{"id":66692,"date":"2021-04-10T11:56:07","date_gmt":"2021-04-10T16:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=66692"},"modified":"2021-04-10T11:56:07","modified_gmt":"2021-04-10T16:56:07","slug":"66692","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=66692","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Abusers and oppressors will rejoice the death of the Second Amendment<\/a><\/p>\n

As a group of House Democrats\u00a0pushed<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0presidential action<\/a>\u00a0on gun control, a group of House Democrats\u00a0are pushing the Senate<\/a>\u00a0to vote on House-passed gun control bills. In either case, the result would be dangerous and make Americans more vulnerable. When the right to keep and bear arms is suppressed by a government, the doors to oppression and abuse are opened. I know, because I\u2019ve seen it.<\/p>\n

Hardwired, the global human rights organization I founded, fights against the oppression of religious communities of all faiths in countries around the world. Among these countries is Nigeria, where\u00a0Fulani herdsmen<\/a>\u00a0have been waging a war\u00a0against Christian farmers<\/a>\u00a0for the past decade, but in recent years it’s grown much worse. The Fulani herdsmen are attacking farmland throughout the region to force Christian farmers out of the area and take over their land. The attacks typically increase in the spring and are\u00a0carried out with AK-47s<\/a>\u00a0and machetes.<\/p>\n

In Nigeria, the law\u00a0does not permit citizens to own firearms<\/a>. As a result, the Christian farmers are sitting ducks. They have no recourse.<\/p>\n

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Not only will their government not protect them, their government is preventing them from protecting themselves. Herdsmen attack entire villages, burning churches, killing pastors and worshippers<\/a>,\u00a0kidnapping<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0forcibly converting young children<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0destroying homes, business and crops<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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And the Nigerian government is not only silent, it is complicit. The\u00a0illegal sale of weapons in Nigeria<\/a>\u00a0is a global concern but it ignores the real issue. The government is not only to be condemned for their silence about attacks on Christians, but also for their apparent complicity in leaving the Christians defenseless.<\/p>\n

As a result, the conflict in Nigeria\u2019s Middle belt states\u00a0continues to worsen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Benjamin Franklin famously\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cThose who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”<\/p>\n

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The situation in Nigeria is a perfect example of what happens when innocent civilians are unable to defend themselves. And why our founding fathers made a point to secure the right to bear arms second only to the freedom of speech and religion. Because you cannot have one without the other.<\/p>\n

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I have seen this happen elsewhere. When ISIS militants stormed into northern Iraq<\/a>, within hours they decimated and took control of entire villages. The police fled and the people could not defend themselves. And as a result,\u00a0hundreds of thousands of families<\/a>\u00a0were forcibly displaced overnight. Yezidi men were taken and shot to death, lining\u00a0mass graves<\/a>\u00a0with their bodies. And then ISIS took the women to areas where they\u00a0raped and tortured them<\/a>, before\u00a0selling them into sexual slavery<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This is what happens when people cannot defend themselves and their families, when their government fails to protect them, or worse \u2014 are complicit by suppressing their rights.<\/p>\n

After ISIS moved into northern Iraq, I met a woman named Aida whose four year old daughter was taken from her at gunpoint. She was told she could leave the child or she would be shot. She cried and pleaded for help as she recounted the last moments with her daughter.<\/p>\n

As a mother and person of faith, I can\u2019t imagine living in Nigeria, Iraq, or any other country where I do not have the right to arm and protect myself and my family against horrors like this. I can\u2019t imagine being forced to watch my child raped and tortured and have no way to defend her.<\/p>\n

It’s so easy for those of us living in freedom to take for granted the simple freedoms we enjoy by virtue of living in this great nation. I am amazed at how easily we will give up our freedoms without understanding the consequences.<\/p>\n

Condoleeza Rice has described herself as a \u201cSecond Amendment absolutist<\/a>\u201d. She\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0that growing up in the late 50s and early 60s in Birmingham, Ala., her father and his friends would deter the Ku Klux Klan members that came into her neighborhood by firing their guns in the air. She astutely noted that had \u201cBull\u201d Connor knew where the guns were, he surely would have rounded them up. Even in America, the Second Amendment has been crucial to the self-defense of those who have not always been protected by the government. It\u2019s astonishing that we would consider taking this away.<\/p>\n

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Even leaving aside the long history of governments disarming their citizenry as a means of oppression<\/a>, the right to defend ourselves against any existential threat is among the most basic rights, which is why our founders fought so hard to protect it. In my own life, I am the single mother of a young daughter. This means that all of the parental duties have fallen to me for all of my daughter\u2019s life and this includes being her sole protector.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I pray that my daughter or I are never in a situation where we need to use a gun to protect ourselves from an attacker or my own government, but having seen the repercussions firsthand, I will always stand against any move to force us into defenselessness.<\/p>\n

Tina Ramirez is the Virginia chair of Maggie\u2019s List and was a candidate for Congress in Virginia\u2019s 7th district. She is the president of Hardwired Global, a human rights organization and was the founding director of the bipartisan International Religious Freedom Caucus in Congress.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abusers and oppressors will rejoice the death of the Second Amendment As a group of House Democrats\u00a0pushed\u00a0the\u00a0presidential action\u00a0on gun control, a group of House Democrats\u00a0are pushing the Senate\u00a0to vote on House-passed gun control bills. In either case, the result would be dangerous and make Americans more vulnerable. When the right to keep and bear arms … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66692","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=66692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66693,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66692\/revisions\/66693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}