America Turns 250 as the
Second Amendment Movement Keeps Winning

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, gun owners should take a moment to remember how unlikely today's victories once seemed. In 1976, when the nation marked its bicentennial, many Second Amendment supporters believed the right to keep and bear arms was slowly being written out of American life. The law schools were hostile. The courts were hostile. The media was hostile. Most politicians treated the Second Amendment as a historical inconvenience. The future looked grim.

We chose to keep fighting. Giving up was not an option. The Constitution was clear, and we intended to fight to keep the Republic, even if the chance of success seemed nil.

A strange thing happened. The Second Amendment movement became the seed of the movement to restore the American Republic. This correspondent doubts it would have happened without the clear words of the Second Amendment. They created a rallying point, an anchor of certainty in the righteousness of our cause, a clear guide to who was with us and who was against us. Voting against the Second Amendment showed a politician might say he valued the Constitution, but his actions showed him to do the opposite. We educated ourselves.

The NRA played a critical role. They slowed the advance of the administrative state. It appears they believed the fight was lost, but they were determined to fight long rearguard actions to delay the inevitable. They stopped the registration and licensing of handguns in the National Firearms Act of 1934. They stripped registration of handguns out of the Gun Control Act of 1968. In 1977, Second Amendment supporters took control of the NRA in the Revolt in Cincinnati, where NRA life members voted in Second Amendment supporters and outed the old guard. The NRA would become powerful and rich with its rearguard actions in Washington, DC. Second Amendment supporters wanted more. They wanted to win. …