The right to keep and bear arms is not something we as Americans possess because of government benevolence, but something with which our Creator endowed us.
The right is one of many natural rights our Creator wove into the fabric of our humanity, and to be denied the exercise of that right is to be denied the full expression of our humanness.
This was common knowledge among our Founding Fathers, as they sourced our rights in Him who transcends and supersedes manmade government. Thomas Jefferson could not have been clearer on the source of our rights than when he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Those were Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence, and they provided a general framework which was fleshed out by James Madison and others via the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.
In other words, Jefferson made a general declaration of our having been endowed with “unalienable Rights” and Madison, with the Second Amendment, took the clarifying step by identifying and hedging in one of those rights as the right to keep and bear arms. (Other amendments in the Bill of Rights identified and hedged in freedoms of speech and religion, of assembly, the pursuit and sanctity of private property, and the freedom to be secure in our persons and houses, among other things.)
Sadly, instruction on these matters has become less and less emphasized–and, in some cases, purposefully suppressed–thanks to the ideologically leftist academicians running our colleges and universities. State-sponsored, one size fits all K-12 curriculum has not helped either, as it is often more focused on a diversified perspective than an actual recounting of the history of America and her founding.
To understand the lack of genuine instruction in higher education one must simply note that a vast number of leftist academicians secured their PhDs for the purpose of fighting the patriarchy, capitalism, and/or Western hegemony. These goals necessitate the suppression of the knowledge that humans were created to be free and that the traits of that freedom are seen in the exercise of rights received from a transcendent source.
The knowledge of the true source of our rights is powerful, as it reminds Americans that they have rights which government cannot take away because the rights were not given by government in the first place. Moreover, such knowledge helps Americans understand that their government should be protecting these innate, natural rights rather than diminishing them one statute or regulation at a time.
Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) described natural rights as “absolute rights,” noting that they were fixed and that the laws of mankind should be fashioned in such a way as to preserve the exercise of the rights: “Therefore, the principal view of human laws is, or ought always to be, to explain, protect, and enforce such rights as are absolute…”
Our Creator endowed us with the right to keep and bear, arms and the Second Amendment prohibits government from infringing upon that right. (The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, is written to handcuff the government rather than the people.) If the American people understood this–and if America’s college and university students were being taught this–the gun control lobby would have to close its doors tomorrow. Such an end would come because Americans, including American students, would finally understand that our right to keep and bear arms is not up for a popular vote nor is it open to arbitration at the hands of our executive, legislative, or judicial branches of government.
We must recover the knowledge that has been hidden by decades of leftist academicians; dumbed-down, State-sponsored curriculum, and an establishment media that is all too eager to suppress the truth. Such recovery will take effort and will require the discipline to read good books and the willingness to embrace the truth once it is uncovered. If we can do this, we can know with certainty that we are a free people, “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” one of which is the right to keep and bear arms.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, a Pulsar Night Vision pro-staffer, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly: awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
