“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.“

The Second Amendment to our Constitution is one of the most important parts of what is known as the Bill of Rights. While guns are not as necessary to our survival as they were many years ago out on the frontier, they remain an important building block in the wall that keeps totalitarianism at bay. Without weapons in the hands of a free people, those people become vulnerable to the whims of dictatorship. The people must have a means of assuring that their will is the will of the land and not some charismatic leader who takes over our armed forces. This may seem like an extreme scenario, but we see it happen in countries all over the world. Without a means to defend themselves people become sheep to be herded at the whim of fanatics.

Yes, there are problems. People use guns to commit crimes. The answer is strong laws and prison terms for these offenders. The answer is NOT to take guns away from the law abiding citizens, but to make using a gun in a crime a real deterrent. (See our Position Paper on the Legal System.)

There are prices to be paid for being a free country and sometimes those prices can be very high. A few highly emotional and highly publicized incidents should not allow us to be swept away into complacency. We must defend our rights for to lose one right is to, eventually, lose them all.