Is there anything currently serving as a better testament to the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers and their inclusion of the Second Amendment in America’s Bill of Rights than what the world is witnessing in Ukraine right now? As Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s army has been stymied and bogged down in its effort to overrun Ukraine, and specifically its capital city of Kyiv, it appears that Ukraine’s efforts to arm its citizens has played a roll in slowing Russia’s progress.

Joe Biden said it himself in last night’s State of the Union: “Everyone from students to retirees to teachers turned soldiers [is] defending their homeland.” How can they do that? With what he and his ilk derisively call “weapons of war.”

The Ukrainians have done perhaps the opposite of what Putin and much of the watching world expected. Rather than turn and flee before the seemingly overwhelming odds they faced in Russia’s vastly superior numbers and equipment, they have stood to admirably fight with whatever they have, including rifles that the government quickly authorized to hand out.

Even if Putin is successful in eventually taking Kyiv, what he will then face are millions of Ukrainian citizens now armed and loathe to surrender to some Putin-installed puppet. “Any Russian-backed Ukrainian puppet government is likely to be vehemently rejected by the Ukrainian people,” observes political analyst Jim Geraghty. “Russian forces will find it difficult to go out on patrol when every citizen’s got a rifle and every grandma on every street corner is handing them sunflower seeds, telling them they are going to be fertilizer soon.”

The anti-gun crowd loves to ridicule the notion that private citizens with firearms would stand a chance against today’s modern militaries. Joe Biden did that last summer when he erroneously claimed: “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.” Then he almost threatened the American people: “Those who say … ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. The point is that there has always been the ability to … rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it.”

We bet Putin wishes the Ukrainians were a little less well armed.

But Biden is far from the only Democrat to falsely interpret and apply the Founders’ rationale for the Second Amendment. California Governor Gavin Newsom is one of many who repeatedly refer to AR-style rifles as “weapons of war.” Failed Texas senatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke repeatedly promised to take away AR-15s, insisting: “Look, we are a state that has a long, proud tradition of responsible gun ownership. And most of us here in Texas do not want to see our friends, our family members, our neighbors shot up with these weapons of war. So, yes, I still hold this view.” “This view” is his presidential campaign proclamation that “hell yes” he’s going to take away your rifles.

Democrats have forgotten a fundamental reality: It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. That’s a reality Ukrainians are living out right now. An armed citizenry is a dangerous citizenry, which helps to ensure that oppressive tyrants both foreign and domestic are prevented from infringing on citizens’ freedoms.