President’s Column | Ukraine’s Example

[Charlie T Waite]

For anyone who ever needed proof of how crucial gun rights are to our survival and our safety, I have just two words of advice: Remember Ukraine!

You saw the pictures and video from that war zone. Thousands of men and women from every walk of life lined up to get the firearms they needed to defend themselves and their country from Russian invaders.

Let’s be clear: The highest purpose of your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is to protect innocent life from any and every aggressor. The simple fact is that invading armies, foreign dictators, domestic tyrants, angry mobs and would-be rapists and killers all share one Achilles’ heel: The possibility that their victims might be armed. It’s the one thing they fear the most. Because it’s the one thing that can stop them.

Even some longtime anti-gun media pundits have seen the light, admitting that for the helpless citizens of Ukraine, firearms are the one thing that can give them a fighting chance.

Yet even as Ukraine restores the gun rights of its citizens, President Joe Biden and his anti-gun allies seek to diminish that life-saving freedom right here at home.

Last year, Biden ridiculed the idea of armed citizens using small arms to defeat tyranny. “You need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” he said. But Ukrainian civilians didn’t need “F-15s and nuclear weapons” to bog down the Russian army in March. As London’s The Sunday Times headline put it, “Ukraine’s citizen warriors with hunting rifles beat 40 Russian tanks,” by blowing up a bridge, and then pouring fire down upon the column. Sure, the U.S. and other countries have provided shoulder-fired anti-armor/anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine. But rifles, handguns and shotguns in the hands of Ukrainian citizens have also played a critical role in protecting their country, themselves and their loved ones.

The Russian army might be one of the strongest in the world. But when the Americans defeated King George in the late 1700s, Great Britain was one of the strongest military superpowers in the world. Attacking guerrilla forces in their own back yards is no walk in the park. As Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto reportedly said during World War II, “You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.” Some dispute that quotation, claiming it’s unsubstantiated. But that doesn’t mean the proposition isn’t true. It is.

The specter of tyranny is one reason why we have the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. It’s why England’s King George sent Gen. Gage to seize the colonists’ firearms at Lexington and Concord in 1775, sparking the American Revolution. It’s why the Nazis, when they invaded France in 1940, warned that anyone who didn’t hand over their firearms within 24 hours would be executed. And it’s why, during the August 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union, the first decree of the communist insurrectionists’ State of Emergency Committee demanded that “Citizens shall hand in without delay all types of firearms.” The right to keep and bear arms makes attackers think twice.

When evil strikes, whether in geopolitical situations or walking down the street, you can’t always count on others—the police, your government, your national allies or anyone else—to protect you. Those in law enforcement will do their best to protect us. They will also be the first to admit that they cannot be everywhere at once. In the end, all you have is your God-given right to protect yourself, your family, your freedom and your country. As Wayne LaPierre has often said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” That’s why, as former NRA President Charlton Heston put it, “The Second Amendment is our first freedom—the one right the allows ‘rights’ to exist at all.”

Yet while Ukrainian authorities restored that right to save the lives of their citizens, President Biden and other anti-gun politicians try to gut it. On April 3, while Ukrainian authorities reportedly uncovered mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of civilians murdered by Russian troops in what Ukraine President Zelenskyy called “genocide,” President Joe Biden called on Congress to “ban ghost guns ... Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

Make no mistake: Regardless of what happens in Ukraine in the coming months, nothing is more important to your Second Amendment right to defend yourself, your family and your country from every aggressor than casting your vote to protect that freedom on Election Day, Nov. 8.
In the coming months, I’ll tell you how you can make a decisive difference in that crucial battle.