{"id":119103,"date":"2026-10-05T19:22:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T00:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=119103"},"modified":"2026-10-05T19:22:35","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T00:22:35","slug":"119103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=119103","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Yanis: Preserve, Pass On Legacy of Second Amendment<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRemember what brought you to where you are. Remember why you love doing what you\u2019re doing and keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the message from Jared Yanis, host of the YouTube channel Guns & Gadgets, who addressed the Gun Rights Policy Conference, challenging the audience to not only teach the next generation how to shoot, but why Americans have the special right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some incredible firearms instructors in this country,\u201d Yanis observed. \u201cWe have competitive shooting, hunting, concealed carry classes, millions and millions of parents are teaching their kids, sons and daughters, about firearms safety. We have a pretty good chance of them being taught the right way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat worries me is much bigger,\u201d he admitted. \u201cWill the next generation understand WHY they have the right to do this? That\u2019s a much bigger question, because there are two different things:<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing how to operate a firearm is a skill,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut understanding why the American citizen has the right to keep and bear arms is true education. If we lose that education, we will eventually lose that right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yanis was not so much \u201cpreaching to the choir,\u201d he was challenging every grassroots activist in the room to go beyond passing along a tradition, and carry on the process to a next level.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to ask ourselves a difficult question: What exactly are we trying to preserve,\u201d he posited. \u201cAre we trying to preserve gun ownership? I\u2019m not. Are we trying to preserve the principle that makes gun ownership a right in the first place? That\u2019s what I\u2019m about, because they\u2019re not the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that people in other countries own firearms, but under far different circumstances. It might involve licensing, government approval, registration and other restrictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica was built around something fundamentally different,\u201d he said. \u201cThe government doesn\u2019t give you any of our rights. They\u2019re just stewards of our rights. The Constitution doesn\u2019t give us the right. The Bill of Rights doesn\u2019t give us the right. We had those rights before anyone put quill to parchment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, the Second Amendment recognizes a pre-existing right that belongs to us, the people and it tells government \u2018You shall not infringe,\u2019\u201d he stressed. \u201cThat distinction is everything. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re teaching it that way nearly enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

One problem with the current battle to protect Second Amendment rights is that people have become focused on \u201cthe controversy of the moment,\u201d Yanis explained. This could involve bans on so-called \u201cassault weapons,\u201d original-capacity magazines, pistol braces or the \u201czero tolerance\u201d philosophy of the Biden administration, which focused on cancelling federal firearms licenses for literally any infraction.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes we become so focused on fighting the latest infringement,\u201d Yanis observed, \u201cthat we forget to explain why that fire we\u2019re fighting matters in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yanis focused on semi-auto rifles. He brought up the argument anti-gunners have made, that \u201cnobody needs an AR-15.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019ll say, \u2018Yes I do,\u2019\u201d he noted. \u201cBut why? Because it\u2019s my right, or because the Second Amendment says so.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf our education ends there,\u201d he said, \u201cwe have a serious problem in America, because somebody on the other side is going to teach that young person, they\u2019re going to give them an explanation of why they think they shouldn\u2019t have an AR15. They\u2019re going to talk about public safety, crime, mass shootings; all the blue tokens they throw out there to make people feel it in their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then boiled things down for the audience to remember and take home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Founders didn\u2019t include the Second Amendment because they loved guns,\u201d Yanis said. \u201cThey included it because they understood power, and that\u2019s the conversation we need to bring back to the forefront.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Constitution is fundamentally a document about power,\u201d he continued. \u201cWho has it. Where it comes from, how much the government possesses, how that power is divided and what happens when government exceeds it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Founders had just fought a revolution against the most powerful government that they knew, and the most powerful military on this rock,\u201d Yanis recalled. \u201cAnd they didn\u2019t emerge from that experience believing that human beings would suddenly stop abusing that authority. In fact, they knew it would happen again. So they built a system based on the opposite assumption, that power must be divided, it must be checked, and certain rights must remain beyond government\u2019s legitimate reach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among these are speech, religion, assembly and the right to keep and bear arms. Yanis explained how the Second Amendment is not just about a right to keep and bear arms. It\u2019s about the entire constitutional philosophy, he said; the relationship between the citizen and the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you understand that philosophy,\u201d he stated, \u201conce you get that relationship, once you know what the founders believed when they fought for this, the Second Amendment makes a lot more sense to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He closed by reminding the GRPC audience that passing on the tradition in all the traditional ways is good and proper.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking your kids shooting is fantastic,\u201d Yanis affirmed. \u201cTeaching them firearms safety is essential. Teaching them how to hunt is wonderful. But at some point, maybe on the ride home from those things, turn around and ask them this \u2018Do you know why you have this right?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cTeach them about Lexington and Concord,\u201d he advised. \u201cTeach them what happened on April 19, 1775.<\/p>\n

Tell them why ordinary people possess arms and why it matters. Teach them about the Bill of Rights.<\/p>\n

Teach them that with rights come responsibilities and that an armed citizen should be safe, but a responsible citizen, an informed citizen and most importantly, a citizen, and not a subject.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yanis: Preserve, Pass On Legacy of Second Amendment \u201cRemember what brought you to where you are. Remember why you love doing what you\u2019re doing and keep it going.\u201d That was the message from Jared Yanis, host of the YouTube channel Guns & Gadgets, who addressed the Gun Rights Policy Conference, challenging the audience to not … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119104,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119103\/revisions\/119104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}