“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams
Amongst those that appose the rights of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms, there is an argument that infringing upon this right will reduce violent crimes and deaths by firearms. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Center for Disease Control and the FBI have found that when law abiding citizens are armed there is a reduction in violent crime NOT an increase.
The quest to disarm the American citizen isn’t about ending deaths by firearms, it’s about power. And unchecked power leads to totalitarianism with an all powerful central government controlling our lives. Which history has also shown leads to the deaths of millions of innocents.
Our founding fathers recognised this and that is why the Second Amendment addresses both State controlled militias as well as the individual right to keep and bear arms. Author and senior editor at the Mises Institute, Ryan McMaken, expertly addresses this in his article: “Why We Can’t Ignore the ‘Militia’ Clause of the Second Amendment” linked here.
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
– John F. Kennedy