MILESFORTIS

Actually everyone should prioritize it.

Conservatives Must Prioritize The Second Amendment
We need to look at all our civil and natural rights as being connected.

Without the right to defend ourselves, all other political battles become irrelevant. At different times, for different reasons, it is perfectly acceptable for different conservatives to prioritize different issues. But at no time should any conservative compromise on the right to self-defense.

Not only is the threat of a tyrannical government ever-present, but street violence is an ever-present danger, too. The threat to life posed by a rapist in the night is just as much a threat as that from a totalitarian regime. If the conservative movement really is a pro-family movement, then no law-abiding American citizen should be denied the right to protect himself and his family.

To compromise on gun rights is to necessarily compromise on abortion, taxes, immigration, school choice, welfare, right to work, and any other political issue. All other political questions are irrelevant if you and your family are at the mercy of a tyrannical government or a violent street thug. What good is your right to free speech if it can be taken away at a point of gun? What use is your right to life if you cannot defend yourself?

Americans understand we are born with rights and it is the duty of the government to preserve those rights. But as conservatives, we understand humans and human institutions cannot always be trusted. Americans understand we are born with rights and it is the duty of the government to preserve those rights. But as conservatives, we understand humans and human institutions cannot always be trusted. Yet, knowing human nature, we also know we can trust the government not to infringe our rights if we make the prospect of doing so too costly. Officials must know they can be held to account.

As we witnessed with the resent passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Senate and House Republicans who campaigned on protecting the Second Amendment were not only willing but happy to give a win to the anti-gun left with a whole slew of new gun-control provisions for absolutely nothing in return. In fact, Utah’s Senator Mitt Romney wanted the deal to be even more extreme. Elected Republicans have this mentality because conservative voters have given them a pass to cut corners off the Second Amendment. So long as the left appears more radical than they are, voters think the GOP can do no wrong, even as our right to bear arms is eroded. They, and we, must learn you cannot claim to support the Second Amendment if you compromise on it.

If removing the right to defend yourself really made everyone safer, then perhaps the anti-gun groups would have a point. But it is just not true. According to the CDC’s analysis of several studies in 2013 during the Obama administration, there were “about 500,000 to more than 3 million” defensive gun uses per year. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives are saved by guns every year. Since nearly 70 percent of criminals committed their crimes with an illegally obtained firearm, more gun regulations will only hinder a minority of gun-related crimes.

In general, regulations only serve as barriers for lawful Americans ability to exercise their right to defend themselves and their families. Common gun-control initiatives, such as waiting periods and protracted background checks, can deny access to life-saving firearms. If a riot were to break out in your hometown, like the George Floyd riots of 2020, and you needed to protect your family that very day, a waiting period would make you and your family defenseless in your time of greatest need. Regulations like expanded background checks, which are already required for every retail gun purchase, serve as an excuse to deny Americans their rights; the background-check system is flawed, as about nine out of ten denials are the result of false positives. Additionally, the background-check system provides a paper trail so the government can expand its illegal registry of gun owners. An ATF official could easily search thousands of firearm records and produce a list of lawful gun owners’ home addresses with a simple use of Control+F. These records are the first step towards gun confiscation.

At its core, any call for gun regulation—be it on the right or left—ignores a far more worrisome problem: humanity’s capacity for evil. The anti-gun crowd targets the gun is because they are afraid of focusing on the true culprit in gun violence, namely, the person behind the gun. There is rarely an attempt to understand why a young man would become so twisted as to murder innocent children. The media and politicians gloss over that hard question and immediately jump to asking how soon they can pass the next useless firearm regulation.

We need a serious national conversation focusing on why a young man would commit such a vile act, not on how he accomplished it. Conservatives need to stop thinking gun rights are an issue about which we can compromise. Do not fall for the lie that we can give over our Second Amendment rights in exchange for a win on some other policy issue. We need to look at all our civil and natural rights as connected. Compromising with the left on the right to self-defense gives them the green light to stomp on everything else.

Russian Invasion Offered Hard Lesson on Gun Control, Ukrainian Says

Gun control in Ukraine has proved to be highly problematic in the wake of the Russian invasion, a Ukrainian activist told a gathering of journalists and friends of DonorsTrust in Washington recently.

Natalia Melnyk, communications director for the Ukraine-based Bendukidze Free Market Center, said that in Ukraine, before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded, “You could not own handguns legally; only hunting weapons if you had a license.”

“All handguns were ‘award’ weapons, randomly distributed by our Ministry of Defense. Usually, you needed to have some connections to get these weapons,” she said at the event sponsored by DonorsTrust, a nonprofit libertarian- and conservative-leaning donor-advised fund.

Amid the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Melnyk noted the development of arming citizens—but with restrictions and even then not all citizens.

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“In areas not under immediate attack, the government said to these territorial units, ‘If you are not under immediate danger of attack, please return the weapons. We will safely store them in a warehouse. If something happens, you can come and get them.’ Of course, [the Ukrainian people] said, ‘No, thank you.’”

Melnyk criticized the Ukrainian government’s move to arm citizens while at the same time imposing restrictions, such as mandatory storing of guns in a warehouse.

“We do see improvement, but it resembles two steps forward, one step back … because that idea about returning weapons is also very recent. We jumped from that idea to the idea that we do need weapons for self-defense,” she said.

The Ukrainian government is currently discussing further plans for arming citizens, Melnyk said in her June 16 remarks at the City Tavern Club in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington.

“It never was such a big issue in the broader Ukrainian society, because we were a peaceful nation,” she said. “A lot of people honestly believed [and] I was one of them: ‘Why would you need a weapon? We are not going to war, and if you are not a hunter … why do you need it?’”

But after the Russian invasion, “it appears we really do need it,” she said.

Melnyk described the cultural change toward caring about self-defense after Russia invaded. “It was nearly impossible to get a time slot at a shooting range because so many Ukrainians went in to learn how to actually handle a gun, because they have no idea,” she said.

“It’s not the case of the Ukrainian government sending Ukrainian people to die,” Melnyk told The Daily Signal, explaining a common misconception of those observing the Ukrainian crisis from the outside. “This is the conscious decision of thousands of Ukrainians to protect their freedom, protect their land, and to protect the future of their children.”