Earlier this month, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man from Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire on a crowd of people attending an outdoor country music festival from a hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, killing at least 58 people and wounding more than 515.

In the wake of the massacre, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, who hosts “Deadline: White House,” went on her show and spoke out against the Second Amendment, going so far as to suggest that it wasn’t intended to be used as a way for people to defend themselves against their own government from becoming tyrannical, but rather, only to fight against “foreign militias,” which proves that she doesn’t truly understand the Constitution.

Specifically, while speaking with Julianne Moore, a well-known liberal actress, and John Feinblatt, the President of “Everytown for Gun Safety,” a gun control organization led by former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, Wallace referenced an article, entitled “Repeal The Second Amendment,” that was written by conservative columnist Bret Stephens and recently published in the New York Times.

“A conservative [Bret Stephens] wrote a piece last week that got a lot of attention about maybe opening up the conversation about the Second Amendment,” began Wallace. “He said the intellectually honest way to have this debate is to say that this isn’t what was intended; that we are an armed population. This was a right to bear arms against foreign militias,” she explained.

Stephens’ claim about the Second Amendment, however, is absolutely ridiculous. It wasn’t added to the Constitution to just to defend against foreign militias. It was primarily added to ensure that the people have a means of overthrowing their government if it becomes corrupt or authoritarian, which was a major concern for the vast number of people living in the new country seeing as they just fought to be free from a tyrannical government that didn’t appropriately represent them.

Edward J. Erler, a professor at the California State University, San Bernardino, did his best to make this abundantly clear in his essay, “The Second Amendment as an Expression of First Principles,” which was published several years ago in “Imprimis,” a monthly speech digest from Hillsdale College.

“The Second Amendment is not about assault weapons, hunting, or sports shooting. It is about something more fundamental. It reaches to the heart of constitutional principles – it reaches to first principles,” explained Erler in his introduction.

“The Declaration specifies that when government becomes destructive of the ends for which it is established…then ‘it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.’ This is what has become known as the right of revolution, and a central ingredient of the social compact and a right which is always reserved to the people,” he added.

“The people can never cede or delegate this ultimate expression of sovereign power. Thus, in a very important sense, the right of revolution (or even its threat) is the right that guarantees every other right,” continued Erler, noting, “if the people have this right as an indefeasible aspect of their sovereignty, then, by necessity, the people also have a right to the means to revolution. Only an armed people are a sovereign people, and only an armed people are a free people – the people are indeed a militia.”

If Stephens and Wallace truly understood the Second Amendment, then they wouldn’t be calling for its repeal. This is because, as explained by Erler, the right to bear arms is necessary to ensure we remain free.