by Diane Rufino, March 27, 2018

My appreciation of the Second Amendment and gratitude for the wisdom and insistence of our Founders and for the States who insisted that it was necessary to be included in our Constitution (or else they would refuse to join the Union) was solidified in an incident that happened to me many years ago.

When I was 26 years old, I was living on my own in my first apartment – a tiny, one-bedroom place in Plainsboro, New Jersey. My first job out of grad school didn’t pay very much so I had to work a second job to support myself.  One night, after getting home from my waitressing job and taking a shower, I had trouble sleeping. So I put on the TV and found a good Clint Eastwood movie to watch – Any Which Way But Loose. It was a very small apartment and it turns out that the TV stand I had was very close to the apartment door, which was locked. It was about 1:00 – 1:30 in the morning – maybe later. As I was watching the movie, I happened to notice that the door knob was moving. Someone was outside my door, trying to get in. The knob was moving harder and harder, and I was scared like I had never been scared before in my life. (I had learned soon after I moved into the apartment complex that a young woman tenant had been murdered just before I moved in).  As I was shaking uncontrollably and trying to find the number for the Plainsboro Police (the days before cell phones and 911), I heard a man speak through the crack in the door “Open the door; you’re the girl with the silver Fiero, right?”  In fact, I had a silver 1983 Pontiac Fiero. The man trying to break in specifically targeted MY apartment. He was looking for ME. I didn’t know who he was and I couldn’t imagine who he was. I was new to the area and had very few friends and acquaintances. I called the police, using the only phone I had, which was next to the kitchen. It was not in a direct line of view to the door. The police dispatcher told me to stay on the line and that a police car would be there shortly.  I picked up the only knife I had in my apartment – a cheap steak knife. All I kept saying was “Please hurry. Please hurry. I’m so scared.”

I was absolutely helpless. I am 4 foot 9 inches tall and weighed less than 100 pounds at the time. I had a cheap knife in my hand, not even sure if I was capable of overcoming my state of fear to defend myself.

The police arrived before the door was pried open and I collapsed in tears, grateful that someone was there to protect me. The potential intruder told the police that he had been drinking and in his drunken state, he must have gotten confused because he thought he was trying to get into his own apartment.  I told the police that it wasn’t the truth because he had called out “You’re the girl with the silver Fiero.”  Nevertheless, the police believed his story and they let him go. They admonished him for scaring me and told him “don’t do it again.” Turns out that he lived in the building next to my building; a grassy courtyard separated our buildings. He lived on the second floor.  My apartment was a ground-floor apartment. So, it was hard to imagine the police would have believed his story about being confused and thinking it was his apartment.

I never stayed in the apartment again after that. I stayed with a friend for about two weeks and then moved into a new place, in another town.

I often thought what I would have needed to defend myself that night, especially if he rushed in and rushed towards me. Again, I’m short and barely able to keep my composure when nervous. I am prone to anxiety attacks. Would a simple handgun holding 5 bullets been sufficient for me to stop him?  I can’t say for sure. Maybe, but maybe not. I imagine I would not have been composed enough to aim well so maybe not. I would have needed something that didn’t require accuracy. What if there were two men?  Well then, a simple handgun would not have been enough.

What if Plainsboro law required individuals to have guns dissembled in the home?

Self-protection is not a one-size-fits-all model. The Right to Self-Defense doesn’t require a one-size-fits all scheme. The Right to Self-Defense has no limits or conditions; it is merely the RIGHT to defend oneself (against others who intend harm), allowing each individual to decide for himself or herself what is needed to ensure that. The government once re-interpreted its “Necessary and Proper” Clause to mean “anything convenient” to help the government carry out its functions. It reasoned, in direct conflict with the very words of Article I, Section 8, that the government needs to determine, and to do, whatever helps it (“whatever is convenient”) to carry out its functions. We the People interpret the Second Amendment in the same broad sense –  “anything convenient” to carry into the effect the right to defend and protect oneself.

The Right to Life is recognized ever so profoundly in perhaps the most important, most significant document in the world – our American Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that All Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The Right to Life is not the government’s to give, or define, to limit, or to take credit for, and the natural Rights to protect it, secure it, and preserve it (known as the Right of Self-Defense and the Right of Self-Preservation) are inherently equal to that Right to Life.

