I receive a daily email distribution on Second Amendment related media coverage. Today’s subject line said “gun rights.” Today was the last day I’m taking that sitting down.

“Gun rights” keeps the focus on guns, which is where the Alinsky-loving people-haters want the focus to remain. By continuing to support their narrative, we will lose our guns, and then our rights.

I couldn’t care less about guns. I don’t love guns; I don’t even like them. But as a self-defense tool and a symbol of Liberty and self-actualization, they are excellent. Inanimate objects don’t have rights. People do. We have a civil right of self-defense, and guns are the best tool available to promote and protect that right.

When a 250 pound predator breaks into the home of a 120 pound woman, does she or doesn’t she have the right to stop him from raping and murdering her?

Remember that the U.S. Supreme Court already ruled that police have no duty to save her life. Even a woman who obtained a restraining order has no special relationship with police. If the cops write a report on her three dead children, they’ve discharged their duty. (See TOWN OF CASTLE ROCK, COLORADO v. GONZALES.)

Does a neighbor have the right to come to another’s defense? Neighbors helping each other strengthens the fabric of society.

Do citizens have the right to help a stranger being attacked? The cowardly try to deflect us from their craven natures by saying we should not get involved and just call the police and consider ourselves as having done our duty as members of civil society. (“Civil society”? Now there’s an oxymoron for you.)

People helping people strengthens civil society. So what does that say about those telling us to not get involved?

They claim that getting involved, or even defending yourself, just “increases the violence.” Really? Two problems here:

First, self-defense is not violence. If you successfully accomplish legitimate self-defense, the courts don’t find you guilty of a crime. Your self-defense doesn’t appear on the FBI violent crime reports. Even the government recognizes self-defense isn’t violence.

Second, self-defense decreases violence. One predator removed from society is many crimes not committed in the future. Cops tell me that by the time a criminal gets arrested, he’s committed many crimes that go unreported or not cleared by police. For example, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that between 2000 and 2008, only 42% of rape victims reported their attacks to police. Only 71 prison sentences were handed out for every 1,000 rapes committed. That means a rapist has a 93% chance of getting away with it. (It’s a big Excel workbook, so there’s no citation. But if you want to look into it, go to the BJS site and search for “Federal Justice Statistics” for each year.)

For those still insisting that keeping their heads in the sand means that Castle Rock v. Gonzales doesn’t exist: It’s even worse than that. I document in my book Four Hundred Years of Gun Control that after Britain and Australia destroyed the civil right of self-defense, they began dismantling double jeopardy. As they did with gun control, they claimed this was a benefit to society.

In reality, this means that incompetent prosecutors can haul you back into court for another go-round. The government can afford to spend the money on another trial, because it’s not their money and they can always raise taxes as expenses rise. Meanwhile, the defendant has been rendered powerless via disarmament and is at risk of bankruptcy from ongoing legal expenses.

Both societies were rendered harmless to redress grievances against their government via civilian disarmament. No more right of self-defense against criminals below or above.

So the next time somebody talks to you about “gun rights,” ask them if they mean the civil right of self-defense, and ask them some of the questions I asked above. It’s time to stop being on the defensive by talking about “gun rights,” and take back the narrative by talking about the civil rights of self-defense and the freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.