Protecting God-Given Rights

"Would you like a lesson, sir, in the rules of war? Or perhaps your children would."
--Colonel William Tavington (The Patriot)

Jacob Hornberger reminds us that the Second Amendment does not 'give' us a right. Instead, the Second Amendment, and the rest of the amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights, expressly prohibit the federal government from infringing on those rights.

The origin of those rights is explained in the Declaration of Independence. They are natural and God-given. As such, they are unalienable, meaning that no earthly being can justly take away what God has given.

The proper role of government is to protect the existence and exercise of people's God-given rights. When government steps over its just boundaries and infringes on the very rights that it is supposed to protect, then, as the Declaration observes, people can rightly 'throw off' that government in favor of a more capable design.

Because government is empowered with state-of-the art weaponry to enforce those rights, citizens must be permitted to carry similar arms in the event that the government must be thrown off. As Hornberger observes, our founding ancestors understood this principle well. Hence the Second Amendment.

That so few people, particularly children, seem to understand this thought train reflects an abject failure of our education system in explaining the founding logic of this country.