Daniel Defense: Second Amendment Rights Come From God, Not Government

During the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Daniel Defense president and CEO Marty Daniel affirmed his conviction that Second Amendment rights come from God, not from government.

This is the same position our Founding Fathers held; the same position they all supported with their signatures when signing the Declaration of Independence, which says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It is crucial to note two things in this portion of the Declaration: 1.  Thomas Jefferson sourced our rights in our “Creator,” not in government or in a majority vote of the population. 2. Jefferson sourced government’s power in the people. In other words, governments possess powers, not rights, and the U.S. government only has power because the people lend it a portion of the authority that they possess by birth.

And the authority which the people lend government never communicates permission to infringe on the rights with which the people were endowed. (This is why James Madison used Federalist 46 to stress that “ultimate authority…resides in the people alone.”)

Enter Marty Daniel of Daniel Defense. Marty told Breitbart News that the Second Amendment must be protected because it is sourced in our Creator. He juxtaposed Second Amendment rights with the gospel and said that he views it as his job to protect both because both flow to us from God.

Marty said, “We are in business, we believe, to be a supporter of the gospel. And, therefore, a supporter of the Second Amendment. In other words, not only do we have these Second Amendment rights because God gives them to us but also the gospel.” Marty went on to stress his conviction that Daniel Defense “[supports] the freedom of the gospel by supporting the Second Amendment.”

It is interesting to note that President Donald Trump struck a similar tone when speaking to the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum on April 28. Trump said, “Freedom is not a gift from government, freedom is a gift from God.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.