As Sir William Blackstone so aptly put it, self-defense is more than a right it is "the Primary law of nature" and it was viewed in that context by our Founding Fathers.

The People's "right to keep and bear arms" for personal and national defense, is guaranteed in the Second Amendment. This was so well understood by our Founding Fathers, as their own words clearly show, that there was no need to mention personal self-defense in the Constitution itself.

"The whole Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large, or considered as individuals...It establishes some rights as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."
-Albert Galatin, New York Historical Society, Oct.7, 1789

The Founding Fathers made no distinction beween "social" crime and "political" crime. To them it was one and the same, and therefore unnecessary to differentiate between the two. The Second Amendment covered both eventualities, the need to defend one's life, and possessions, or the Constitution.

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion..... in private self-defense."
-James Madison

"Here, every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defense...."
-John Adams

"The Constitution of most of the states (and of the United States) asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
-Thomas Jefferson Note that Thomas Jefferson considered "to be at all times armed," not only a right, but a DUTY of each citizen.

"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
-Sir William Blackstone

"Each of us has a natural right -- from God to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?"
-Frederic Bastiat

"He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature itself teaches every creature to defend itself."
-From a sermon, Philadelphia, 1747

"God has given life. Refusal to defend it denies and disparages God's gift and is tantamount to suicide. A victim is morally bound to kill rather than allow another to take his or her life."
-Annonymous

U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990) Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote that the term "the People" as used explicitly in the First, Second, Fourth and Tenth Amendment s means the entire general populace that makes up our "national community," thus reaffirming, that in the Second Amendment, the people’s right to arms as an individual right rather than a collective, militia right.

This was backed up by a SCOTUS ruling (5-4) in "Heller vs. Washington D.C." (2008), that the Second Amendment did indeed protect an individuals right to keep and bear arms separate from the collective militia right.

Many Americans today are indeed forfeiting their right to self-defense and are thereby jeopordizing not only the future of this nation, but the freedom of their children and grandchildren. To what purpose?

Published in The Orlando Sentinel, July 19, 1998

My apologies to Charley Reese for the minor changes I made to this article, mainly to bring it into the 21st century.

The easiest way to resolve the gun-control debate, in your own mind, is to take this little test.

1. Do you believe that you have a right to live?

2. Do you believe that your family has a right to live?

3. If someone is threatening to kill you and your family, do you think that you have a right to defend them and yourself?

That's the yes-or-no part of the quiz. Now here is one final essay question:

How will you defend yourself and your family if you are confronted by an armed intruder or intruders?

You could call 911, but even if you did get the call off, you still have a problem: The intruders are there in your house, and the police aren't. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

The sad fact is that, because of logistics, police can't protect you. In more than 99 percent of the cases, by the time the police even get called -- and certainly by the time they arrive -- the crime has already been committed. In fact, contrary to what you probably believe, the police have no duty to protect you. So, if not them, who?

The hard truth is that, when you are confronted by a criminal, you're in the same situation today you would have been in if you had lived alone on an isolated ranch on the American frontier. There's nobody at the dance but you and the criminal. You have to fight. You win, you live; you lose, you die. Simple as that. No alternative unless you want to depend on your begging and some thug's mercy. But in serious encounters, by the time the cavalry gets there, there will be dead and wounded lying around. The question you have to answer is: Do you want to be among the dead or among the living?

Now you may suppose that you are a glib talker and when some crack-crazed thug sticks a gun in your face, you can reason with him. That's a very far-fetched supposition. I would bet on the thug. Any honest street cop will tell you that the predators roaming today are far more dangerous than even mob hit men of the past. The hit men would never kill without a reason. Today's thugs kill on a whim for no rational reason at all. And many of them will kill everyone there, including babies and children.

The neo-totalitarians -- sometimes known as the gun-control crowd -- will repeat the big lie that a gun kept for self-protection is more likely to injure you or your family than a criminal. The flawed data, that claim is based on, was discredited years ago.

If you take a gun to a gunfight, you may not win; if you don't, you will surely lose. Credible studies by respected scholars with no bias show what common sense tells you -- that thousands of Americans every day save themselves from criminal harm by using a firearm, most of the time without having to fire a shot.

To me, there is no more outrageous insult or greater example of stupidity than a government that is such a gross failure at preventing criminal, armed attacks on the population that it would take the position that the answer is to disarm the victims. I take it as a given that any politician who proposes to deny honest people the means to defend their lives and the lives of their children is too evil, or too stupid, to tolerate in public office.

Some guy once wrote that a characteristic of Southerners is that they take things personally. I know that's true in my case. When I hear some politician talk gun control, I think, ``You (expletive deleted), you're endangering my children.''

You have a right to own a firearm. Don't let anyone take that right away from you. Use it.