The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the most powerful expression of individual sovereignty ever conceived by mankind. Even those who have no interest in owning a gun should tirelessly defend what it represents.
That's me, by the way. I had a bad experience with guns as a teenager. They will always make me nervous, even as the technology, aesthetics, and history of firearms fascinate me. But I'm a 2A defender to the core of my being. It's a matter of deep principle to me.
The same experience that made me nervous about guns also taught me exactly how long it takes for the police to respond when you tell them someone with a gun is trying to break into your house and kill you, even when you live in town.
But as I said, this is about principle as much as the practical realities of defending your home and family. The 1st Amendment makes us citizens. The 2nd confirms us as sovereign individuals. Both are vitally important. Neither should be compromised.
Of COURSE totalitarians hate both the 1st and 2nd Amendments and want to limit, rewrite, or dispose of them - all for our own greater good, of course! The Bill of Rights is the antithesis of totalitarianism, of collectivism, of socialism, of communism, of fascism.
We should use those vital amendments as a test of ideology. No matter what an ideologue claims to want, no matter what he says about "justice" and "fairness," we should ask: Is your ideology fully compatible with the Bill of Rights? If not, sorry, no sale.
In most cases, you can shorten that ideological test to just the 1st and 2nd Amendments. Every bad and dangerous ideology fails to get past those two. They are America's tireless sentinels against tyranny, very much including the tyranny of the "well-meaning."
You'll never find a totalitarian perfectly comfortable with the 1st and 2nd Amendments as written. You can easily prod them into exposing themselves by asking if they think changes to either or both are necessary for their agenda to be fulfilled.
And in my experience, the people who claim to love the 1st Amendment while dismissing the 2nd as reactionary powdered-wig nonsense about militias can't hold out for long without telling how they think 1A should be rewritten too. There is such a profound connection between them.
The 2A says something about the relationship of American citizens to the state, about the moral and practical limits of government power, about individual responsibility. Those things should never be unsaid. They should be repeated loudly and proudly by all of us, every day. /end
