Recently, I received an email from a reader reminding me that while America will celebrate its 250th birthday this July 4, this year is also the 135th anniversary of the murder of 297 Lakota Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

These native Americans, in their winter camp, were murdered on Dec. 29, 1891, by federal agents and members of the 7th Cavalry who had come to confiscate their firearms “for their own safety and protection.”

Sound familiar? For “their own safety and protection” is the way American gun control adherents prefer to frame their attack on the Second Amendment.

The kinds of weapons federal troops and other federal officers were after at Wounded Knee were the same kinds of weapons carried by our military at the time–repeating rifles, shotguns, handguns, etc.

The e-mail pointed out that Wounded Knee was among the first federally backed gun confiscation attempts in United States history. It ended in the senseless murder of 297 people–200 of whom were innocent women and children. Most of the Lakota Sioux had already peacefully turned in their firearms, but that didn’t stop the U.S. government from gunning down the few who still held on to their weapons.

The e-mail went on to say: “Before anybody jumps on the emotionally charged bandwagon for gun-control, they should take a moment to reflect on the real purpose of the Second Amendment—the right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, and property in the face of invading armies or an oppressive government. The argument that the Second Amendment only applies to hunting and recreational target shooting is asinine.”

 The author of that email is right. When the United States Constitution was drafted, “hunting” was an everyday chore carried out by men and women to put meat on the table each night, and “recreational target shooting” was an unheard-of concept. Musket balls and gunpowder were precious commodities in the wilds of early America and were certainly not wasted on “recreational target shooting.”

 During the Revolutionary War, the military weapons of the day were the flintlock musket or the American long rifle, also known as the Kentucky Rifle. The Kentucky Rifle was set apart from a normal musket by its grooved barrel, which caused the lead ball to spin as it exited the barrel. This momentum gave the rifle vastly increased range and accuracy, with most rifles achieving an effective range of 250 yards, making it a deadly weapon in the right hands.

In other words, the civilian population in America carried the same weapons as the British and Continental Armies did.

The weapons owned by millions of gun owners today are no different—with one major exception. Military issue weapons can be fully automatic, while the so-called “assault rifles” that anti-Second Amendment Democrats and other gun control zealots are after are semi-automatic. That means those who own an AR-15 have a weapon that requires one trigger pull for each round fired—meaning it is a semi-automatic rifle, not an automatic weapon, which fires bullets as long as you hold the trigger down.

The AR-15, which anti-gun fanatics incorrectly claim stands for “Automatic Rifle,” is the most popular MSR (Modern Sporting Rifle) in America today, with an estimated 25 million owned by Americans. By the way, the “AR” stands for Armalite Rifle—the name of the company that first produced the AR-15 in the late 1950s.

The patent and trademark for the AR-15 were sold to Colt’s Manufacturing Company in 1959. Colt successfully campaigned to have the military adopt the fully automatic version of the platform (which the military designated as the M-16). In 1964, recognizing an opportunity to expand into the commercial market, Colt engineered a modified, strictly semi-automatic version specifically for civilian hunters and target shooters.

I don’t own an AR-15, but I do own an M-1 Garand—the semi-automatic rifle that millions of GIs carried during WW II and the Korean War. You load it with an en bloc clip that holds eight .30-06 caliber rounds. That iconic rifle is now illegal in New York, which has banned all weapons with a clip or magazine that holds more than 7 rounds. This is idiocy.

Limiting the number of rounds a weapon’s magazine, en bloc clip, or stripper clip can hold will not stop attacks on schools, synagogues, churches, nightclubs, or any other place where people congregate. Deranged people who want to kill others will do so even without firearms. They can set fires, plant explosives, poison water supplies, drive trucks and cars into crowds, and brandish knives or swords. The point is, there are multiple ways to kill people if you set your unhinged mind to it.

