Actor Kevin Sorbo is stressing that Americans need to understand that the irony of “men with guns” taking Americans’ guns justifies the existence of the Second Amendment.
“If you don’t see the irony of a gun ban being enforced by men with guns, then you fail to understand why the 2nd amendment was written in the first place,” Sorbo tweeted.
The Hercules and Andromeda star used an earlier tweet to signal that his “gun ban” observation was a response to President-Elect Joe Biden’s gun control push.
Breitbart News reported that Biden wants to ban firearms that Democrats categorize as “assault weapons,” and Biden’s policy director pledges “big, bold changes through executive action” on guns.
When Sorbo suggests that “a gun ban being enforced by men with guns” justifies the Second Amendment, he brings to mind Founding Father James Madison’s emphasis on how an armed populace provides a check against federal overreach.
Madison, the author of the Second Amendment, used Federalist 46 to contend hat one of the strongest checks on federal tyranny–if not the single strongest check–was an armed citizenry. He boiled down differences between Americans and their European counterparts by explaining that Americans could unite to stop a federal government intent on using military force to topple State power: disarmed Europeans had no such option.
He wrote, “The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”
He explained that “ultimate authority…resides in the people alone and that all authority held by government is derivative power that flows from the people and rests in the people.”
To Sorbo’s point, it would highly ironic to have a scenario where a government that gets it power from the people, then used that power to send armed men to enforce gun bans.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.