innocent took their protection into their own hands? The police cannot be everywhere, and as demonstrated by Castle Rock v. Gonzales, they are not even required to protect you! We must take our protection as a personal responsibility, not as something others will provide. There are bad people in the world, regardless of legislation telling them to stop doing bad things. We must be ready to defend ourselves against all enemies whether they be hoodlums, invaders, or the very government itself. Even Congresswoman Giffords took her responsibility to protect herself seriously. She had her personal firearm in her purse. It’s a shame she didn’t have time to react to the attempt on her life and the lives of others. The greater shame is that nobody else took their responsibility seriously, and six people, including a precious nineyear-old girl, died as a result. Josh Westerlund is a married father of three. He works for a national telecommunications company and is a constitutional activist in his free time. He is a die-hard Natural Law advocate, firearms enthusiast and a red-blooded American patriot. You can contact him at josh@theconstitutionalisttoday.com.
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