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John Smith
Jane Doe
COMS 101
May 7, 2021
Arming Ourselves with Truth
The modern world is an unpredictable place when you think about it, right? Schools have
numerous educational resources, and we are supposedly more educated than any of our past
generations, yet this is ironically leading to more irrationality than ever before. Despite our
Founding Fathers going to great lengths to guarantee our right to keep and bear arms, an
abundance of young Americans have not only lost sight of the importance of the Second
Amendment but have also grown a hatred for it. Why is this? It is because our nation’s
power-hungry leaders are indoctrinating us with theory, feelings, and fantasy. As Thomas Sowell
once stated, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help
yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
The truth is that the Second Amendment is vitally important. The lack of understanding
regarding the Second Amendment, as a dilemma in America today, can have a negative impact
on society, but this can be rectified. I will validate this statement by discussing how the 2nd
Amendment protects our core values, how the lack of support exists because people fail to deem
it as important, and that a solution should be based around ensuing, establishing, and educating
ourselves and others of the truth.
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First and foremost, the Second Amendment protects our core values, defending life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Firearms are used every day to save lives. “Defensive gun
uses are not uncommon or anomalies. They are everyday occurrences that make a meaningful
difference in the lives of ordinary Americans, like you and me. As the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention affirmed in a recent report, almost all major studies on defensive gun
uses have concluded that Americans use firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million
times a year.” Some claim that we should not have gun rights because too many innocent lives
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are taken by firearms. However, we know, that guns are used 16 to 100 times more often to
protect life than to take life. We don’t make law-abiding citizens safer by disarming them or
making them less capable of fighting back against criminals. We only make them easier targets.
Firearms are also necessary to protect liberty. Our Founding Fathers intended to prevent tyranny.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to William S. Smith, “What country can preserve its
liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of
resistance. Let them take arms.” “Many of history’s worst atrocities were committed on citizens
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who were disarmed, tyrannized, and couldn’t fight back.” Those who do not learn historical
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truths are doomed to repeat them. Firearms also preserve our right to the pursuit of happiness.
Some enjoy hunting. Others enjoy targeting shooting. However, everyone discovers happiness in
freedom. According to the Human Freedom Index, the top 30 countries with the highest gun
ownership enjoy statistically more freedom than the 30 countries with the lowest number of gun
3https://medium.com/@mikeliao/an-argument-for-gun-ownership-government-tyranny-a7766a9ecf7e
2https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html
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https://www.heritage.org/firearms/commentary/11-more-examples-how-firearms-save-gun-owners-lives-pr
operty
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ownership.” Understanding that we have the right to live happily and as we deem best while
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respecting the right of all other individuals to do the same is crucial.
This brings me to my second point. The lack of support regarding the Second
Amendment exists because people fail to deem it as important. Most Americans are
constitutionally illiterate, and young people are not much better. Despite the millions of taxpayer
dollars spent on education, our schools do a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed
in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Schools are fostering civic ignorance. A recent study
of 1000 high school students found that only 3% would be able to pass the U.S. Immigration
Services’ citizenship test, while incredibly 93% of those from foreign countries who took the
same test passed. Only 28% of the students could name the “supreme law of the land” (the
Constitution), while even less could identify Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of
Independence. Barely one out of every four students knew that George Washington was the
nation’s first president. None of the students correctly answered 8 or more of the 10 questions,
and 97% scored 50% or less. Sadly, this problem is not limited simply to the lack of
understanding regarding the Second Amendment. It’s a problem of the lack of government and
civics education.
The solution to this problem is ensuing, establishing, and educating ourselves and others
of the truth. “Those who drafted the U.S. Constitution understood that the only way to guarantee
that freedom would survive in the new republic was through an informed citizenry—one
educated on basic rights and freedoms. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I know no safe depositary
of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not
4https://www.cato.org/commentary/guns-freedom
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enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to
take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.” Educating ourselves and others is
the only way to rectify this dilemma. Civic knowledge and public engagement are at an all-time
low with only eight states requiring students to pass a civics test. Based on research and the
statistics regarding constitutional illiteracy, it should be legislated in all 50 states that high school
students pass a civics test before receiving their diploma.
As I have demonstrated, the Second Amendment protects our core values. If we fail to
understand the significance of the Second Amendment, we seriously risk losing our rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This problem exists largely because people lack
understanding and fail to deems it as important. As George Orwell once said, “In a time of
universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” The solution to this problem is more
effective and engaged education. We must arm ourselves and others with truth. The right to keep
and bear arms is not merely an old custom; it is also part of the framework of our Republic and
our heritage. If we wish to become beacons of light for our society, we must make the effort to
understand America’s Founding and our freedoms, because we are the threads of our culture that
will hold the sheets of principle together with our unwavering and undying spirit of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
