The Right to Self-Defense is the Core of Liberty- Here's Why
Guest Contributor Josh Montgomery. May18th, 2018
“Never Again.” It’s a vague but catchy motto splashing across social media at the end of posts demanding gun control to prevent school shootings. Anti-gun advocates, in mourning, fear, or pure delusion, throw the phrase at legislators and gun owners in their Tweets and on their signs in marches, painting them as villains for having opposing–or even just slightly more nuanced–views outside of their activist echo chamber.
Most recently, David Hogg rekindled the words when he announced the June 5 release of his book, #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line. Hogg is a Parkland survivor and self-perceived overnight gun rights, Constitution, and self-defense expert. In it, he will most likely demand irrational, impossible, ineffective laws by creating the tired false dilemma between those who feel safer with their Everyday-carry option, those who know and exercise their natural rights, and the lives of kids gunned down in spite of laws already in place.
Hopefully, his gaff (besides the use of a hashtag in a book title) was unintentional, but it just goes to show how ignorant the anti-gun cause truly is. His generation is not the first demanding “Never Again,” and it’s not a “new generation” drawing the line, but one that had a chance to study history, see that their slogan is not new, and watch what happens when those words have force behind them.
Popularized by human rights activists (as opposed to anti-liberty protesters) like Meir Kahane and Elie Wiesel, “Never Again” is the promise of billions, a solemn oath through gritted teeth, never to let another Holocaust occur, ever again, anywhere in society. They used it to unite groups of citizens for the betterment of society, and the protection of peace and freedom.
The words stand sentinel, protecting and overlooking the ashes of the unknown prisoner, at Dachau. Upon the stones of the camps, and upon the lips of those who escaped them with their lives but lost nearly everything all the same, "Never Again" is not a platitude. It is not a publicity stunt. It is not docile or non-violent. It is a pact and we who know it will use force to uphold it if necessary.
Gut-wrenching as it is to see the promise detached from its history and re-purposed into the flimsy lamentations of the social media generation, perhaps it is not so surprising. A recent survey showed that 22% of millennials haven't heard of the Holocaust, let alone studied it in any capacity. Two-thirds of the millennials surveyed were unable to define Auschwitz correctly.
With fast-fading knowledge of perhaps the most pivotal period in modern history, it’s no wonder that students who don’t study Nazi Germany are sure that their government would never turn on them. They’re good citizens. Why wouldn’t their government protect them?
If these millennials couldn't even say what Auschwitz was, then they probably will not know anything about the 1938 Regulations Against Jews, which stripped Jews not only of their rights to own guns but also of the freedom to any weapons of self-defense. The Left blows this out of proportion, claiming that the Right thinks that gun control is to blame for the Holocaust. That is patently false, of course. One has to be willfully blind, however, not to see the connection and the high-stakes cautionary tale.
Like most gun control laws throughout history, the Regulations Against Jews were not about public safety, but the advancement of an agenda. They laid the groundwork for atrocities that increased stepwise into the Final Solution. The Regulations disarmed government opponents in order to enable oppression. If Jews were better armed, would the Holocaust have been prevented? No, because there is not a cure for that level of hate and fear, especially when spread by intense propaganda campaigns.
Should the 1938 Regulations be charged in history books as an accomplice to the unthinkable crime that followed? Absolutely.
So what does all of this have to do with the Second Amendment, and the right to self-defense?
Listed first as an unalienable right in the Declaration of Independence is the right to Life. Then comes Liberty. Millions were deprived of both of those at the hands of tyrants. The phrase "Never Again" promises that tyrants will never again be able to dispossess anybody of those rights. The promise is one to stand against tyranny and oppression and protect ourselves, and each other, by any means necessary.
Tyrants do not coax people into submission. They do not arrive on the scene with patience and pamphlets. The people cannot allow their reduction to that limited capacity. One cannot reason with oppressors, for hate fuels them. One cannot talk down a dictator or even a mass shooter, or throw the US Criminal Code at them, for they already accepted that they are breaking laws because their mission is above the laws. All that is left, then, is for the people to arm themselves and stand bravely against the tyrant of the day.
Therefore, we must vehemently defend the Second Amendment, because law-abiding citizens are just that- law abiders. If the right to self-defense is legally outlawed or even reduced, these upstanding friends and neighbors must decide between never again having an impact on oppressive forces or living as outlaws.
If the Second Amendment takes a hit, it becomes vulnerable to more egregious usurpations until there is nothing left. Stripping individual rights ushers in a new era of radical oppression. When the government doesn't have a healthy fear of its citizens, when it gets its power not from the will of the people but from their inability to act, they control the news, the narrative of history, the religion, and the identity of every citizen.
For example, look at the press. Under the First Amendment, they can print as much fake news as they want. The government can’t shut them down. The Second Amendment is the insurance for the First. Without the Second, the government could and would tighten their grips on the press until fake news became government-sponsored, and ultimately the media would become a bald-faced, unabashed propaganda machine, and an institution of the government. If 22% (and counting) of the most active portion of the population can't identify history repeating itself, "Never Again" turns into "#NeverAgain."
With gun control advocates like David Hogg at the helm, “Never Again” is Ozymandias, a once great and powerful king of oaths, quickly eroding into meaningless ruin in the middle of a knowledge desert. Without the right to self-defense, the original pledge is meaningless. The right to self-defense is the right to pursue knowledge and spread it. The right to self-defense is the right to remember, the right to tell the stories, and the power to look tyrants in the eye, stand firm as a group of citizens and human beings, and say “Never Again.” And mean it.