PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Last Action:
Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
Morality and the second amendment :: 08/03/2016
The most fundamental goal of any people—and of any government that is of, by, and for the people—must be to protect civilization.
Only in a state of civilization, in which personal and property rights are protected from the forces of the metaphorical jungle, can we truly be free.
For only then can we go to bed secure that, come morning, we’ll wake to find ourselves and our loved ones still safe, and the property we labored to acquire still there.
The problem confronting millions of Americans is that they do not live within the geographical borders of civilization. They are trapped in asphalt jungles, where crime is rampant and police response times are alarmingly long.
What are they to do? From a moral standpoint, if you are an adult mired in so sorry a condition, you have a duty to protect your loved ones who depend on you, including your spouse and children. You simply cannot abandon them to the forces of the jungle, no matter how ubiquitous they are.
Unless you can somehow uproot and move to a safe and civilized place, the answer for you likely is to own a firearm. Despite what you may hear or read to the contrary, guns save far more lives than they take.
Anti-gun advocates who dominate the media don’t want you to know that gun-control laws don’t work. The bad guys always manage to get guns anyway, and they know which neighborhoods have been rendered defenseless. Where gun ownership rights prevail, crime rates are much lower. Why? Because crooks, too, engage in cost-benefit analysis, and they’ll avoid areas where potential victims are able to defend themselves.
Having a gun doesn’t mean you have to use it—most of the time, merely showing home invaders that you are armed is enough to repel them.
Here’s a Big Thought to consider. The evidence is overwhelming that gun ownership deters crime, while gun-control laws promote crime (just look at the spiking crime rates in Chicago, one of the staunchest gun-control regimes in America).
Do you care about helping people to avoid becoming victims of crime? You should. And if you do, then you also should realize the importance of deterring crime, because deterrence statistics measure how many innocent persons are not being victimized in the first place.
You can’t see their faces or know their names, but they are real, and by supporting gun ownership you are helping them to survive. And who knows, perhaps one day you’ll be one of them—another person who avoided a horrible circumstance because you took moral responsibility.
This brings us to the Second Amendment to our Constitution, which succinctly provides: “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.”
This is one of ten amendments, collectively called the Bill of Rights, which were enacted because we, the people, insisted on strong written protections for our individual freedom against an overbearing federal government.
Our right to bear arms isn’t about hunting, fishing, or recreation. It’s all about our liberty.
Here’s another Big Thought. One person, standing alone in the jungle, cannot hope to resist the forces of evil for long. To protect individual liberty from such a threat would require many persons, acting together as a group. That sort of group has a name that stands out in our early history: the militia.
The militia was a banding together of citizen-soldiers for freedom. It was a good idea back then, and it’s a good idea now that we at least have the capacity to form militias should the need arise. But no militia will get far without guns. Fists and baseball bats won’t do.
There is a serious movement afoot today to repeal the Second Amendment. But the liberals and progressives behind this—the ones who are hamstringing our police forces in our major cities, and who are letting criminals cross our borders unfettered—cannot be depended on to put government on our side.
We don’t need them, but we do need the right to bear arms.
Blaine Winship, who was lead trial counsel for 26 states in their historic constitutional challenge to ObamaCare, is the author of "Moralnomics: The Moral Path to Prosperity" (Moralnomics Press), available in hardcover from moralnomics.com and in e-books from amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. (“Moralnomics” is a trademark owned by Blaine Winship.)
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/08/02/morality-and-second-amendment.html
