Parkland shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv schooled classmate Cameron Kasky on the Second Amendment’s threat to tyranny.
Kashuv has been adamant that blame for the Parkland shooting rests with the “cowards of Broward County” and other government entities, rather than guns, while Kasky has been a vocal proponent of more firearm restrictions for law-abiding citizens in the wake of the attack.
For example, the Tampa Bay Times reports that Kasky used a Sunday morning media appearance to push an “assault weapons” ban. And on Tuesday Kasky mocked the idea that Americans need an “assault rifle” to defend themselves from tyranny:
Kashuv reponded to Kasky’s tweet by pointing out that a threat to tyranny lies at the heart the Second Amendment. He made this point via an appeal to James Madison’s Federalist 46:
Madison used to Federalist 46 to explain that Americans are exceptional because armed. Moreover, he made clear that Americans possess their arms so they can band together, in the event of an overreaching government, and repel the tyranny.
As Breitbart News reported:
Madison showed that the armed citizenry, together with “the existence of subordinate governments to which the people are attached,” provided the framework in which the people could rally to defend their lives and liberty. The people wound band together in “militias”–officers being “appointed” by those local, “subordinate governments”–and their banding together would be meaningful because the people were armed.
Former Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski explained:
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
No guns, no freedom.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, 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 directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.