“Mr. Editor, Is The 2nd Amendment Real?”

Seeing as we have now entered the Christmas season I am reminded of a story some 116 years ago when an 8 year old girl named Virginia wrote to the editor of The (New York) Sun and asked him if there was a Santa Claus. She asked because her intelligentsia little friends were telling her that he did not exist. Because THEY didn’t believe in Santa they were intent on forcing other people not to believe either.

The editor, Francis Church’s, response in the affirmative that there was a Santa Claus was as poetic as it was truthful and it can be read in it’s entirety here.

Nowadays though, there are other groups of smarmy pseudo intellectuals who try to hijack the public consciousness and claim that there is no 2nd Amendment, that if there ever was one, it no longer exists because it is no longer needed.

To all those people, and with respect to Francis Church I present my version of his reply:

Yes Virginia, There IS a Second Amendment

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe in defending themselves except what protection they can get from the government. They think that nothing should be allowed that is not comprehensible in their little minds. In this great country of ours a true American is a lion at heart, as industrious as an ant, with the knowledge and intellect to see what the founding fathers envisioned for this land.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Second Amendment. It exists as certainly as freedom and liberty exist and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would this country be if there were no Second Amendment guaranteeing liberty? It would be as dreary as if there were no patriots. There would be no recourse, no defense, no protection from the intolerable existence of tyranny. We would have no freedom except in what the government would allow us. The external light, that this country has shone out to the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in the Second Amendment? You might as well not believe in speech. You might get your Papa to buy a gun to watch over and protect you, and then buy you a gun to protect yourself. But even if you never needed to use it, what would that prove? Nobody needs to face down evil and tyranny in order to know it exists. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see the George Washington lead the colonials to victory in the Revolutionary War? Of course not, but that’s not proof that they were not there.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world where ideas of liberty and freedom exist, and in that place, where brave men and women are willing and able to fight to maintain that world, no tyranny can tear it asunder. Is the Second Amendment real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else so real and abiding.

No Second Amendment? Thank God it lives, and lives as long as patriots stay vigilant. A thousand years from now Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, it will still continue to keep tyranny at bay and continue to make free the hearts of childhood.

Related articles