We continue to pray for families and friends who lost loved ones or were injured in the shooting in Las Vegas.

America has suffered from people who want to kill people. People who want to kill people will always find ways to kill, whether they want to kill a few or many. This is the essence of the problem. Do you want to kill a lot of people indiscriminately? Make bombs. That’s the quickest and most efficient way to kill a lot of people. America has laws against bombs, but those laws have not prevented people from killing people with bombs.

Our founders guaranteed a number of individual rights for all citizens, because they had just fought a long, bloody war to win independence from an oppressive government. They wanted to do everything they could to protect citizens’ rights against the next oppressive government. So, they formulated the Bill of Rights to insure citizens had the wherewithal to resist or fight back against future oppressive governments.

All ten amendments aimed to prevent oppressions they had suffered under British rule, though the oppressions were not unique to British rule but are common to all tyrannical, oppressive governments. The founders protected the right of speech and assembly, the right of a free press, and the right of religious freedom for all citizens.

In the 2nd Amendment the founders protected rights of individual citizens to own guns so they could hunt…. To enjoy shooting sports? This is what Jimmy Kimmel and those on the left continually claim! No. The founders protected the rights of individual citizens to own guns and any other means of self-defense to prevent an oppressive government from gaining control over America. Remember, Jimmy, the British government had tried to disarm Americans, and the founders wrote the 2nd Amendment to protect Americans from any government that would try to disarm them.

The 2nd Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

“Freedom” was most important to our founders. Today some believe this amendment limits the bearing of arms to a “well regulated militia.” No. That’s why the founders spelled out the details so that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Our founders were profoundly influenced not only by their own experience fighting oppressive government, but also from wise men before them like William Blackstone, a contemporary jurist who said, “[Self-defense is] justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the laws of society.”

In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” In another letter later that year to Madison, Jefferson wrote, “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.”

In “Commonplace Book,” Jefferson quoted 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria, writing, “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws … serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides….”

Human hearts have not changed since our founders wisely guaranteed individual rights for all Americans.

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By Daniel Gardner

Contributing Columnist

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, Miss. He can be reached at PJandMe2@hotmail.com.