‘Weapons to Anyone Who Wants to Defend the Country’

Following Russia expansion of war into Ukraine’s eastern territory, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said he will give weapons ”to anyone who wants to defend the country”. Photo courtesy Cybernistas.

The founders, drafters, and signers of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights codified that government would protect our rights to perform the two great commands in the first two amendments. The two greatest commands are “to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

The founders wanted to prevent any centralization of government power from abridging our ability to obey those commands. Look at the first: freedom to practice our religion, to be able to preach anywhere, to print a Bible without being put to death, or molested, to gather and worship as we see fit and to be able to petition the government to address any of our perceived offenses when we feel that we have lived our conscience and our rights have been violated.

The second protects our ability to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The Second Amendment grants us the duty and ability to protect ourselves and our neighbors. It is unreasonable for anyone to think that the religious and moral men who fasted, prayed, and deliberated for months would ever expect that any American would accept being hamstrung by law to disobey the command to love your neighbor as yourself. If we are willing to express our right to protect ourselves then according to the second greatest command that makes us duty bound to be willing to protect our neighbors the same way.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky giving firearms to all citizens “capable of defending our sovereignty.” Photo courtesy News Azerbaijan.

The only duty in the Constitution where the word NECESSARY is used is not next to the President, or even Congress, but “militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Second Amendment wasn’t written so that I can carry my gun like Charles Bronson, or Clint Eastwood daring people to “Make my day.” Again, the Second Amendment was written to give us the ability to protect ourselves and our neighbors.

When the founders wrote the Second Amendment there was no police force. There wasn’t even a standing army. The militia consisted of able bodied men over a certain age as defined by each state. The Second Amendment expressly forbids the federal government from making any laws, or giving any orders that infringe upon the rights of the people to both keep and bear arms.

Let me bring this to today: the Supreme Court of the United States has reaffirmed on multiple occasions that law enforcement officers have no legal duty to protect any person from harm. I love my local enforcement. They are some of the bravest and most self sacrificial men alive today, but their job is not to protect individual members of society and it is our own failure to understand and protect our Second Amendment right to protect ourselves and our duty to protect our neighbors that has made our society, so vulnerable to evil doers.

Its actually a laughable notion that the Founders would have tolerated any federal order that would prevent children whose parents were sick from carrying arms to hunt food, or even protect their families from rogue and undercover agents of the crown, or nomadic and rapinous marauders. Today if I use a weapon to defend and protect my neighbor I could be thrown in jail. We have a lot to do to restore the true meaning of the Second Amendment in the public mind.”

Ukraine, like the modern US populace, must understand that being simply armed is not the end all, be all. We learned in Afghanistan that even modestly trained individuals will often give up their arms when challenged, and worse, harm innocent people if they are not prepared in advance.

A well trained, armed populace is the answer. I don’t mean simply trained to load and carry firearms safely. We need to be trained tactically to operate firearms, transition, clear malfunctions, communicate between voting precincts, and be prepared to function as a team in our communities if and when the poop hits the fan. America needs to start to normalize the secure communities model of neighborhood fortification and it begins with incentives for our communities to get FTX and FMS trained now.

Zoe Warren is Editor at Large for The Standard newspaper, a photojournalist, husband, father of three, missionary, musician, filmmaker, documentarian, and storyteller. He is the founder of Pistuo Productions, a narrative film and commercial video production company, the media ministry God’s Plain Truth TV, the Pakistan mission organization Gospel Fire Army, and the studio music project “Striving and Rest.” He has also announced his intention to declare as a candidate for Lt. Governor in SC. Warren may be reached at pistuoproductions@gmail.com.