Second Amendment: Protecting Freedom by Jim Butler

Saying that people can't shout fire in a crowded theater has no similarity to denying people the right to self-defense 24 hours a day.

There is nothing reasonable about the government's making it difficult to defend your life and family against aggressors.

Laws that prohibit firearms misuse should be directed at misuse only, and not directed at the firearms or the owners. There are already laws against murder, rape, robbery, etc. Those laws stand as the "reasonable" limitations on the Second Amendment.

Under the First Amendment freedom of speech or press, it is unconstitutional to require a person to register himself and obtain a license before speaking or writing an opinion. Also it is unconstitutional to limit how many speeches or articles a person may deliver each month. Laws that restrict harmful speech may not control people's voices or the private ownership of megaphones. Misuse of the megaphone is a different story.

Courts have held that government may restrict speech when the content of the speech damages someone, slander, cause a person to be injured physically or financially using fraudulent misrepresentation. And if the speech is designed to produce an immediate reaction that causes unlawful actions, injury to others, such as inciting a lynch mob, or strongly urging a person to commit a criminal or treasonous act.

Offensive noisy demonstrations, interfering with business, emergency or military communications, or obstruction of traffic. Obscenity deemed to offend society are covered as well.

The real Second Amendment issue is not the recreational use of firearms, it is freedom and survival. The primary purpose of our firearms is the defense of life, liberty and property: the protection of our loved ones from robbery, rape, assault and crime in general; and, in times of crisis, the defending of our nation and our kinsman from governmental tyranny and despotism.

Firearms are the great equalizer and gives weaker, older, less-aggressive victims equal or better chances against a stronger attacker. Prior to the development of firearms it was the most muscular and brutal - the man with a club, ax, or sword - who ruled our roads and streets and at their whim terrorized our homes. Thanks to firearms even a out of shape intellectual or a dainty and delicate woman, with courage and determination, is more than the equal of any brute who ever trampled the earth. The truth is that gun control fosters crime, while a well armed citizenry curbs it. Gun control laws merely hamstring the law-abiding while emboldening the criminal element.

The Second Amendment gives the people the power and right to secure all our other rights in our Constitution including the First Amendment.

Without it all the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution would just be words on a piece of paper that could be changed at will. If one inalienable right can be taken from us, the rest can and will probably be taken from us.