Independence Day 2022

Editor's Note: We've been posting this article each Independence Day since 2007. This year it takes on an even more special meaning, as we mark the passing away of its author, our long-time friend Rick Jones.

With the upcoming holiday, let's look at what it might mean to some people…a day off with pay, just a day off, family, friends, cookouts, reunions or just a day to lounge and watch the fireworks. As for me, I think of our Constitution, our founding fathers, our Bill of Rights, our military men and women who are performing their duties to protect our freedom.

“FREEDOM”. We say it often, exclaiming our rights by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but is it really free? Daily, there are people who are ready, willing and able to chip away at our most basic freedoms as guaranteed by the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, and it is these people who we must fight against. The one that is the most often spoken of, is the First Amendment…the right to free speech, the right to choose the way we want to worship, the right of free press, the right of peaceable assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This freedom in the First Amendment is the main reason that our forefathers came to this country… to get away from a ruler who wouldn’t allow such freedoms. The First Amendment was of the utmost importance to our founding fathers, and that is the reason it is listed first!

With such freedoms now in place, how will you be able to protect them? It is with the Second Amendment that these freedoms are protected!

The Second Amendment has been the most debated and dissected Amendment in the Bill of Rights throughout the 20th century. It contains 27 words, 3 commas and a period, and has been interpreted many different ways, been through lower courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, and is still in place today to protect your rights and mine!

Even before the signing of our Constitution, our Founding Fathers had their ideas of self-preservation, liberty and security. Here are a few examples:

• "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
• "To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason

Consider this excerpt from our Declaration of Independence:

• "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

The only way this can happen is if the Second Amendment is kept in place until such time that this should have to happen!

• "... It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no Danger of their making use of their power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them." - Samuel Adams
• Please support those who fight against those who wish to take away your Second Amendment rights!

Here is wishing you a “HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY”!