The day the government denies we the people that right to protect, secure, and preserve our lives is the day that we are no longer free but merely subjects, inferior in our status to the government’s right and power to preserve itself. The day that we lose our Right to Have and Bear Arms is the day that we surrender all other rights. The Right embodied in the Second Amendment is the one right that secures all others.

The Declaration goes on to tell us what we the people have the inherent and natural right to expect from government: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,….”  And then it instructs what we also have the inherent and natural right to do when government fails to secure our rights and instead, threatens them: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…”

Powerful and progressive actors (individuals and organizations) in this country, including Michael Bloomberg, are forcing an evil agenda on the people of this country and on the government which has, as its ultimate goal, the destruction of the rights we are entitled to and the ones we need to continue being a free people. These actors are forcing us to re-evaluate whether our government is becoming destructive of the ends for which it was created and the result is not going to be pretty.  A government (King George III of England) tried that over 200 years ago at Lexington and Concord, MA, and then at Williamsburg, VA, and the result was a revolution for the right to govern as the colonies saw fit, with the goal to never surrender their rights and liberties again. Today’s youth don’t understand this. Today’s youth don’t even know about this.  Today’s progressives don’t care about this.

There are a lot of people out there, including those who marched on DC, who are advocating for the weakening and even the repeal of the Second Amendment. But that cannot happen. Let’s be absolutely clear on that. The Constitution – and thus the legal status – of the Second Amendment is crystal clear on the matter:  The Second Amendment confers the RIGHT to an individual to have and bear arms for SELF-DEFENSE (McDonald v. Chicago, 2010, and Heller v. District of Columbia, 2008).  That right SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.  Furthermore, the ONLY way the Second Amendment can be limited or abolished is through the Article V amendment process.  And there are some legal experts who believe that the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights can never be amended. Amendments, they explain, can be added (for example to include other rights), but the original ten amendments are to remain in force as they are because they recognize what, at the very least, our inherent liberty rights include. Because they are rights that are inalienable to us (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness), we are always entitled to them.

What does it mean to have the natural right of self-defense?  It means we can be expected to protect ourselves, in any way that the situation requires. It means that if we are in fear for our lives or serious harm, we have the right to eliminate that threat. Individuals have the right to exercise their rights but only when they don’t seriously impact those of other individuals. I have the right to free speech. But my right doesn’t include the right to shut yours down. I have the right to own a gun, but I don’t have the right to take the life of an innocent person with it. The inherent, or natural, right of self-defense and self-preservation is recognized, and has been recognized historically, in criminal law. A person who shoots and kills an intruder carrying a gun commits homicide which is a serious crime. But under the law, it is considered “justifiable” and therefore not punishable. A woman who stabs and kills a man who is attacking her and intending to rape her commits homicide. But under the law, it is considered “justifiable” and therefore not punishable. “Justifiable” is a term which means that the killing was “justified,” and one of the most common reasons is self-defense.

We don’t need the Second Amendment to have the right to defend ourselves, including with firearms. The Second Amendment confers no such right. Rather, it recognizes the right. If bad guys can threaten lives with guns (which they will ALWAYS be able to do; which they have ALWAYS been able to do), innocent victims have the right to have access to guns to counter that threat. If we continue down the road to governments like the Third Reich, Stalinist Russia, Mao Zedong’s communist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela, and even British King James II, to use the full force of government to ignore individual rights and eliminate political opposition, we know that that its operatives and its armies will threaten American citizens with guns and all kinds of advanced weapons. We have the right to have access to guns, and also advanced weapons, to counter that threat.  Like kind for like kind. That is what is meant by being free and that is what is meant by having a meaningful right to self-defense.

