Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.
P.O. Box 270143
Hartford, WI 53027
Phone (800) 869-1884
Fax (425) 451-3959
Performed
by Jerry Hughes of the Accent Radio
Network.
For more information on how YOU can help bring back a Bill of Rights culture,
go to www.jpfo.org/your10rights .
For more on our "Government Keep Out" series of speeches,
go to www.jpfo.org/keepoutspeeches.htm
On July 4, 1776, a new nation was born. It was more free than any that had ever existed on earth.
By the time we stood up to declare independence, men had already been fighting for the new nation for more than a year. The fighters were, for the most part, a well-trained but un-uniformed rabble. Farmers. Shopkeepers. Dockworkers. Members of their local militias.
These nobodies had taken on the biggest superpower on earth -- Britain.
No president or general or any other central power ordered them to start fighting. They just did what had to be done. To this day, nobody knows who fired the first shot when the British soldiers arrived to confiscate firearms and ammunition from the citizens of Lexington and Concord.
That much, you probably know.
But the myth of the unorganized rabble putting the superpower on the run tells only part of the truth. The men who won America actually possessed more sophisticated military weaponry than their foes.
The best small arm of the day was the Kentucky long rifle. Our little mob had it. The "legally constituted government" -- as represented by the red-coated soldiers -- didn't.
Let me repeat that. Ordinary American men had a weapon not available to the soldiers of the world's biggest superpower. They knew how to use it in defense of their towns and properties. And they used it to be free.
In July 2006, the United Nations held a conference -- one in a long series of them -- to disarm the ordinary men and women of the world.
This has been a long-time goal of the U.N. Anyone who loves freedom should carefully consider what the U.N. aims to do. Their intention is to ensure that only governments have guns.
They want to set up a system that will let any government on earth keep all guns out of the hands of anybody who isn't approved by government.
That might sound sensible if you don't think too hard. But that means that the United Nations wants to make sure that the worst, most evil, tyrannical, brutal government on this planet has the power to make sure that its opponents can never fight against it.
They want to make sure that underdogs always lose. That freedom fighters can never win. According to U.N. standards, Hitler should have had guns, but German Jews should not. (Funny, that was Hitler's plan, too.) According to U.N. standards, Stalin should have had guns, but the farmers he deliberately starved to death in the Ukraine should not. (Stalin would have agreed with the U.N.)
If the United Nations had had its way three centuries ago, America would never have been born. And you and your family, to this day, would be at the mercy of any dictator who wanted to rule over you or any thug who wanted to attack you.
Don't believe me?
Look what's happened in nations that have confiscated firearms or forbidden their possession:
Germany: genocide
Armenia: genocide
Russia: genocide
Rwanda: genocide
China: genocide
Uganda: genocide
The list goes on.
The simple fact behind all the complicated issues of "gun control" is this: Citizens of free countries have guns. Groveling subjects of dictatorships do not.
Not long after the War for Independence ended, the founders of America gave us a Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights has one vital function: It is a no trespassing sign. It says, "Government, keep out."
It delineates what government is forbidden to do. It says government, especially the federal government, has only limited, delegated authority. It says the people, on the other hand, have a multitude of inborn rights that no legitimate government can ever take away.
But governments are powerful and individuals are small. How could the people retain their hard-won rights against the threat of overwhelming force?
Within the great Bill, the founders placed one amendment to guard all the rest. The guardian is the Second Amendment: the right to keep and bear arms.
But the right to bear arms means nothing without the farmers and shopkeepers -- or today we might say the computer programmers, assembly-line workers, nurses, and auto mechanics -- who are the ones meant to be the first defenders of liberty.
Today, the fashionable voices of the media tell us the Second doesn't really mean it when it says "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." They assure us it means only that the states have authority to operate National Guard units. They assure us guns are too dangerous for mere rabble to possess.
They tell us, most assuredly, that government agents should always be able to out-shoot anybody who breaks the law -- even if the law in question is unjust and tyrannical. They tell us it's for our own good for government to be infinitely more powerful than We the People.
Is that so? Do you believe it? Then why did James Madison, the father of the Bill of Rights, say, "The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals"?
Why did Patrick Henry say, "The great object is that every man be armed ... Everyone who is able may have a gun"?
And why did Thomas Jefferson declare, "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms"?
Because free men are armed. Slaves are not.
No, the Second Amendment is not the government's right. Governments have no rights. And they shouldn't. Governments are big, dangerous dinosaurs. They should be kept within limits and carefully watched at all times.
The Second is your right. Ultimately it's your right to control your own government. Your right to be free.
The Second Amendment is the minuteman standing guard over the rights to free speech, fair trials, and a free press. The Second puts "liberty teeth" into the promise in the Bill of Rights that government won't be allowed to lock us up without charges or snoop through our lives without warrants.
The Second says, more effectively than any other amendment, "Government, keep out."
The fashionable voices laugh at the idea that Americans might ever have to shoot back at their own government. And let's hope we never do have to. But the great beauty of the Second Amendment is that, just as the mere presence of a firearm can deter a crook from entering a house, the mere presence of millions of watchful armed citizens deters tyrants.
The Guardian best does its job when not a single shot is ever fired!
Yet despite remaining an armed nation, we've failed the Second Amendment. We've failed freedom. And we are in peril because of it.
Tyrants don't need to conquer us by force of arms. Instead, they buy us off, building enormous unconstitutional empires with our hard-earned money and promises of handouts. They disarm us mentally so they can disarm us physically.
Today, instead of demanding our uninfringed right to be just as well armed as soldiers and police officers, we've let governments impose rules on us that their own people don't have to obey. They invade our homes and towns with machine guns. But they tell us our own firearms should be fit only for "sporting purposes."
"Sporting purposes" was never written into the Second Amendment. And it wouldn't have done the farmers of Lexington much good. "Sporting purposes" was unknown in U.S. law until 1968 when -- get ready for this -- a U.S. Senator, Thomas Dodd, copied it from a Nazi German "gun control" law.
Today, we allow the Second Amendment to be violated by an illegal agency called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. This agency is notorious for its viciousness, its entrapment schemes, its false charges against innocent people, and its bureaucratic arrogance and incompetence.
It is un-American in the deepest sense. But we tolerate it.
Now the government thinks it has defanged its citizens. They think they can force our protests into prison-like "free speech zones." They think our once free press will always be willing to spout what the government wants us to hear. They believe we'll tolerate imprisonment without charges as long as its done to people we don't care about. They think they can regulate away all but a few of our weapons. They even think they can buy off our churches (once major voices against government abuse) with "faith-based" government handouts and special tax favors.
But what they fear is this: The Guardian, though weakened, still remains.
When the founders wrote the Bill of Rights, they didn't "give" us anything. They were merely putting into writing what already existed. You have a right to defend your life, your family, your community -- and your freedom.
You have an inborn, undying right to defend yourself against anybody who tries to take your life and liberty. Anybody. Whether he's a thug who works only for himself or for the biggest superpower on earth.
The Guardian has been battered, weakened, wounded, and infringed. But the Guardian remains -- and always will -- wherever a few brave men and women are willing to stand and say, "Government, keep out."
For a copy of the Bill of Rights, in 15 different languages, visit the website jpfo.org
Opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of JPFO.org or its members. Talkin’ to America is a production of JPFO.org.