The 2nd Amendment Isn't About Hunting: It's About Self-Defense

When Gov. Cuomo argued against guns with magazines that hold 10 rounds on Jan. 9, he tried to justify it by saying, “No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 rounds to kill a deer.”

Problem one: He’s wrong in the same way Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) was wrong when he said no one hunts with an AR-15. Tons of people hunt with these kinds of rifles. 

Problem two: It isn’t about hunting — never has been, never will be.

The 2nd Amendment wasn’t given to us to protect our right to duck or deer hunt but to defend our lives and our property and to repel tyranny, period.

When the left twists the 2nd Amendment to make it about hunting, they do so to effectively cut all non-hunters out of the equation, which lessens the size of the opposition by lopping off those who own guns for other purposes (self-defense). And this also gives them grounds to limit guns and gun-types based on hunting applications.

However, this is a specious tactic at best, because the 2nd Amendment is not about hunting. 

As the Supreme Court said in both their District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago  decisions, “individual self defense is “the central component‘ of the Second Amendment Right.” (italics in original)

This is not an argument against hunting. It’s just a reminder that that’s not the reason the Founding Fathers wanted us to be armed.