We see a dramatic rise in violence by bad people and we see a dramatic rise in retaliatory violence by persons who are emotionally and mentally unstable. We are seeing something play out that people throughout history have also seen – bad people and evil-intentioned people will ALWAYS find ways to get weapons (or they will make them, such as Timothy McVeigh and the UnaBomber Ted Kaczynski, or they will weaponize other instrumentalities, such as cars, trucks, planes).  The rise in abnormal behavior, in criminal tendencies, in retaliatory mass shootings, in mental instability is something we should be focusing on. It’s the behavior – the diseased mind and the black heart – that seeks out the guns for violence. The guns don’t force themselves on those individuals. We should be focusing on what in our society is giving rise to this behavior – this troubling trend. Specifically, we should be looking at policies that government has forced on our communities through its seeming desire to change our social fabric and our social norms, to force new values on us and to force us to repress old conventional ones. Government – our public schools and our colleges and universities, our public offices, our public hospitals, the main-stream media (undoubtedly, an arm of the government’s establishment) – has been pushing a new agenda now for many years and that is “Diversity.”  We are indoctrinated to believe that diversity is the most important factor in college admissions, in the make-up of a student body and in the classroom, in the workforce, in our police forces, and in government; we are indoctrinated to belief that what we look like – what the color of our skin is, what country we came from, what gender we are, and what gender we want to be – is far more important than the competency and skills we bring to that school or that office. The government disregards the entire sad history of this country from the era when slavery was abolished until Civil Rights legislation was passed when we DID focus only on what a person looked like. Government doesn’t learn from history but rather repeats it. Government, through its willing and reckless refusal to enforce the most important of laws, our immigration laws and its willful blind eye to all the crime and lawlessness that has resulted, indoctrinates us, tacitly, that laws are not really to be taken too seriously. Government, contradicting what our parents used to teach us, undermines the importance of the rule of law and undermines the notion of equality under the law.

Morality is a thing of the past and so is religious observance in our daily lives. The family is no longer the bedrock and the pillar of society, and we see that in the laws of progressive states and in the court decisions in all other areas. We are intolerant to focus on the “nuclear family.” We are intolerant to refer to parents in gender terms. We are discriminatory if we dare accept the psychologists’ and the social scientists’ data that the proper emotional and psychological development of children depend on there being both a female and a male parent in the home and in their raising. We are discriminatory if we dare accept the well-established and reproducible data that children end up living in poverty, with a lack of education, and with psychological or domestic problems when they are raised in a single parent home. We are discriminatory if we dare accept the well-established and reproducible data that those who commit violence, those who commit mass murder, and those who embrace a criminal lifestyle are those raised without a father or without an effective father figure in their lives  We who lived in societies that respected and recognized traditional family values (and legislated to that effect) enjoyed its benefits. Societies were safer and children progressed through their childhood and teen years without incident and went on to become healthy and contributing members, having families of their own and raising their children successfully. We who recognize that reality and who recognize the robust data on the social benefits of a traditional family and the social problems created by the lack of such a family are antiquated and a threat to the progress of society in this country. Most families are no longer intact or have been re-established through second marriages, etc.  Children are psychological playthings – mere social experiments whose well-being comes at the expense of the desires or the recklessness of their parents or is merely considered as less important. Those were not the values of my parent’s day.

So, we don’t need the Second Amendment to exercise our rights of self-defense and self-protection. What we would like is our government to say “Government is prohibited from defining limits to the Second Amendment; the Constitution is clear on that.” We need our government to be of the kind that the Declaration of Independence promises us –  one that has as its primary purpose the security of our individual rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. And one way to demonstrate that it is such a government is to respect the Second Amendment and not push to have it limited or as former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens urged, to have it abolished. Should that, in fact happen, and especially if it happens through legislation by the US Congress or by pronouncements from the bench by activist judges, then we have an illegitimate government and the provision in the Declaration which states “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…” is triggered and the people have the natural right to separate from it.

I have proposed a State Sovereignty Resolution to my legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly. I feel very strongly that the General Assembly, our legislative body (“The People’s Body”), should make it clear that the people’s right to have and bear arms is safe and secure in our state.

The text of my proposed State Sovereignty Resolution is provided below:

NORTH CAROLINA STATE SOVEREIGNTY RESOLUTION

A Bill Announcing the Intention to Nullify any and all Unconstitutional federal Gun Control Bills that the State of North Carolina and its People believe to be an Infringement of their Natural Rights of Self-Defense and Self-Protection as Recognized by the Second Amendment

The State of North Carolina asserts the following

A warm attachment to the Union of the States, to which it had pledged its loyalty in accordance with the terms of the Constitution, the compact that created it, and to that end, it has a duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles which constitute the basis of that Union, because only a faithful observance of them can secure its existence and the public happiness;

Its recognition and respect for the lawful and constitutional process for altering the terms and meaning of the Constitution, including the amendments contained in the Bill of Rights, which are the two procedures listed in Article V (the Amendment Process);

The Second Amendment recognizes that a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed;

The Second Amendment also recognizes that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed;

The Second Amendment recognizes the natural right of Self-Defense and Self-Protection, both on behalf of the State (“a free State,” by the way) and of the individual;

