PA Bill Number: HB829
Title: In preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Description: An Act amending the act of April 12, 1951 (P.L.90, No.21), known as the Liquor Code, in preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Last Action: Signed in House
Last Action Date: Jul 3, 2024
Come and Take It! :: 07/19/2018
“You can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead hands” became a popular saying among supporters of the Second Amendment during the 1980s and ’90s, and caused the liberal media to go ballistic when, at a speech delivered to the NRA in 2000, Charlton Heston concluded his remarks by raising a Kentucky rifle above his head and intoning, “From my cold dead hands.” A thunderous standing ovation followed.
Many media leftists thought the great actor was now at the nadir of a downward trajectory that had begun in the mid-1960s when he began moving in a conservative direction. Here was a Hollywood actor who had starred in dozens of movies, had been awarded an Oscar for Best Actor for playing Judah Ben-Hur, had participated in two civil rights marches in the early 1960s, and had been awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for “outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes.” What gives? They didn’t appreciate that Heston had grown up hunting in the woods of northern Michigan, had served in World War II, and was a staunch supporter of all 10 Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Unlike many so-called civil rights advocates, Heston did not skip over the Second Amendment. Moreover, he even thought it the most essential of all.
He made this abundantly clear in a 1997 speech at the National Press Club luncheon in Washington, D.C. “It is America’s first freedom,” declared Heston, “the one that protects all the others. Among freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, of redress of grievances, it is first among equals. It alone offers the absolute capacity to live without fear. The right to keep and bear arms is the one right that allows rights to exist at all.”
Reporting on the speech, the New York Times did its best to characterize Heston as an extremist. The paper quoted Jake Tapper (yes, that Jake Tapper), spokesman for Handgun Control Inc., saying, “His interpretation of the Second Amendment is unique to him and his organization,” and Christopher Eisgruber, a professor at New York University Law School, claiming, “This is a bleak and unrealistic idea. Sometimes ideas like this are stated by left-wing radicals defending urban riots, and if you’re on the outer fringe of society, you might believe that this is your only option. For Charlton Heston to believe this is utterly outrageous.”
Neither Tapper nor Eisgruber seemed to have a sense of history. Heston did — and so, too, did our Founding Fathers. They were students of history, especially Classical Antiquity. They understood that a people once disarmed were slaughtered or enslaved or made serfs or vassals. An armed citizenry was essential to protect all other freedoms.
The Founders were also aware that the link between disarmament and subjugation was widely understood throughout recorded history, to the extent that cultures, including, especially, American culture, typically honored those who defied disarmament and tyranny — especially if they fought when the cause seemed lost.
When the Persians demanded the Spartans surrender their arms at Thermopylae in 480 B.C., King Leonidas replied “Molon labe.” Translated literally, the Greek phrase means “having come, take,” but a more accurate rendering in English would be something like “come and take them — if you can.” After seven days of resistance, including three days of fierce fighting and two days of battle in which the 300 Spartans under Leonidas stood virtually alone, the Greeks were overwhelmed by a Persian army numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The Persians should have been through the pass in seven hours, but instead, it took seven days. The delay gave the Greek city-states precious time to organize a proper defense and the heroic example of the Greek warriors in the Battle of Thermopylae and Leonidas’ defiance of the Persian demand for a surrender of arms inspired the Greeks to fight the invaders on land and sea. The ultimate Greek victory saved not only the Greek city-states but Western Civilization.
It’s not surprising that more than 2,000 years later, colonial Americans were following Leonidas’ example. During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress ordered the construction of Fort Morris at the port of Sunbury, Georgia. By November 1778, the hastily built fort was manned by fewer than 200 Continental troops and local militiamen and commanded by Colonel John McIntosh. A much larger and more powerful British force, led by a Colonel L.V. Fuser, arrived on the 25th. Fuser immediately demanded the surrender of the fort. “Sir, we would rather perish in vigorous defense than accept your proposal,” replied McIntosh. “We are fighting the battles of America and therefore disdain to remain neutral until its fate is determined. As to surrendering the fort, receive this laconic reply: COME AND TAKE IT!” Stunned by the reply, Fuser began to fear there might be American reinforcements in the area and withdrew. Word of McIntosh’s Spartan-like defiance of the British spread through Georgia and the Carolinas, inspiring American rebels.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/29482-come-and-take-it
