This week I learned many new facts about the history of the 2nd Amendment from our elected officials and the media. My favorite “fact” has to be that the Founding Fathers intended the 2nd Amendment to only allow their lowly citizens to be able to hunt animals for sustenance and shoot trap & skeet for leisure.

Where does one begin on debunking this myth? You have to look at what was going on at the time of the writing of our Constitution. The Founding Fathers saw other countries that had disarmed their citizens and the tyranny that ruled those fiefdoms. Since the concept of a Constitutional Republic was a newer form of government, the Founders realized they had to make sure that if it became corrupt and overreaching in its powers that its reorganization could be facilitated by its citizens. A disarmed citizenry would be unable to accomplish this.

Another reason for the 2nd Amendment is because the Founders knew that its citizens must be skilled in the use of firearms to defend their families and country against a world (and other citizens) that would seek to destroy the freedom it fought so valiantly to acquire. Believe it or not, our government has actually encouraged citizens to enhance their shooting skills through programs such as the CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program) which was founded in 1903.

The difficulty today is that one would seem crazy for even suggesting that a US citizen might need to take up arms against the United States government. I am not suggesting that this is that time in our history. However, we have been lulled into a false precept that we need to be like the rest of the world where the citizens are the servants and the government is the benevolent master. We are told that to feel like we are the master, instead of the servant, is somehow wrong and that we are uneducated and unenlightened for not embracing the way the rest of the world is forced to exist.

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