the value of arms

By way of a linky-no-thinky post for today, I recently stumbled across an article entitled “Just Say ‘No’ to Gun Registration“, by a certain Chuck Hawks. While an across-the-board gun registration scheme is not seeming very likely at the moment, even with the anti-gun stance of President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama, Chuck brings up a lot of important, pertinent, and powerful points, even now, six years after the document was written.
Whether you read the whole thing or not, there are two choice quotes from this article that bear reposting:

Although all individuals everywhere have inalienable rights, it has been repeatedly proven throughout history that only those who are armed can ultimately defend their rights against governments and politicians who seek to abrogate them. So it follows that politicians with subversive objectives must disarm a free people before they can usurp the rest of their freedoms.

… and …

It is no accident that the Fathers placed the right to maintain and bear arms (which became the Second Amendment) right after the First Amendment (which guarantees the most basic human rights), and before the other eight Amendments in the Bill of Rights. They regarded it as the second most important right, the guarantor of all other rights.

This is clear to anyone who has read the Federalist Papers (written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison). The Second Amendment was primarily intended to guarantee that the people could defend the First and all subsequent Amendments in the Bill of Rights against the intrusion of the federal government, should it ever become necessary. That is a responsibility that still rests upon the shoulders of all law abiding gun owners today.

And that, my friends, is that. I am nowhere near a “three-percenter“, but I cannot help but to see the validity and relevance of Chuck’s words.