America’s Founders firmly believed that the right to keep and bear arms was the right that safeguarded all others, and this belief is one we must recall in this 250th year of our nation’s existence.
On this date, July 23, 1793, Roger Sherman died. While many Americans have forgotten his name, he was the only one of the Founding Fathers to sign all four of the documents considered most key to the birth of the United States: the Continental Association from the First Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, Sherman was on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Having been present at so many of the most important moments of the Revolution and the establishment of our republic, Sherman understood how vital it was for ordinary citizens to be able to defend themselves.
Like many of his fellow leaders of the Revolutionary generation, Sherman expressed his strong conviction about the importance of what we now call the Second Amendment. In 1790, only a few years before his death, he made the following comment:
[I] conceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular States, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
Notice that while he is discussing the topic of militias, he makes it very clear that every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms separate from the right to serve in a militia. Democrats sometimes try to claim that the Founders meant gun rights to operate only in the context of militias, which is false.
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The other salient feature of this comment is that Sherman absolutely ties the security of one’s liberty and property to one’s ability to fire upon those who threaten either. As I stated at the beginning of this article, but put into slightly different words, the whole Bill of Rights and all other constitutional rights depend upon the Second Amendment. An armed citizen is a better safeguard against encroachments on free speech, freedom of worship, a weaponized judiciary, and all other tyrannies than any law could be.
Of course, to a certain extent, this is also based on the supposition that the armed citizen would be willing to fire upon government officials and troops as colonists did during the American Revolution, which is not true today and explains such abuses as the COVID-19 lockdowns, the Waco siege, and Biden-era mass arrests. I’m not making an endorsement of a particular choice of action here, but simply making an observation about a difference between the revolutionary generation and our own. It is still true, however, that cities with the strictest gun control in America tend to have the highest violent crime rates. Now as in the 18th century, an armed citizenry deters malicious actors.
That is precisely why Democrats want to confiscate guns. As Roger Sherman would have warned us, anyone who comes for your gun is also coming for your liberty and property.
