By Bill Zettler
If, in 1935, 6 million European Jews had had 6 million guns would there have been 6 million dead Jews in 1945?
The answer, obviously, is no. Maybe there would have been 100,000 dead Jews, maybe a million (and a like number of dead Nazi’s) but certainly not 6 million. And eventually the Germans would have made an accommodation with the Jews. So millions of lives would have been saved if in 1935 European Jews had had Second Amendment rights. In fact 10’s of millions of lives may have been saved because an armed Jewry may have made the Germans think twice before attacking the rest of Europe thus possibly saving 20 million Soviets, 8 million Poles, not to mention 5 million Germans. Oh, and by the way, 300,000 French. The French, obviously, did not see a problem.
Further evidence of the value of an armed citizenry in saving lives is Israel where from 1947 to the present 6 million armed Israelis have staved off the predations of 80 million Muslims hankering for their destruction. Is there any doubt that eventually an accommodation between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East will be reached? Is there any doubt that an unarmed Israel would have resulted in another 6 million dead Jews?
Instead of 6 million dead unarmed Jews at the hands of 80 million Muslims we have only 140,000 dead (Jews and Muslims) since 1947 just because the minority was armed. An armed Israeli citizenry has saved millions of lives in the Middle East, Jew and Muslim.
If you look at the recent history of the slaughter of innocent unarmed citizens one may wonder why the UN does not encourage arming the citizenry worldwide. Sometimes guns are more important than food.
Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia, Ethiopia the list seems endless. Perhaps if rich nations and wealthy UN bureaucrats had provided guns instead of hand wringing and too-late policing millions would have been saved. But no, we sat, met, discussed, and threatened sanctions while innocents died mercilessly, their hacked and bleeding bodies bloating in the sun. These innocent victims deserved a 2nd amendment and a gun but they had neither. In these examples compassion would have been a gun
You will notice that in every case referenced above it was the government in power at the time that did the killing. German Nazi’s sent to kill Jews and Poles, ruling Sudanese Muslims sending Mongol-like mounted Janjaweed to kill starving Darfuran women and children, armed Khmer Rouge Communists sending millions to death in the killing fields, all the killers armed representatives of their government and all of the murdered innocents unarmed and without hope of self defense.
So the historical power, morality and compassion of the Second Amendment are all around us. We are among the fortunate.
If there is a God-given right it is the right to self-defense whether by fist, knife or assault weapon.
The Primacy of this right cannot be denied, as it is the foundation of all other rights. Without the right of self-defense there is no freedom of speech, religion, press let alone freedom from slavery or search and seizure. If you do not have the right to defend yourself you are not free and therefore the state you live in is not free either.
The individual’s freedom to defend himself defines the free state. It comes first. By definition then, a free state has a compact not to attack its own citizens and the citizens have the right to defend themselves with arms if that compact is abridged. The free state cannot exist without free citizens. That is what the Second Amendment says.
The Second Amendment should have been the First because without it all other rights are at risk.
For those who say it cannot happen here, therefore we do not need gun rights, remember we are a young country and though no one expects freedoms to be abridged by our government, forever is a long time. Is it not easier to imagine the threat of tyranny at some point in the future than it is to imagine an infinite time without such a threat?
Bill Zettler is a free-lance writer and consultant specializing in public sector compensation. He can be contacted at this email address. Click here to read more by Mr. Zettler.
