Last week Donald Trump issued a warning about the defense of the 2nd Amendment. He warned that 21st Century patriots might defend the 2nd Amendment against Queen Hillary with the same passion as 18th Century patriots defended it against King George.

For the ignorant or willfully forgetful, the patriots of 1789 who wrote the United States Constitution believed that the rights enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are rights that all citizens have as natural rights, as gifts from our Creator, not as grants from a benevolent government. Moreover, speaking of King George, the American patriots declared, “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Donald Trump was warning that when the Bill of Rights is targeted for repeal or nullification, it is likely that patriots will respond with something more direct than a letter to the editor. Undisguised subversion of fundamental rights may spark armed rebellion.

In response to Trump’s warning, the public was treated not to an educated debate about the 2nd Amendment but to a media attack on the messenger who sounded the warning. Imagine if the newspapers of Massacusetts in 1775, instead of heeding Paul Revere’s warning — “the British are coming!” — had set out to defame and discredit him.

The media establishment is now in open, all-out support of a candidate whose loudest supporters openly call for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment. As President, Hillary Clinton would have both the power and the expressed intent to effectively nullify the 2nd Amendment by appointing Supreme Court judges who can “reinterpret” it out of existence. You want to own a firearm? Okay — go join a state regulated militia.

Donald Trump was warning the establishment that there are patriots who will resist that subversion of constitutional liberty — as patriots did in 1776.

The 2nd Amendment is what protects the 1st Amendment and all of our freedoms. It is not a protection of the right to hunt deer and wild boar, it is a guarantee of the right to defend the home, family and community against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Lost in the current controversy is recognition of the importance of the 2nd Amendment to the very origin and existence of the United States of America as a sovereign nation. It is an historical fact that while most of the grievances against the British Crown revolved around taxation without representation and the British Crown’s systematic destruction of locally elected legislatures, the actual armed revolt against British oppression which began in April 1775 in Lexington and Concord was sparked by the British Governor of Massachusetts sending an army of “Redcoats” to locate and confiscate a suspected cache of arms and gunpowder. Thus, the American Revolution began as a defense by patriots of the right to bear arms as a means of self-protection against a tyrannical government.

The 2nd Amendment was ratified in 1792 as part of our Constitution. It was adopted by the same generation of patriots who fought the British and wrote both the Declaration of Independence and the original Constitution. It is a well established fact that the Constitution would not have been ratified by the thirteen state conventions without the promise of adding the Bill of Rights, with the 2nd Amendment being among the most important.

Benjamin Franklin was tasked in the summer of 1776 by the signers of the Declaration of Independence with designing the Great Seal of the United States. Franklin chose as the motto to be adopted as part of that seal, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Thomas Jefferson liked that phrase so much he adopted it as well.

It is also part of the historical record that the rebellion against King George was understood as a rebellion against the British Parliament — for failing to curtail the King’s usurpation of individuals rights. A weak, subservient Parliament enabled King George to wage war against American liberties. For that reason, Americans made the Separation of Powers a cornerstone of constitutional government and gave Congress extensive powers to check a rogue President. That our Congress has chosen to follow the path of the lapdog British Parliament by failing to check a rogue President is a sorry chapter in American history– and sadly, a dark harbinger of things to come.

Now, it may be a surprise to the talking heads at CNN, NBC News, and the Clinton campaign, but the NRA is not the only place in America where the 2nd Amendment is recognized as the keystone of all Constitutional liberty. Millions of Americans understand that if it is removed or subverted through politically motivated jurisprudence, all liberties are in jeopardy. Attacks on the 2nd Amendment are not attacks on gun owners, they are attacks on the sovereignty of a free people.

Since the American Revolution of 1775, millions of soldiers have died defending our constitutional liberties. Millions more are prepared to defend them today and tomorrow.

Each new citizen’s Oath of Allegiance and the oath of office of each new military officer includes the pledge to defend the country “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Citizens taking that oath take it as seriously as do elected officials who recite it before television audiences — indeed, they take it more seriously than politicians who cross their metaphorical fingers in silent mockery of that sacred oath.

Should citizens respect the words or deeds of elected officials who declare their intention to subvert the Constitution’s most important safeguard against tyranny, the right to bear arms in defense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The intent of modern progressives to repeal and abolish constitutional safeguards has been made abundantly clear. As the patriots of 1776 understood and declared, armed resistance is always a last resort to tyranny.

21st Century tyrants must remember the lessons of history, that American patriots will tolerate the subversion of liberty only so far and no further. That is a warning, not a threat, a warning that needs to be heeded if violent acts of rebellion against tyrants are to be avoided.