{"id":19,"date":"2008-06-09T10:33:23","date_gmt":"2008-06-09T17:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2008-06-09T10:45:22","modified_gmt":"2008-06-09T17:45:22","slug":"rikbacom-a-look-at-our-2nd-amendment-rights","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/rikbacom-a-look-at-our-2nd-amendment-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"RIKBA – Our Rights – A Look at the 2nd Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to RIKBA.com, short for RI<\/span>ght to K<\/span>eep and B<\/span>ear A<\/span>rms. RIKBA<\/span>. With so much happening today both for and against the statement that we the people have the the right to maintain our arms, I felt it was time to step up and begin adding my views to the dialog on this crucial matter. <\/p>\n

The Founding Fathers were not perfect men. They had many flaws of their own. Thomas Jefferson kept one of his black slaves, Sally Hemings, as his concubine and subsequently mother of his children for many years, though his own words indicated that such an act was abhorrent. The Fact that Jefferson even kept slaves after numerous public repudiations against it is still appalling to many. Benjamin Franklin was steeped in promiscuity, though he (genuinely) strove to entreat all men to be chaste. John Adams is said to have been vain and prideful, even to a fault. <\/p>\n

These men and others, however, we know, were yet men, and not Gods. So why do we revere them so? In spite of their faults, they led admirable lives, and given the circumstances of the times, they were brave, noble men who wisely saw the need to guarantee the rights of humankind. They didn’t just start a revolution, they began the march toward ultimate human victory over millennia of tyranny, injustice, and barbarism. <\/p>\n

No, the Founding Fathers were not perfect men, but rather a perfect body of men (or about as close to it as you could get at the time). Through their differences and disagreements they formed the most perfect union that exists in government even today – A Free Society. Though challenging as it was to procure a free state from Britain’s tyrannical grip, equally challenging was the establishment of the rules and virtues of this free state. Many hours, days and even years have been spent toiling over what we know today as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. Of those, the right to bear arms is "the palladium of the liberties of a republic"<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It seems increasingly clear to me that the 2nd Amendment as held within the Bill of Rights, installed only after the declaration of our rights to speak freely from chains of government bondage, was clearly intended to inform any government, state, federal or otherwise, of our inherent rights as human beings to protect and defend ourselves from all encumbrances which might make themselves upon us, be it hostile indians in the land, crazed lunatics in our towns, or an unrepentant government in pursuit of power over it’s people. <\/p>\n

To mistake the intent of the Second Amendment as not being an individual right to keep and bear arms against all evil is to mistake a horseshoe for a horse. It is patently absurd to even flirt with the idea that our Founding Fathers, having just fought off a tyrannical Britain with arms that belonged to the people, would have intended this amendment to mean that only government itself is entitled to arms, and that the people, the individuals, had no claim on arms themselves. Indeed, the Second Amendment guarantees that we, the people, will have means to protect our families, our homes, and ourselves from all legitimate threats. And as a last resort, we have been imbued with the power to, if necessary, repeat history once again by carving out our own independence from a suffocating government with our own blood and arms. <\/p>\n

So this site is a tribute to our rights. Our freedoms were gained once by those who were willing to fight, with their own lives, for those freedoms. Now, as those very rights come into question once again, it is up to you and me to fight, not to create<\/em> these freedoms, but to conserve them. As you will see in subsequent posts here on RIKBA.com, when today’s governments limit the power of individuals to bear arms, it only leads to greater danger and a more turbulence for individuals in these societies than one with arms. I will show this clearly in weeks, months, and years to come. Thanks for reading in support of your rights. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to RIKBA.com, short for RIght to Keep and Bear Arms. RIKBA. With so much happening today both for and against the statement that we the people have the the right to maintain our arms, I felt it was time to step up and begin adding my views to the dialog on this crucial matter. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rikba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}