Ignorance of the unknown can be easily manipulated into fearing the unknown. A display of this all-too-common scenario was on full display over the weekend in Washington, DC, where thousands of folks descended in an emotive and illiterate display of anti-firearms virtue-signaling. This protest of gun rights was ironically dubbed the “March for Our Lives.” Organizers touted the crowd as being upwards of 800,000, but in reality it was just over 200,000. Note that DC is 95% Democrat and the surrounding suburbs share similar percentages. Consequently, any leftist confab can draw hundreds of thousands of Dem government-dependents, either because they or a member of their household is employed by a bureaucracy or because they are boondoggle contractors, all of whom live in or near the Swamp. So turnout for such rallies is not at all representative of the sentiments of our nation, though the optics certainly imply that, as portrayed by the Leftmedia.

And what was the message? Well, to put it simply, the right to feel safe trumps an individual’s Second Amendment right to be safe. Democrats and the mainstream media touted the “courage” and “leadership” of these young Americans, using the backdrop of the Parkland, Florida, atrocity to suggest that students understand the “gun issue” better than the average adult. Though many of the marchers were highly emotive but well-intentioned, their benign indifference to (and abject ignorance of) Liberty and its most foundational assurances is undermining their fundamental rights. But they won't recognize that until those liberties are lost. The leftists at the helm of the Democrat Party have based the achievement of their statist objectives on such ignorance, which they have institutionalized in the government schools — the pool from whence came many of the march’s attendees.

Why don’t students know what an “assault weapon” is? Why don’t they know why the Constitution protects the God-given right to bear arms? Because they are not taught; they are indoctrinated.

The truth is this march was part of an organized and orchestrated effort by wealthy leftists, who, by appealing to emotions over facts, press their statist agenda. These students are simply being used as pawns in a culture war that aims to convince Americans their Second Amendment rights are the root of the problem, causing violence and crime, rather than the palladium of Liberty. Students are not being taught the true value of the right to bear arms. Instead, they are being taught to view the Second Amendment as a flawed ethic that the Founding Fathers got wrong and that needs to be eliminated. Clearly, as Mark Alexander notes, “Our nation has reached the pinnacle of privilege when some citizens have become so ignorant and complacent that they want rights taken away.”