Breitbart News recently had the opportunity to talk with Louisiana Governor and presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal (R) about guns and gun rights. He explained that “the left are bullies” opposed to armed citizens and religious liberty.
We began by asking Jindal about the importance of the Second Amendment, and he said:
The Second Amendment is important for various reasons. I like to list three.
First, the Founding Fathers were smart enough to know that the American people need to have the right to bear arms for self-defense. They wrote the Second Amendment with the knowledge that a well-armed colonial citizenry had just defeated a tyrant and the most powerful army in the world, in the British army. So the most basic reason for the Second Amendment is our own self-defense.
Secondly, the Second Amendment keeps us in a place where we can enjoy sporting uses of weapons. While this is certainly not the primary reason for the amendment–self-defense is primary–it is important and it provides a way to enjoy the outdoors. I love going duck hunting with my kids, especially my boys.
Third, even for those who may not own a gun themselves–like I do–they should understand that this is an important liberty right. That the right to keep and bear arms is part of our greater liberty which demonstrates that the Founding Fathers trusted the American people, not the government. If we let those on the left come after one of our liberty rights they will come after them all.
So we see there are those on the left who will come after our Second Amendment right and who are also coming after our First Amendment religious liberty rights, they are coming after our freedom of speech and freedom of association rights. There is this attitude on the left that they know how to live our lives better than we do.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Mayor Bloomberg, who is opposed to Second Amendment rights, was also the mayor who thought that he knew best how much soda New Yorkers should be drinking.
We then talked to Jindal about Hillary Clinton’s town hall statement in which she said gun owners “terrorize a majority of people.” We talked about how Hillary was using this statement to try to shame gun owners into being quiet the next time a big gun control push comes along.
Jindal said:
The left are bullies. Look what they did in Indiana, when it came to the fight over religious liberty. They are bullies who try to intimidate their opponents. They can’t argue with us–at least they can’t argue with us on the merits of the matter or ideas or even what the Founding Fathers intended–so they just bully.
What’s scary is, they are going to try to bully us out of our Second Amendment rights–but we won’t let them–and they are going to try to bully us out of religious liberty rights, and we mustn’t let them.
But you can see this unholy alliance between the Hollywood elites, the liberal media, and, in some cases, big business. Republicans need to pay attention to this–we are historically not the party of big government, and we need to be sure we are not the party of big business either.
I think 2016 is going to be an election between elitism and populism. Hillary Clinton is clearly on the side of elitism, she has staked her ground there. Republicans need a conservative candidate who understands that we need to stand on the side of the people and individual liberty rights. We need to be sure the American people know we differ from Hillary in that we trust the American people to live their lives without government oversight.
The government did not create our rights, rather, government is to secure God-given rights and the left forgets that. So get ready, because the left is going to yell and increase volume when they can’t beat on the substance on these things.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.