The Case for the AR-15

By: Peter Gunn

How many times have we heard from the Anti gun folks “Make the case for the AR-15”

Ok, so here it goes:

There isn’t one. Moreover, there doesn’t need to be. The idea that I need to explain why I “need” one to other people is patently ludicrous, dwarfed only by the notion that I need to defend my inalienable, creator-endowed rights to someone else’s satisfaction. THEY need to make the case to MY satisfaction why I need to surrender rights and property to a government THEY do not trust either.

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was put in place to ensure that Americans could protect home and hearth without interference (I.e. infringement) from their government. Police have no actual Constitutional authority, the people were once responsible for their own defence and protection and just because we created police agencies, does not mean that we abdicated our rights to protect ourselves.

The “militia’ of our founders is us. Whether we are we are investigating the breaking glass at three AM by ourselves, or banding with our neighbors to mutually defend against looters, terrorists, foreign invaders, space aliens, zombie hoards, or the forces of a tyrannical domestic government, WE are the well-regulated militia. Exactly as intended.

Many people in America throughout the world know a brief history of the 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the American Revolution. There is much to the story they don’t know because the truth is somewhat inconvenient. While Paul Revere would never have actually said “The British are coming” (everyone in America was still British at that point) , most folks do not understand WHY the Redcoats would be marching through the dark night in 1775. It was a weapons confiscation raid! They were timing the march to hit the weapons cache in Concord at dawn while the Colonists were still asleep. This was the warning Paul Revere was delivering on the midnight ride , and the reason for calling the militia to arms. The other part of the story that gets glossed over is what happened AFTER the battle. The Redcoats marched back to Boston and by this time, the word had spread throughout the area that the Army had engaged the Minutemen and blood had been spilled. From all over, Militiamen kissed their wives and children, grabbed powder and shot, and marched to Boston. This would not stand. The British Soldiers were besieged by armed citizens from all over New England for 11 months before evacuating Boston. For the rest of the American Revolution, British soldiers never set foot in New England again.

At the end of the war, the Founders recognized that Governments, while necessary, are inherently dangerous to liberty. Based on their experience, they assumed that we would no doubt find ourselves needing to “refresh the tree of Liberty with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants” in the future. To this end, they created the Bill of Rights, or the first ten amendments of the Constitution to insure that We the People would ALWAYS be stronger than the Government, in both Arms and numbers. The idea that they “could not have foreseen” how efficient rifles would become is false on its face. At the beginning of the war, the Minutemen and the British Army had THE SAME weapons, by the end of the war, the Continental Army had SUPERIOR Weapons in the form of the Long Rifle (sometimes called the Kentucky Rifle). Innovations in weapons technology were no stranger to The Founding Fathers. Since rifles, which use a different technology from muskets, existed during the War, it is simply not possible that the Second Amendment could only pertain to muskets. The AR-15 is a direct descendant of the long rifle, in the same way a 2018 Mustang is direct descendant of the 1964 ½ Mustang. Sure the tech and performance have improved, but they still share the familial DNA.

The Intent of the founders regarding the Second Amendment is crystal clear in their writings from the time; American Citizens were to be able to retain the ability to defeat the Government militarily if they were unable to maintain their freedom through legal and political means. There is an old American proverb that our Freedom is contained in three boxes; the Soapbox, the Ballet Box, and The Cartridge box. We are free to speak out (the Soapbox) Free to vote our conscience (the ballot box) and if those two should fail, we are free to arm ourselves to protect our liberty (the Cartridge box).

America as a nation is finding itself in the very danger our Founders were worried about. The Left/Progressive movement is trying everything it can to deny the Right/Conservatives “the Soapbox”. Burning down Berkeley to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, calling for the Abolishing of the NRA, Facebook deciding Diamond & Silk’s conservative content is “dangerous to the community” and public schools harassing conservative students and causes, while sanctioning and supporting liberal ones. Protesting the Conservative message and counter arguments are as American as Apple Pie, but they are trying to silence the opposing viewpoint all together which is more Soviet Union.

The “Ballot box” is also under siege. There was the video of a white man being dragged from his car and beaten by several black people because he was suspected of supporting Trump for President. You have Hillary Clinton running around the world proclaiming that women who didn’t vote for her were being oppressed by their husbands, and that the people in the States she lost were less educated and productive than the people living in the states she carried, and let us not forget that conservative voters are a “basket of Deplorables”. Part of the reason Hillary and the left are so unhinged about the outcome of the election, is they probably rigged the election so it is impossible to them they could have lost. The only explanation has to be Russian interference. Anyone wearing a Trump MAGA hat can expect to be publicly Ridiculed and harassed on the streets. Masked thugs, laughably calling themselves “Anti fascists” will violently disrupt any Right/Conservative demonstration in support of the duly elected and sitting President of the United States.

Since the time may be drawing near when the only option left to the Conservative Right is the “Cartridge box”, the Left/Progressives have targeted what is arguably the best militia weapon on the market today, the AR-15. According to the FBI, rifles as a group account for less homicides than knives, blunt objects or even hands and feet. Rifle account for around 300 annually out of about 8,000 firearm homicides each year (not quite the 30,000 you hear about in the media). AR-15s are an even smaller subset of rifles in general, so small in fact that the FBI does not separate them in their uniform crime report. As they do with people, the Left /Progressives name call the rifle “assault weapon” to demonize it and drum up support to insure the “well-regulated militia” is unable to secure the free state from the Left/Progressive endgame.  This is a feature of gun control, not a bug

Gun Owners having to “make the case” to retain the EXACT weapons the Second Amendment protects is ludicrous. Its backwards and none of us should take the bait. The Left/Progressives attempting to ban them makes a crystal clear case that AR-15s and similar weapons should hang over the mantle of every freedom loving American household, as the musket and long rifle once did over two hundred years ago.

Share:

Author: Peter Gunn

Peter Gunn is has been involved with Second Amendment issues for nearly twenty years, In addition to testifying before the State legislature, Gunn hosted the Polite Society podcast and was a staff writer for both Tavernkeepers and the Brenner Brief. Having grown up in Lexington Massachusetts, Peter learned at an early age the power and necessity of an armed citizenry. Peter now lives in rural New Hampshire, as far away from other people as he can get.

Related Articles

7 thoughts on “The Case for the AR-15

  1. If you’re not going to protect you home, who will? Let’s imagine they banned AR-15 – are they going to stop at it? Hell no, they going to come after every other firearm till you’re left with a bolt action from a century ago. We already have a far inferior selection compared to military weaponry(they have full auto rifles n stuff, best you can get right now is something like semi-auto M4 carabine , bullpup or maybe an AK(not even true in a whole bunch of states)). They’ve already reduced our options and if we keep allowing them to do so even more, we might as well give up our rights as a whole.

  2. Never give up your right to bear arms. No matter how the media twists the facts. That would be the end of freedom in this country. You can have mine when you pry them from my cold dead fingers. I’m willing to put my life on this front line. Bear arms & free speech are the only Amendments still as written not twisted & distorted.

  3. Re: “…the people were once responsible for their own defence and protection.”

    We still are. Law enforcement has absolutely no obligation to come to a citizen’s aid.

    1. You are absolute correct, the point I was going for was that we were responsible BEFORE the police existed and that nothign changed when they were formed. You are likewise absolutely correct, Police have no legal obligation to protect individuals and yet the gun banners tell us “The police will protect us”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *