Thread by @kitty_Kaiti

Mega-Thread on the Constitution, Human Rights, Self Defense & the Second Amendment:

1/ I am a Constitutionalist only insofar as the Constitution continues to protect my human rights. In the end, it truly is just a 'piece of paper'. The fact that our Constitution can be amended or altered through a Constitutional Convention must remind us that even our

2/ Constitutional rights are not forever secure. Tyrants can strike out those Constitutional Amendments if they were so determined and had the numbers to do it. Even our Founding Fathers recognized the fact that our Constitution does not create these rights outlined in the

3/ Bill of Rights nor the Amendments that follow. These rights are birth-rights. They are granted to us by our very existence, by natural law, by evolution, by God, whichever you believe. They always exist. The Constitution merely outlines restrictions on government,

4/ prohibiting our elected representatives from violating or taking away these rights. Should our Constitution cease to exist, or is altered in an attempt to abolish our liberties, it does not change the fact that these liberties still exist and we will always still have them,

5/ no matter what authority claims contrary. Our rights are programmed into our very DNA. We are literally born with these rights inherent in us. Our First
Amendment protects our basic human right to freedom of thought. As a sentient species, we are capable of self awareness

6/ and independent thinking. It is a basic birth-right. This entails freedom of speech, expression, opinion, press, protest, religious belief, ideological belief, association and the free exchange of ideas. Nobody on Earth has the power to take this right away.

7/ The erasure of the First Amendment would not change the fact these rights still exist. Our Second Amendment protects our basic right of self preservation. Our Founders understood the concepts that we are born with the rights to Life, Liberty and originally, Property,

8/ but also the Pursuit of Happiness. Our right to live includes our right to defend our lives. Without that inherent right found across all of nature on Earth, how can we live if we cannot defend from a threat that endangers that right to live? The right of self preservation

9/ is found not only in humans but in nature. All life on Earth has evolved, or been created, with its own unique abilities to protect itself, its offspring, its home or nest, its family or its fellow kind from threats of harm from predators. The porcupine has grown quills

10/ to stab its attackers, as has the cactus to deter those who seek to take its water. The cobra has fangs and venom. The wasp has a stinger. Wolves work together as a group and have claws and teeth to protect their packs, as does the lion. As a sentient species, we create

11/ tools to accomplish the tasks we wish to carry out. This includes our ability to create weapons for protection from danger, be it wildlife or other people who seek to conduct harm against you and yours. Our right to life includes our right to self preservation and that

12/ includes our right to keep and bear arms for security, to protect and defend our lives, liberty, property and personal life pursuits. The erasure of the Second Amendment does not erase this basic human right. It will always exist. No one on Earth has the authority

13/ to take that away. Our basic rights of Life and to independent thought
encompasses our right to express and carry out living our lives freely. Our Third, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments protect those rights. These amendments cover the concepts of due process and privacy,

14/ in which no one can have their life, liberty or property taken away without
justifiable cause. It is our right to be free, to express ourselves and to live, so we have restrictions in place to protect these rights from invasions of our homes, to be free from unjust

15/ imprisonment, enslavement or death, and to prohibit torture and abuses. The erasure of these amendments does not erase the fact that we still have the right to our lives, to our liberty and to our property and life pursuits without threat of unjust violent force from

16/ criminals or tyrants. We have time and again seen great evils carried out against innocent masses, from tyrannical violent regimes to terrorist organizations to individual murderers. Each time, the target was masses of people who had been disarmed or left defenseless.

17/ Those who attempt to carry out such atrocities have a consistent
pattern of seeking out those who are unable to resist the efforts to take away their right to live. It is a pattern of cowardice that preys upon the vulnerable and defenseless or in the case of genocidal

18/ regimes, they must first seek to disarm the populous before carrying out
the horrific acts that have time and again stained human history. Again and again we have seen the efforts of governments to mass disarm the people of their only means of self preservation,

19/ and when such people comply and voluntarily surrender that liberty, is shortly followed by stripping away of every other liberty, mass murders, genocides and democides. Why is it that so many mass murderers seek places where arms are prohibited to carry out their acts?

20/ It is because they are free to kill with impunity and with minimal risk of retaliation or consequence. The problem with allowing our right of self preservation to be regulated by governments is the saying of "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" rings true.

21/ When it comes to gun control, it never did stop at certain types of firearms. It quickly became all firearms. It quickly followed with laws restricting self preservation, how and when you are allowed, if at all, to protect life, liberty or property from criminals. Soon other

22/ arms followed suit, they came for all forms of weapons, each time stripping away more of our rights to defend our lives from those who seek to take that right away. We now live in a nation that has forgotten the intent of the Second Amendment and forgotten the wisdom

23/ of our Founders, where in many places you cannot even possess less-lethal or non-lethal arms, such as stun-guns, Tasers or proper strength pepper spray. Some jurisdictions now mandate fighters to register their own hands as weapons and regulate when, how or if they are

24/ allowed to defend themselves from harm. They have established laws that prohibit self defense entirely. The very concept of duty-to-retreat, or laws
that restrict the concept of Castle Doctrine, are extreme and egregious violations of our basic human right to life.

25/ It should disturb any sane individual that in some places in this great country, a woman targeted for rape can be sent to prison for fighting back and killing her rapist because she chose not to attempt to run away. It never was about public safety and it

26/ never was about common sense laws. It has and always will be about total domination and control, and that is entirely dependent on a disarmed, vulnerable, sheepish populous who can do absolutely nothing to stop them when they get out of line. Through it all, the opinions

27/ of elected representatives, Supreme Court justices, activist groups,
lobbyists, Presidents and dictators and even the Constitution of the United States itself are meaningless. They can attempt to legislate away our human rights or decide what rights we are allowed to have

28/ or how to exercise them, but those rights still exist and we are free to exercise them. I do not recognize the authority of anyone or anything that attempts to deny me these rights, and it is justifiable, as our Founders also
agreed, to defend these rights from tyrants

29/ and criminals who seek to suppress them, including when our own government becomes abusive to those ends. To accomplish that, we have the right of self preservation and that includes keeping and bearing arms, otherwise, how can we be free? How can we live when someone

30/ challenges that right to live?