The Only Right That Matters?

Trey Smith

Over the past two years, I have written a lot about the coordinated assault on the US Bill of Rights. The government has passed laws and created regulations to deny citizens the rights of free speech, free assembly, and making grievances against the government itself. We have also lost the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

While some of us have decried these encroachments, many of our fellow citizens have reacted with little more than a yawn. The ONLY right that seems to get their dander up concerns a narrowly constructed view of the 2nd amendment -- you know, the one that deals with militias and guns. That seems to be the ONLY right many Americans care about: the supposed right to own and possess firearms.

As Bill Maher pointed out last night on the first Real Time of the new year, this idea of Americans owning guns supposedly is, among other things, about protecting our liberties from a tyrannical government. The problem, however, is that we already have lost or are losing the very rights that many people believe guns are meant to protect!

Why is it that so many folks are willing to forgo the rights of free speech or prohibiting unreasonable search and seizures, but they will talk openly about insurrection if almost ANY watered-down regulation even is suggested about gun ownership? Is the ability to shoot whomever you want more cherished than the right of due process?

If so, then in a nutshell we know what's wrong with this country. Guns are more valued than anything else, even more valuable than all the other liberties combined!