Let’s look at some facts:

On the terrible December day in 2012, when 20 Sandy Hook Elementary school children and 6 adults were killed, some 55 million American children went to school and returned home. The fact is, the chances of a child being killed in a school shooting in the United States are remote, to say the least. For example, on that day in 2012, more than 99.9999% of those 55 million children went to school and returned home safely.

A child is statistically far more likely to be killed in a motor vehicle accident, by drowning, or by violence occurring outside of a school environment (such as in a private home or neighborhood) than they are during the school day.

Because mass casualty events at schools receive intense, prolonged media coverage, the perceived risk among parents and children is often much higher than the actual statistical probability. This has led to widespread systemic changes, like active shooter drills, which affect millions of students daily, regardless of their actual safety.

Federal statistics and historical tracking show that 159 mass shootings have taken place in America between 1982 and 2026, leaving roughly 1,150 people dead. While those crimes were horrific, during that same period, approximately 855,000 total homicides took place in the United States. This means that the public mass shootings that garner intense media coverage represent roughly 0.13 percent of all murders committed in the U.S. over the last 44 years.

Yet, gun control zealots would have you believe that mass shootings are the primary cause of gun violence in America. Sorry, that is just not the case. Most gun-related homicides are committed during robberies, muggings, rapes, home invasions, car-jackings, premeditated murders, or so-called “crimes of passion.”

Almost none of the weapons used in those crimes would be covered by the proposed “Assault Weapons Ban” currently under discussion in Congress (Senate Bill 1531 and its companion House bill). The focus of modern federal and state legislation is heavily centered on semi-automatic firearms that feature detachable magazines and traits derived from military designs.

The primary target is the civilian semi-automatic rifle, most notably the AR-15 platform and the AK-47 platform. Under the language of these bills, a rifle is typically classified as a banned “assault weapon” if it is semi-automatic, can accept a detachable magazine, and possesses at least one or two specific secondary features, such as:

• Pistol grips or thumbhole stocks
• Folding, telescoping, or detachable shoulder stocks
• Barrel shrouds (which prevent a shooter’s hand from being burned by a hot barrel)
• Threaded barrels or flash suppressors

A cornerstone of modern gun control proposals is a ban on what advocates term “high-capacity magazines” or “large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.” At the federal level, bills generally seek to ban the sale, transfer, or manufacture of any magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Some states have pushed the threshold slightly differently (for example, recent legislation signed by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger capped the capacity of restricted magazines at 15 rounds), but the target remains standard-issue factory magazines for most modern semi-automatic firearms.

What the anti-gun devotees don’t tell you, however, is that according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), 70-80 percent of gun-related homicides in America are committed with handguns, not semi-automatic rifles.

By comparison, rifles of all types (including bolt-action, lever-action, and semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15) typically account for only 3% to 5% of annual firearm homicides. The remainder involves shotguns or firearms for which the specific type was not reported to law enforcement.

Criminologists consistently find that, despite receiving the most media and legislative attention, semi-automatic rifles are used in a very small fraction of street-level gun violence.

It is important to note that the Supreme Court has ruled twice (2008 and 2010) that banning handguns would be a violation of the Second Amendment and, therefore, unconstitutional.

Lawmakers who push for semi-automatic rifle bans (“assault weapons bans”) generally acknowledge that handguns commit more daily crime. Their argument for targeting rifles is centered on mass casualty events (like Sandy Hook, Uvalde, or Las Vegas), where semi-automatic rifles equipped with high-capacity magazines allow a shooter to inflict a massive number of casualties in a very short time.

Gun rights advocates use the 70-80 percent handgun statistic to argue that “assault weapon” bans are politically motivated rather than data-driven, as they heavily restrict millions of law-abiding owners of the country’s most popular rifles (AR-15, M-1) while leaving the weapons (handguns) most frequently used in street crime entirely untouched.

It is critical to remember that the Second Amendment was written by people who fled oppressive and tyrannical regimes in Europe. It protects the right of American citizens to be armed for self-defense should such tyranny arise in the United States.

