GOA to Obama: Describe 2nd Amendment Correctly

It’s no secret–except perhaps to those who lack the ability to observe and think–that Obama and his administration do not like guns. If they had their druthers, we’d all be disarmed lickety-split in order to “fundamentally transform” the USA more quickly and effectively.

Gun Owners of America (GOA) know this, and in a recent “open letter” have observed a particularly glaring strike at our rights, asking that corrections be made. At the White House website, the Second Amendment to the Constitution is described thusly: “The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.”

(I’m mildly shocked that it acknowledges “citizens” rather than “militia,” but even that could be arguable to someone versed in the legal differences between “people” and “citizens.” But I digress.)

It is false to claim that the Second Amendment (2A) “gives” us any rights. In its first point, GOA’s letter specifies clearly why the claim is false. In a nutshell, the Bill of Rights exists to protect rights which all people naturally have at birth, and doesn’t give anything. After all, the government doesn’t own our rights and cannot give what it doesn’t have.

The second point in the letter is the omission of “keep” from the online description. The right to bear arms is worthless if one can’t keep (freely possess) his or her own firearms. Again, GOA’s letter provides details to back this up.

GOA’s proposed description reads as follows:

“The Second Amendment seeks to preserve the United States as a free nation, by protecting the right of individual American citizens to acquire, own, possess, sell, carry and use modern firearms, both through service in a citizen’s militia as a final line of defense against government tyranny, as well as other personal uses such as self-defense, hunting, and other sporting activities.”

How true, how true. Sadly, I suspect it’ll be a cold day in Hades before the Obama White House puts that description on *our* website.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.