“The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. [T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any…” –James Madison (1788)

While your Patriot Post team covers a wide range of issues, every bit of bandwidth we use is devoted to our mission – “advocating individual Liberty, the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values.”

At its core, our mission rests on the eternal “endowment of Liberty as referenced in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our Constitution.

While that unalienable endowment is eternal and assured for all people, it is only as sustainable as it is defensible.

For that reason, any discussion about the Rights of Man is nothing more than talk unless it includes discourse on the ability to defend those rights – which is why central to our advocacy of Liberty is our advocacy for the Second Amendment.

Our Founders, as with generations before them, understood that Liberty could only thrive in conjunction with adequate defense. Thus, they codified both the innate right to and obligation for that defense in our Bill of Rights as Article Two: "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.”

For the record, in the context intended by our Founders and affirmed by the Supreme Court over the last two centuries, “a well regulated Militia” refers to “the People.”

Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by our Constitution’s principal author, James Madison, wrote in his “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” (1833), “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

In other words, the obligation “to Support and Defend” our Constitution is entirely dependent on “the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms.” While Americans may chose not to be gun owners, they are dangerously misinformed if they do not understand that their rights are assured by those of us who shoulder this obligation.

In an era when the rights of Americans are under relentless assault by Barack Obama, the loudest members of his Democrat Party, and their activist cadres across the nation, there are several very effective organizations that are devoted to sustaining our Second Amendment rights and obligations.

The most widely recognized of those grassroots organizations is the National Rifle Association, which is holding its annual meetings and convention in Nashville this week. I am attending those meetings and thus this is an abbreviated column. However, I recommend for your review the extensive commentary I have devoted to our Second Amendment, and its role as “the palladium of the liberties” of our Republic.

The bottom line: When debating the Second Amendment, there are three points that are often neglected.

First, possession of firearms is a deterrent against countless millions of crimes, as made clear in studies of convicted felons, who tell researchers that they choose victims who are least likely to be able to defend themselves. Second, there are more than a million crimes thwarted every year by those who defend themselves with a firearm.

And finally, the Second Amendment is, first and foremost, about protection of our Constitution and the Liberty it enshrines. As I have oft noted, handguns are for personal and home defense. But semi-automatic rifles, mislabeled by Socialist Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists as “assault rifles,” are for protection of those who would infringe on the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” If you find that notion unsettling, then you need to learn more about the history the constant assault of statist tyranny on Liberty.

And for the record, despite claims to the contrary, banning the sale of those guns has had dubious results in terms of reducing the rare but sensational use of such firearms by mass murderers.

Again, “The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. [T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any…” –James Madison (1788)

Read more here and visit our Second Amendment store.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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NOTE: The First Civil Right is To Keep and Bear Arms. It is, as James Madison’s Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story, rightly defined it, “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” the ultimate assurance of all other rights.

All defenders of American Liberty and its foundational guarantor, the Second Amendment, should be prepared to articulate and refute the rhetorical gun control agenda disinformation propagated by Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists.

See these updated Footnotes for key points of rebuttal: Firearm Fiction v. Facts.

Only law-abiding citizens abide by the law. Only outlaws perpetrate acts of violence. Making good people helpless won’t make bad people harmless.

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