For years, the anti-gun crowd has included in their argument the false concept that the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect gun rights for things like hunting.  How often have we heard the typical straw-man argument that "no one needs an AR-15 to hunt"?

As we well know, most, if not all, of their arguments against legal gun ownership are ridiculous and not based in reality or facts in any way, but that doesn't stop them from rolling them out every time it's politically expedient to do so, usually while they're simultaneously invoking the name of the latest shooting victims they care nothing about. 

What are some of their other arguments?  There's the idea that taking guns away from legal gun-owners will somehow magically reduce crime and end mass shootings.  They clearly miss the basics in this argument, as those who legally own guns account for a very, very low percentage of the gun crime in this country.  Taking guns away from legal owners is akin to taking kitchen knives away from chefs because there has been a rise in stabbings, as we've seen in Great Britain in recent years.

Then there is the argument against high-capacity magazines, which usually leans back on the same silly hunting argument, with some version of "How many rounds does it take to kill Bambi?" spewed snarkily by someone on MSNBC or CNN who likely knows less about guns than Kamala Harris knows about expressing coherent thoughts.  While lower-capacity magazines may slow a mass shooter down a little, the solution — if you're the shooter — is simply to have more magazines and more guns, which is exactly what has happened.  Someone who practices even a little can become proficient in changing magazines or weapons, and this empty argument once again conveniently forgets the simple fact that those who don't care about laws will find a way to break them.  Once again, the laws will deprive only the law-abiding citizen of the tools to defend himself, not the criminals or psychopaths from the tools of their trade.

No, the 2nd Amendment was never intended to ensure the gun rights of hunters for the sake of their sport.  It was intended to protect all of us from the kind of government overreach, authoritarianism, and tyranny that has been on full display since roughly March of 2020, when our new pal COVID-19 came to crash the party.  Don't believe me?  Think I'm just another conspiracy nut?  I'll pause for a few minutes to let you look up some information about Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, just for starters.  Go ahead...I'll wait.

Those three nations, once considered some of the most free and independent-minded societies in the world, have gone full Orwell during the last two-plus years, with draconian lockdowns and mask mandates, travel restrictions, and "vaccine" mandates the likes of which most of us could never have imagined outside a dystopian fantasy world.  How have they gotten away with treating their citizens like prisoners and lab rats?

I'll give you two reasons.  One is because many of the citizens simply let it happen.  They were so mesmerized by things that sounded "sciency."  Believing them meant you were on "Team Science, the home of rational, intelligent and enlightened minds."  Not to believe them — or even to question them — meant you were a mouth-breathing, lowbrow "anti-vaxxer" plague rat, to be shunned and kept from polite society.

The second reason is because all of this so-called authority — in reality authoritarianism — is, at the end of the day, enforced with the (very real in the case of Australia) threat of a gun.  And who has the guns?  Not the citizens of any of those countries, by and large.  Why not?  Because they have all been convinced that by letting their governments take away most of their gun rights (and guns), they are somehow a safer (and more enlightened) society.  Their governments know full well that there is almost nothing to oppose them, no matter how far they want to go, and they have really leaned into this one.

In Australia throughout 2021, truly peaceful lockdown protests (unlike the variety in the U.S. during the summer of 2020) were met with strong shows of force by Australian police departments, with protesters being shot, at close range and often in the back, with rubber bullets.  Let me assure you that rubber bullets are no love tap.  They can cause severe bodily harm — broken bones, lost eyes, and even brain hemorrhages.  It must have been nice for those police to know there was little to no chance that anyone would be firing back.

The 2nd Amendment reads as follows: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Nothing about hunting.  Not even anything specifically about self-defense, though each certainly is understood to be ancillary to the main point, which is the maintaining of a free State.  Free from what?  Free from the very real and clearly demonstrated threat of government overreach and tyranny that we are seeing in places that were once considered bastions of freedom, including right here at home in the U.S.  The anti-gun crowd are desperate to make us the next Canada, New Zealand, or Australia because they know that the 2nd Amendment is last thing that stands between them and total control.

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