It would be easy to pour a thousand words over each and every individual liberty now under attack by the people’s servants and, mysteriously, by the people themselves. The tactics of domestic tyranny are amazingly sophisticated and sometimes stunningly attractive. 

 The more profound threat however is not in open attacks, but in an increasingly perverted understanding of liberty; the twisted idea that freedom is a privilege granted by government rather than a blessing to be secured by it.

 Within the U.S. Constitution and its first ten amendments are protections for every citizen against, ironically, the best form of government ever devised in the history of human rule.  These provisions are embedded in the very nature of human worth and dignity and lived in the soul of the revolution which formed the greatest nation to have ever existed on the face of the Earth. 

 After experiencing the failure of a weak central government through the Articles of Confederation, our founding fathers realized that a strong central government was the only way for the nation to survive and thrive.  At the same time they were also painfully aware of the realities of life under an abusive and unresponsive monarchy.

 In the end, the final balance between power and individual liberty was struck in a new system, something formulated as “federalism”.  Through federalism, the principles needed for operating a successful nation – legislation, administration, and judicial interpretation –  were counterbalanced with each other as co-equal branches of government in submission to the people.

 That was not enough.  Our founders were astute observers of human nature.  They understood the propensity of all people in authority to be corrupted by the powers of self-glorification and self-preservation..  There was a clear and perpetual danger of monarchical abuses against the people, even by elected leaders.  One more layer of protection was needed to, as the preamble to the Constitution states it, “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…”.  That provision against tyranny by one’s own government was enshrined in what we know as the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the body of the Constitution.

 Our unalienable rights were almost uniformly recognized as Divine endowments.  They were not generated by America’s founding documents.  Their presence was felt throughout colonization and the escalation of British/Colonial tensions.  The culminating journal of their abuse was formalized in the Declaration of Independence. 

 Because the principles of liberty enumerated in the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, are granted by the Creator, are rooted in each person’s inestimable value and empower the blessings of liberty, they exist before government, not because of it and certainly not by its permission. 

 James Madison put it this way, “The rights for which [America] contended were the rights of human nature. By the blessing of the Author of these rights on the means exerted for their defence, they have prevailed…”