Breitbart contributor AWR Hawkins, the nation’s leading journalist on gun rights, told a standing-room-only audience at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention “Democrats use emotion, denial, and shame to get you to move against the second amendment [the right to keep and bear arms].”
“Gun rights are God-given,” both “unalienable” and “absolute” Hawkins told the crowd.
“Democrats attempt to defeat these God-given rights through three appeals: emotion, denials that any right is ‘absolute,’ and calls to actions,” Hawkins said.
“These appeals to action,” Hawkins added, “are to do something just for the sake of doing it.”
“Joe Dugan [founder and executive producer of the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention] asked me to explain what the Democrats are doing and what we can do [to fight back],” Hawkins, who has a Phd. in military history from Texas Tech, told the crowd.
Hawkins began by referencing the Declaration of Independence.
“I think about these words. Thomas Jefferson wrote them:”
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.
“Let me make some points. A lot of people like to grab the idea that all men were created equal, and they seize on the word ‘equal.’ … All men are created,” Hawkins told the crowd. (emphasis added)
“It’s very important, the thing about all men being created…that tells me there must be a creator,” he added.
“As I keep reading, what does Jefferson say? ‘They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.’… Our unalienable rights come from God, not government. That’s Jefferson’s point,” Hawkins asserted.
“Unalienable rights are also what are called natural rights because they come to us through the vehicle of natural law. Or ‘absolute rights.’ [19th century English legal expert] William Blackstone referred to them as absolute because He that gives them—God—is absolute,” Hawkins noted.
“The federal government, unlike us, was not created by God… The federal government is a construct created to keep a check on evil men and the only powers it has are the powers delegated to it, the powers that men willingly give it for a time,” he said.
“There is something particularly important about the second amendment,” Hawkins noted. “ It stands out somehow from among all the others.”
“There is no logical argument against it.”
“I spoke last week with Rep. Steven Palazzo, Mississippi fourth district, and he said, ‘Listen, if the 2nd amendment falls, all our rights fall.’ That captures what I’m talking about,” Hawkins added.
“It is that amendment, the second amendment, of which Madison wrote ‘necessary to the security of a free state.’ Didn’t write it about the third or fourth amendment..didn’t write it about the first amendment,” he noted.
“Because there are no logical argument to overturn these things, what the Democrats do is, and we move now from philosophy to practicality, they try to use emotion, denial, and shame to get you to move against the second amendment, and even if possible, to erase it,” he said.
Hawkins noted that when the president held a press conference earlier this month to announce more gun control executive actions “there was a tear coming Obama’s cheek.”
“We are expected to be touched by that moment,” Hawkins explained, noting that it was a transparent appeal to emotion.
“Here’s the danger with emotion. Not only is it not logical, it draws us away from logic,” Hawkins noted.
“Nothing the president proposed would even hinder a mass shooting, much less stop it.”
Hawkins noted that former Democratic Congressman Gabby Giffords, seriously injured when she was among several shot by a Jared Loughner in Tucson, Arizona three years ago, plays an important role in this emotional appeal.
“I’m glad she’s well,” Hawkins said of Gifford.”They bring out Gabby Giffords for an emotional pull,” he added.
“Here’s their dirty little secret,” Hawkins told the crowd.
“Her gunman passed a background check, Jared Loughner went through a background check before he got his gun,” he noted.
“Then comes denial… Denial is the most sickening,” Hawkins said of the Democrats second tactic.
“Here’s a problem. All unalienable rights are absolute. . .God gave us these rights, not government. Obama treads on that and he treads on you and me when he pushes that.”
“Perhaps the left’s biggest success is what they’ve done to our educational system,” Hawkins noted.
“Words like absolute rights, natural rights, they’re gone,” he added.
Hawkins then turned his attention to one particular Democratic legislator.
“Sen. Chris Murphy, on August 13, I covered him saying this:”
The 2nd amendment is not an absolute right. Not a God given right. It has always had conditions on it
“What he’s basically saying here is Thomas Jefferson is wrong,” Hawkins noted.
“If the Democrats can ever convince you that your rights are not rooted in God, in my opinion, it might be 3 to 4 years [more]that you might be able to enjoy your gun rights, then your gun rights are gone,” Hawkins said.
“As soon as governmentt can say ‘we gave you those rights,’ they’re gone,” Hawkins asserted.
“We have to dig in with Jefferson,” he advised the crowd.
“Last point. When emotion and denial fail, the Democrats turn to shame.”
“A common Democrat speech is ‘How many more have to die? When will congress finally act?’ “
“They want those congressman who represent pro-gun district to be ashamed [of following] a document that was created in the 1780s.”
“Here’a a problem,” Hawkins pointed out.
“Universal background checks, ‘we gotta have them,’ they say. California has universal background checks. There is no ‘gun show sales loophole’ in California. They also have registration,” he said of California’s current gun laws.
“On December 2 they had two people [in San Bernardino, California] with guns kill 14 people.”
“They [these two killers] passed background checks for their hand guns and they had a friend pass a background check for their rifle.”
“When they tell you background checks will keep you safe, they lie,” Hawkins said of Democrats.
“In the last 15 years, name one mass shooter who didn’t pass a background check.”
“There were three,” Hawkins noted, and stricter background check laws would not have stopped them.
“Adam Lanza in Connecticut stole his gun. The Clackamas mall shooter in Oregon stole his gun,” he noted.
Hawkins then pointed to what the Democrats have done in California as a blue print for what they want to do to the entire nation.
“If we ever give in to universal background check, let’s go to California right now. California git background checks.”
“What followed? Registration.”
“What followed? Confiscation.”
“A judge can rule your guns can be confiscated [without you even being in the court room].”
“California, that’s the blue print for what they’re pursuing at the national level.”
“When you think about the second amendment, think of a wagon wheel,” Hawkins said.
“This spoke is freedom speech, this spoke protects freedom religion, this spoke protects freedom of assembly….All of these spokes are held in place by a hub. I could cut a couple of those spokes and the wheel still turns,” he noted.
“The hub is the second amendment of the Bill of Rights. Our senators, our congressmen, they need to guard that hub,” Hawkins told the audience.
“Once they allow that hub to go away, that wheel collapses. All the other rights go away,” Hawkins said.
“That’s not how free people live,” Hawkins concluded, as the audience rose in a standing ovation.