"Our Right to Bear Arms...Better Enjoy It While You Can"

I can remember as a child my daddy hunting. To us, seeing him suit up in camoflauge, gun in hand on a crisp Autumn morning was as typical as a visit from Santa on Christmas Eve. He even taught my sister and myself how to reload shot gun shells. If any anti gun activists had lived nearby, I'm sure they would have us kids thrown to the nearest foster home for that type of behavior.

My daddy had three guns (not a large number for a hunter, as I can well attest to now...): his shotgun, a rifle, and a pistol. We knew exactly where the guns were kept and had the knowledge that the pistol would always be in the nightstand drawer next to where my daddy slept. The guns weren't loaded-but we never asked. There was never any mystery about the artillery in our house as we had been taught about the guns and the expectations for their use. It was definitely drilled into us that you "don't play with guns". I remember feeling so safe in our home knowing that daddy had a pistol and that he would be able to use it if someone came into our home.

The feeling of safety I experienced growing up is due to the 2nd amendment. We all know that the 2nd amendment states that "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." In laymen's terms, we know that this means we have the right to have guns in our house to provide for our self protection. This is a right that our Constitution, the law of the land, offers us.

This right is increasingly under attack these days from the left. They would like to see us not be able to own a gun, or if we did wish to buy one, jump through a number of exorbiant hoops. Otis McDonald, an African American man from Chicago, had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to have his right upheld. If the government officials in Chicago had their way, the ban on handguns would spread like wildfire. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 in McDonald's favor.

I cannot believe that this decision was 5-4. In legal terms, this is not a large discrepency at all. One more vote could have shifted the decision to 4-5. And with the retirement of Justice Stevens, the Democrats seem set on voting to confirm Elena Kagan as the next Justice. One more retirement, particularly on the Conservative side, could mean the confirmation of another Liberal justice, which could change the consensus on a lot of cases that land in the Supreme Court.

We have to be diligent in our belief that the Constitution is the law of the United States. If the law states that we have the right to keep and bear arms, then we should be afforded that liberty. These days, our Constitution is under attack from those who would like nothing better than to replace the Constitutional Republic form of government we have with a Socialist one. Unless we wish to live in such a government with no freedoms, we must speak out and elect officials who will uphold the Constitution that we hold so dear.