No Second Amendment, No First

By John Zmirak Published on July 25, 2020

I wrote last week that the McCloskeys in St. Louis are the canary in the coal mine. What happens to them shows us what the left has in mind for you and for me. That is true both for our personal liberties and our religious freedom.

A case like the McCloskeys’ could never happen in Germany or England. Governments have comprehensively disarmed the populations of most Western European countries. If a leftist or Islamist mob were to march on the home of normal citizens, that family would be defenseless. If the riots’ leaders even suspected that their target had some weapons, they’d notify the police.

The cops would come and disarm those German or British McCloskeys in advance of the attack. Instead of afterwards, as the Soros-sponsored local prosecutor, Kim Gardner, did to the McCloskeys. Islamists who want to burn French churches, or massacre night club partiers, know that every one of their victims will be completely helpless.

God and Guns Go Together

America is both more religious than Western Europe, and more comfortable with violence. The pro-life movement is weak, and churches politically impotent, in virtually all of those countries. And the populace is disarmed. Is this a coincidence? Some historical happenstance? No, not a bit, as you’ll see if you read to the end.

Apart from outlier Switzerland, few Western European countries protect citizens’ gun rights. Subjects of these regimes have accepted the idea that only two groups of people can carry weapons. The government, which claims a monopoly of violence, and outlaws — criminals and foreign-born terrorists — who prove impossible to disarm. Citizens subject to violence from the latter must cower and wait for the former to show up, and draw chalk lines around their bodies. That’s what happens in places like Paris and London, in these times.

The same is true, of course, in “blue” cities and states. Places like New York, and San Francisco, and others have been “fundamentally transformed” and made like “normal” countries such as Belgium. If I might recycle former President Obama’s favorite rhetoric.

Portland: A “Normal” City, Like London

Of course, there’s little that you I and would consider “normal” about blue city mayors backing violent rioters against police. Or calling for the police to be defunded or abolished — even as normal citizens remain legally disarmed. We saw in St. Louis the awful, dystopian intent behind such moves. A violent mob can descend on the homes of private citizens. If they even show their legally owned weapons, the police will be sent to seize them, and the justice system (unable or unwilling to control the mob) will prosecute the citizens. A perfect blend of anarchy and tyranny, right here on American soil.

But that will become the “new normal” if Joe Biden wins, and packs the Supreme Court with justices hostile to our Second Amendment.

The American Exception

Christians need to see the intimate historical and moral links between the Second Amendment and the First. Too few understand this. They might shoot on a Saturday and pray on a Sunday. But they see those two things as separate, maybe even hanging in tension. In fact they go together, and are every bit as American as ice cream and apple pie.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution didn’t appear out of thin air. In fact, it’s practically plagiarized from the English Bill of Rights. Parliament adopted that in 1689 for one specific reason: to protect religious freedom.

Do you know where the American concern for gun rights even comes from? Too few believers do. That’s why Jason Jones and I wrote an encyclopedia-style scholarly article on the topic, published here at The Stream. It’s a resource for you to draw on, share with pastors, send to your kids in college. Let me sum it up briefly here.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution didn’t appear out of thin air. In fact, it’s practically plagiarized from the English Bill of Rights. Parliament adopted that in 1689 for one specific reason: to protect the religious freedoms of Puritans and other “low-church” Protestants. They’d been persecuted, legally, by British kings for more than a century. So Parliament included in the bill the proviso that “no Protestant” could be denied the right to carry arms. The link between gun rights and religious freedom was spelled out in the text. (Alas, it left us Catholics out — but that got fixed in the American version, a century later.)

Clinging to Guns and Bibles

Did you know that? Did you know that Sunday sermons given in churches from Massachusetts to Georgia often focused on the duty of men to arm themselves, learn how to shoot, and serve in local militias? That theme got repeated many times a year, as scholar David Kopel has documented. The outcome? When Britain tried to peel back the rights of the colonists, their royal garrisons faced many thousands of well-armed, devout Christian citizens ready to rise up … and found a new nation.

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When Barack Obama scorned us for “clinging to our guns and religion,” he knew this history. He just scorned it, as Democrats now scorn our entire origins, thanks to the 1619 Project conspiracy theory that claims America was founded to protect slavery.

No, it was to protect freedom, especially religious freedom. One of the most burning issues among American founders was the threat that Britain would send over bishops to impose official Anglicanism on each of the 13 colonies. I bet you didn’t learn that in school.

Please Share with Your Pastor and Students

Please share this message with other believers, and send them the voluminous historical proof provided in the longer piece, “God, Guns, & the Government.” Print it out for church discussion groups. The most crucial goods of America’s founding are at stake in this election.

Don’t trust me on that. Just listen to the Democrats. They want to tear this country up and build a new one from scratch. Your church could end up in the dumpster along with Washington, Lincoln, and Christopher Columbus.

As I summed things up not in 10,000 words but just 26:


 
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.

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