What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

In a world moving more and more rapidly towards globalization, perhaps we’d do well to review exactly what insures freedom. What is it that makes one free? What sets a free man apart from one enslaved?

The founders would argue insuring a well-armed people was the surest way to defend against an abusive growth of government. They understood Americans would and should be well armed. George Mason, a strong advocate of state’s rights, understood that disarming the people was the surest way to enslave them so he fought hard for the addition of the Bill of Rights to our Constitution including the 2nd amendment. But Noah Webster, who would have been on the other side of the political aisle assured the people that they need not fear a tyrannical government or a standing army as the people must first be disarmed. He was sure that would never happen: “The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, of any pretence, raised in the United States.”

And early Texans understood those ideas even as they pertained ostensibly to the seizure of an essentially useless cannon. Andrew Ponton’s argument “I must therefore [we still need it here] I hope be excused from delivering up the sd cannon…” That gun may have ultimately been loaded with only 16 inches of powder but it was enough to send the Mexican army packing. Fired in the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 1835, it was the Texas shot heard round the world and the beginning of Texas fight for independence from Mexico and the dictatorship of Antonio Lopez Santa Anna.

We’ve drifted far from these shores of liberty. At every act of violence, many work to disarm the people. At every natural disaster and crisis, we look to the military to protect the people and stand silently by as law-abiding citizens are disarmed as in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Slowly we slide towards tyranny without a whimper. Wake up! Webster further cautioned, “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority…They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” Hitler knew he had to disarm the people and Mao Tse Tung argued “the communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.”

Protecting freedom requires that the people be well armed. Government cannot protect us from violence, we must defend ourselves. On the essential elements of freedom, we must not compromise and we must not surrender. Texans must not compromise and must not surrender their right to keep and bear arms. We must not only nullify federal laws that threaten that right but encourage citizens to be, as Madison encouraged, “trained to arms, as that is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”