The Second Amendment doesn’t grant these rights but rather, it protects them, without condition or limitation, from the reaches of the federal government, especially the US Congress and its law-making power;

The phrase “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” is clear and instructional on its face;

To affirm the point above further and to support it greater, the States specifically included a Preamble to explain the reason for the ten amendments to the new Constitution (amendments that were demanded by them and without them would have jeopardized and prevented the ratification of that document. The Preamble reads: “The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution”;

The Preamble to the Bill of Rights makes abundantly clear that the Constitution established a federal government of limited powers, and that in those limited objects of government, the federal government is limited even further by the ten amendments added (ratified by 3/4 of the States) on Dec. 15, 1791;

Just as the Supremacy Clause asserts the supremacy of the federal government with respect to the powers delegated to it, which are “few and defined” (Federalist No. 45, written by the same man, James Madison, who authored the Constitution), the Tenth Amendment and the Preamble to the Bill of Rights assert the supremacy of the States with respect to the powers reserved to them;

That one of the reserved powers of the State is the responsibility, the duty, to prevent unconstitutional federal laws, policies, executive actions, and court opinions from infringing on the rights of its people;

The Second Amendment has a very purposeful history; the rights recognized were not rights pulled out of thin air but rather stem from Natural Law and the concept that certain rights are endowed by a Creator (inherent in our very humanity);

Our Founders were not talking about hunting when they demanded that the Second Amendment be added to the Constitution; they were concerned about the freedom of the individual, and also the populace in general, to be armed in the face of a powerful and aggressive government – one that may send out a standing army in times of peace, one that may try to enact laws for gun and ammunition confiscation, and one that may eventually try to outright or effectively disarm its people;

The history of England, and indeed the history of many other nations, teaches us that when individuals are unable to defend themselves and their rights, they essentially have no rights. Rather, they have temporary permission from government to exercise rights until they somehow pose a serious threat to those in power.

James Madison once said: “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  But what if it was the federal government that was not the angel?  The Second Amendment is the contingency plan in such a case;

James Madison also wrote (in Federalist No. 28): “If the representatives of the People betray their constituents, there is no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government”;

In addition to the natural right to defend one’s life and property, as well as those of family members and perhaps fellow citizens who are vulnerable,  there are other components of self-defense and self-protection other than the actual confrontation and neutralization of a violent intruder or attacker, that the people recognize – one being DETERRENCE;

Gun-Free Zones, homes without effective firearms, and individuals of sound mind disenfranchised in their right to have and bear arms serve as attractive targets for criminals and evil-intentioned, mentally-disturbed individuals;

The State of North Carolina, under the Tenth Amendment and according to compact principles, reserves the right to determine when the federal government has over-stepped its constitutional bounds with respect to legislation on gun control;

The State of North Carolina will NOT comply with any federal gun control law or policy that hinders or burdens its citizens in their free exercise of the natural right of self-defense and self-protection recognized by the Second Amendment;

In furtherance of its DUTY to prevent unconstitutional or abusive acts of the federal government on its citizens, and in furtherance of its DUTY to prevent the God-given and Natural rights of its People, the State of North Carolina will interpose using whatever means necessary to ensure that such gun control laws or policies (including judicial opinions), or any laws, policies, or court opinions for that matter in violation of the Constitution generally or the Bill of Rights specifically are not enforced in the State.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

Notice that the Resolution only recognizes a rightful limitation of the right and ability to purchase and possess guns when it comes to persons who have a history of violence or mental instability. It is only in these two instances that individuals are unable to appreciate or respect the rights of others and therefore have been deemed to have forfeited their rights under the Second Amendment.

The Resolution that I have written (above) can easily be modified for a Sovereignty Bill or a Nullification Bill. If it is modified for such a bill, it should include the various types of interposition (action) that North Carolina would be willing to pursue (and will pursue) in order to shield its citizens from the effect of unconstitutional federal gun control laws. In other words, the bill should list the various types of action that the state and its officials will carry out in order to prevent such gun laws from being enforced on the citizens – including such things as arresting and jailing federal officers who attempt to come into the state to enforce the laws, not recognizing federal court opinions that erode or limit the Second Amendment, removing and disbarring judges from the bench who attempt to punish NC citizens under the federal law, empowering Sheriffs to not enforce the law or to share information with the federal government, refusal to allow its state officials to cooperate in the enforcement of the law, and challenging the law in court.

