Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

From The Daily Caller
By AWR Hawkins, Ph.D.

Are we armed because we’re free or are we free because we’re armed?

Every time I read the Bill of Rights, I am struck by the wisdom our Founding Fathers demonstrated in pronouncing and protecting our natural rights. From religious liberty to protections on private property and the security we have in our own persons, our rights are essential to our humanity because our Creator saw fit to endow us with them. Moreover, because they flow from God to man rather than from government to man, our Founders designated them as off-limits to government encroachment.

But while the whole of the Bill of Rights is magnificent, it is in the Second Amendment especially that one gets a real taste of both the simplicity and profundity of the Founders:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and Arms, shall not be infringed.

In these words, we not only see the right to keep and bear arms clearly and simply set forth, but also the profound truth that an armed population is “necessary to the security of a free state.” No other right is explicitly described by the Founders as necessary to the security of a free state.

No wonder George Washington said a “free people ought … to be armed.”

Read more here: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/20/are-w ... were-armed