“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” -Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution-
Read that again.
I know a lot of people who have spent their entire adult lives, politically, fixated on that one sentence. They have admitted it to me, and their are millions more just like them. I remember when President Obama was elected, and a lot of them, who already had safes or closets or basements full of guns, went out and bought more. You couldn’t find some types of ammunition. I have been told “I will never vote for a Democrat, cuz they want to take my guns” I don’t know how many times. The propaganda machine of right wing media have always told them, and they believed, that a tyrannical government was going to come for their guns and that it would only happen when a person who happened to be a Democrat was in power.
Where are they now? We have seen repeated violations of our civil rights over the past year. From abductions with no due process, violating the 5th and 14th Amendments, to the 4th Amendment violations of masked government goons while illegally entering peoples homes and cars, to the countless ways they have violated the 1st Amendment, including today arresting prominent journalists for doing their job, it is fact that this regime does not care about your Constitutional rights. And then there are the people that have been killed, there is a list here and it includes many more names than what you hear on the news, clearly violating these peoples 8th Amendment rights. And even this doesn’t cover all the people right now being detained in hellish concentration camps, again violating a bunch of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Yet somehow most of the Second Amendment folks are still silent. “They won’t come for my rights” they say, as if the only right that matters is the one you have spent your whole life worrying about.
Well here is the thing about rights. We either all have them, or none of us have them. And we either have ALL of our rights, or we don’t have ANY. And since the people who have been killed, or the people who are being tortured in concentration camps, or the journalists who have now been arrested have had their rights violated, that means your rights are also gone. Not slipping. Not in danger. GONE!
I have seen so many yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags hung on barns, sold at gun shows, and flying from the back of pickup trucks. To those who have adopted that slogan, YOU are being tread on, right now! What are you doing? Again I will make the point, either we ALL have our rights, or NONE of us do. If you don’t want to be tread on, then you need to demand that the rest of us don’t get tread on either. That’s how it works.
Fascists don’t share power. And they don’t allow power to exist that could challenge their authority. If you have spent your life believing that your love for firearms was meant to protect you from a tyrannical government, and you are not currently outraged by the completely obvious and transparent attacks on all of our Constitutional rights by the current regime, then I fear you are not capable of independent thought. What will it take?
I ask you to go back to the top and read that Amendment again. There has always been debate about what that actually means. The 2nd Amendment crowd always likes to recite it to you, but they don’t start at the beginning. They start with “the right of the people”, which makes it sound pretty convincing that what they want to believe is true, which is that this Amendment guarantees their individual rights to own guns. But that’s an interpretation, because “the people” does not mean the same thing as “every single person”.
When the regime comes for your guns, they may not even pretend that they are doing so legally. They have shown that they don’t care about our rights at all. But I ask all of you who think that the Second Amendment was the most important part of the Constitution to consider this. First, most Americans don’t own guns, and also support stricter gun restrictions than what we have now. Second, Trump is extremely unpopular, and has no real commitment to any particular policy. He makes decisions, or changes his position any time he feels it will help him. Third, fascists do whatever they can to remove power from the people they are trying to control. And Fourth, the Supreme Court could decide at any time that the Second Amendment doesn’t say what you think it says. They have done that before, many times.
I will leave it to you to interpret what that means. But if you value your rights, then you should value all of them. Your Constitutional rights are under attack. The only way we will keep them, is to use them. And right now, the best way to reclaim all of our rights is to practice your first Amendment right to free speech and make your voice heard. It’s time to speak up!
WHAT WILL YOU DO?
Source: Substack
Author: Todd Warren
About the author: Todd Warren is a lead organizer with Indivisible QC, helping plan local actions, support coalition work, and connect new volunteers to meaningful ways to participate. He writes about organizing, democracy, economic fairness, and how communities build power through sustained, nonviolent action.
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