If you agree with the sentiment expressed in this article and if you agree with the points articulated in the Resolution, please share with others. If you agree that North Carolina should adopt this, or a similar, resolution affirming the Second Amendment, please contact your representative and send them a copy of what I have written. If you are not from North Carolina but would like your state legislature to adopt such a resolution, please contact your representative(s) and share this article – or at least the resolution.

All tyranny needs is for good people to do nothing.  The powerful progressive movement in our country will continue to misuse and manipulate elements of our government – the liberal, progressive, activist courts and the politically-deranged members of Congress – to strip our rights away. Our rights are what allow us to stand up for the truth and stand up against our aggressive government.  We cannot remain silent and we must not allow their agenda to continue to move forward. The Second Amendment – the right to have and bear guns for self-defense is where we must draw the line, as our founding generation did. That is what Patrick Henry was talking about when he exclaimed: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”  Without the right of self-defense and the right to use firearms for self-defense, we effectively have no secure rights. Without the Second Amendment, we have no effective way to protect the others.

Saul Alinsky, building on Lenin’s original plan for world conquest by communism, wrote a book entitled “Rules for Radicals” in which he outlined a plan to turn useless idiots into useful idiots for political purposes. The ultimate purpose, of course, is the creation of a large, concentrated, socialist government with the power to control the lives of its citizens. I never understood the attraction of a socialist state, especially in this country, and to so many people.  In a socialist state, individuals lose their rights, their freedoms, and their choices to the dictates of government. Alinsky, like Lenin, examined the various levels of control that a government would need in order to establish an effective socialist state and those levels are, in order:

(1)  Healthcare – A government that controls the people’s healthcare controls the people themselves

(2)  Poverty – people in poverty are easiest to control; hence, it is most beneficial for government to pursue policies that increase the level of poverty or that keep individuals and their offspring in poverty

(3)  Debt – government will increase the national debt to unsustainable levels because then it can continue to tax heavily (and to increase taxation; to burden property). Taxation produces more poverty, or at least, prevents many from improving their financial situation

(4)  Gun Control – disarming the people allows the government to establish a police state, if need be

(5)  Welfare – welfare allows government to take control of every aspect of a recipient’s life – food, housing, choices, even decisions to marry, to have children, or to pursue education. Government will never get rid of welfare programs if its goal is socialism

(6)  Education – government needs to take control of what its youth learns…  what they read, what they listen to, and what things mean. It needs to use the education system as a means to indoctrinate its citizens.

(7)  Religion – a belief in God needs to be removed from schools, government, the marketplace, and the public square. A socialist government substitutes itself for the role of God.  A moral, religious people will always question the legitimate role of government and so, it must minimize this faction.

(8)  Class Warfare – government needs to divide its people into poor and wealthy — the “have’s” and the “have-not’s.”  It also needs to divide people along racial lines – characterizing one group as “victims” and the other as “oppressors” (or as “beneficiaries”). This way it is easier to demonize the wealthy, the empowered, the benefitted classes and therefore, to take from them — their money (through taxation – to benefit the poor), and their positions (through “diversity”-enrichment programs). It is easier to re-engineer society by creating division, hatred, and distrust.

Looking at this list, government has achieved every one of these levels of control – EXCEPT gun control. Is it any wonder that the left is pursuing it at such a rabid level lately?  Is it any wonder that it uses every tragedy to attack the Second Amendment?

So again, if you agree with the sentiment expressed in this article and if you agree with the points articulated in the Resolution, please share with others. And if you live in North Carolina, please contact your state rep and send him a copy.

There was a time when North Carolina was the most liberty-minded of all the colonies and all the states. She has a profound and impressive history. My hope is that her legacy will live on with her respect for its citizens’ Second Amendment rights.

[NOTE:  I wanted to include this disclaimer, after the fact. Doing research for my April 5 article, I learned that the 8 Levels of Government Control to Establish a Social State is not included in Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals,” and in fact, is not attributable to him at all. Some, however, have attributed some of the levels to Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven (“The Cloward-Piven Strategy”).  In my article: “Government Control of the People – The Progressive Scheme:  Making Useful Idiots Out of Useless Idiots,” I discuss Saul Alinsky and his book, and its potential for transforming the character of our country, but I also address this misinformation about the 8 levels.  The article is posted here:   https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2018/04/05/government-control-of-the-people-the-progressive-model-making-useful-idiots-out-of-useless-idiots/ ]