OPINION:
The right to keep and bear arms has a prestigious and gloried history. Titans of constitutional law such as St. George Tucker and Joseph Story referred to this protection as the “true palladium of liberty” — the bulwark that preserves all other inalienable rights.
They, like the Founders, understood that the Second Amendment’s purpose was to ensure that the people were armed and always capable of defending their natural rights, whether against an invading army, a tyrannical government or criminal actors.
Two centuries later, far too many inheritors of this precious safeguard have relegated it to second-class status, mischaracterizing its purpose as protecting hunting rights instead of human rights and deriding it as a dangerous relic of the past with no place in modern society.