Yet over time, the average citizen in the United States continues to lose personal freedom and liberty. Far too often, unjust bills and legislation are passed and signed into law under the guise of ‘for your own safety’ or ‘for your own protection.”

The Patriot Act, signed into law by G.W. Bush, is just one of many examples of American citizens being stripped of their rights and privacy for the sake of “safety.” Passed in the emotional and panicked aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the law has been heavily critiqued by organizations ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to conservative and libertarian think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.

It’s a perspective that aligns closely with traditional American political philosophy, and it echoes Benjamin Franklin’s famous historical maxim: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Political scientists refer to this phenomenon as “securitization” or “crisis governance,” the tendency of states to expand executive authority and curtail civil liberties during times of war, economic collapse, or public panic, with these expansions rarely being fully rolled back after the crisis passes.

If you examine recent history, it doesn’t take a professional historian to see that it is governments, not individual gun owners, that are responsible for the greatest human tragedies on record and the largest loss of innocent human life.

Let’s take a quick look at how governments have behaved once they disarmed their citizens:

• In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• Germany established gun control in 1938, and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
• China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and
  exterminated. In 1989, I covered the massacre of thousands of students at Tiananmen Square who dared oppose the Chinese government!
• Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• The number of defenseless people who were rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control is 56 million. You won’t see this data on the US evening news or hear politicians discussing it.

To be entirely objective, totalitarian regimes do not successfully round up populations simply because they passed a gun law. They do so because they have successfully destroyed a free press, dissolved independent judiciaries, weaponized the military against civilians, and eliminated political opposition.

However, there is little doubt that gun laws and the subsequent disarmament of a citizenry are a standard step in the playbook of absolute power. But attributing the genocides primarily to gun control confuses a symptom of tyranny with its cause.

Few Americans have ever heard of the “Battle of Athens,” Tennessee, yet it is a prime example of why our founding fathers believed an armed citizenry is critical to our republic.

In 1946, several WW II veterans fed up with crooked local officials fought back against political corruption in McMinn County, Tenn. During elections, deputies who were part of the Democratic Party’s corrupt political machine illegally seized ballot boxes and took them to the courthouse jail so they could stuff them, thus ensuring another machine victory. The Democratic machine maintained power through systemic voter intimidation, aggressive over-fining of citizens (which funded the deputies’ salaries via a fee system), and blatant election fraud.

When hundreds of World War II veterans returned home to Athens, Tennessee, they were outraged by the local tyranny. They formed a non-partisan ticket to challenge the machine in the August 1, 1946, election, running veterans for key offices—including decorated Army Air Force veteran Knox Henry for sheriff.

In response, members of the Cantrell machine deployed hundreds of armed, deputized men from out of town to guard the polling places and control the vote counting.

When it became clear that the veterans’ ticket was winning via a massive turnout, the deputies beat several GI poll watchers, opened fire on a Black voter who attempted to cast his ballot, and seized the ballot boxes.

Angry veterans rushed to the local armory, armed themselves with M-1s and other military weapons, and opened fire on the courthouse. After several hours, the door to the jail was dynamited and opened. The deputies surrendered, and the stolen ballot boxes were recovered. After the votes were counted, opposition candidates had won, and the machine was defeated.

The Battle of Athens is frequently cited by historians and legal scholars as a rare, literal application of the Second Amendment’s philosophical purpose—citizens utilizing personal arms to directly overthrow a tyrannical local government when peaceful democratic processes had been completely corrupted.

That event in Athens, Tennessee, and the massacre at Wounded Knee are both excellent examples of why the Second Amendment exists, and why Americans shouldn’t be so eager to surrender their Right to Bear Arms.

Without the Second Amendment, we are little more than latent victims–sheep to be sheared and slaughtered by those who have the weapons.

Ultimately, whether someone agrees with that statement depends entirely on what they fear more: the potential tyranny of an unchecked state or the immediate violence of an unregulated populace.

I have little doubt which of those viewpoints those who perished at Wounded Knee would agree with.

–30–

 

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