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A Voice from Fly-Over Country
February 6, 2013

Why the 2nd Amendment?
by Robert L. Hale
fitzgerald griffin foundation

MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA — It is time that we stop beating around the bush. The 2nd Amendment was written and adopted for reasons that had nothing to do with the right to use guns for target practice or hunting.

 

The 2nd Amendment was written with the intention of having the citizens armed in the event they wished to remove their government, and force would be required to do so. This Amendment was a tool provided to a free people to control the government if and when it oversteps its limited authority.

   

The 2nd Amendment was written with the intention of having the citizens armed in the event they wish to remove their government and force would be required to do so. This Amendment was a tool provided to a free people to control the government if and when it oversteps its limited authority. Our elected and unelected officials do, and rightfully so, fear an armed and capable citizenry able to remove them from power. Until recently, the fear of citizens rising up to shake off an overspending, invasive, powerful, irresponsible, and irresponsive political regime was of concern to no one.

Over the past 15 years, however, our state and federal governments have so overstepped their legitimate authority that they have reason to be fearful of citizens rising up. Manipulative political minorities at all levels of government have become so arrogant that they openly ignore the will of the majority and the constitutional limits of their authority. Many have lost their legitimacy.

In January 2012, Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, issued a warning about citizens revolting against the federal government. A study partly funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledged that the Secretary had identified as "extreme right wing terrorists" some citizens who were conservative, concerned about individual liberty, and suspicious of centralized government authority. Napolitano's DHS has described individuals with such views as "potential homegrown terrorists."

This concern is not simply one shared by those associated with the Obama Administration. On the other side of the aisle, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) , stated that the military should have the right to kill U.S. citizens on our own soil if they are suspected terrorists.

The past year has provided several examples of how effective citizens with weapons can be against governmental institutions that trample on their rights. Angry citizens in Libya and Egypt toppled once-powerful and immovable regimes.

An aggressive political party has succeeded in trashing the beliefs and values that once made America the worldwide beacon of freedom. Instead of upholding these beliefs and values, this political minority in Congress has relegated them into oblivion. Government mandates that until very recently would have been unimaginable now undermine the rights of all who believe in traditional religious values, conservative political principles, and natural law realities.

The federal government has mandated that every person in America must purchase a health insurance policy defined by government or face severe fines. The First Lady unilaterally imposes breakfast and lunch standards on public schools nationwide. Those who work are paying for euthanasia; homosexual "marriage" and special rights for homosexuals in adoptions; free abortion and free contraception; and the right to food, housing, televisions, cell phones, and medical services for those who do not work.

Such radical policies are not fiscally sustainable, and so we are threatened by our government with the "fiscal cliff." The fiscal cliff is simply the natural outcome of socialism. Margaret Thatcher put it so well: "Socialism works until the government runs out of other people's money."

We have not averted the fiscal cliff; we have already stepped over it. President Obama understands that the national credit card is maxed out; his response is to demand that the "rich" pay their fair share. That share, of course, is as much as the "rich" have. Once that wealth is exhausted, the middle class will be plundered, followed by such draconian measures as rationing. This is the route that every socialist society has taken. Our experience will be no different, unless rational citizens do what our Founding Fathers told us to do — throw out government when it oversteps its legitimate and limited authority.

President Obama; Secretary Napolitano; Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Senator Graham; and a host of other astute politicians understand this. They are attempting to disarm the American public by trashing the right to keep and bear arms. They think this will enable them and the ideas and philosophy they espouse to remain in power and promote their system of tyranny. But that is what the leaders of Libya and Egypt thought, too…

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A Voice from Fly-Over Country is copyright © 2013 by Robert L. Hale and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. All rights reserved.

Robert L. Hale received his J.D. in law from Gonzaga University Law School in Spokane, Washington. He is founder and director of a non-profit public interest law firm. For more than three decades he has been involved in drafting proposed laws and counseling elected officials in ways to remove burdensome and unnecessary rules and regulations.

See a complete biographical sketch.

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