The PPJ Gazette

Contributor & author: Dr. W. Scott Magill, Executive Director, ViDoL, USMC/USArmy-Med.Corps

interview requests contact Dr. Magill directly at: CO@ViDoLAmerica.org phone 417-886-8499

Preview:  We Americans now live in perilous times. It is paramount that every state in the Union recognizes its primary responsibility under the Duality of Protecting Principal to defend and preserve their citizens’ inalienable rights from a national government gone rogue. And it is every American citizen’s responsibility to call upon their State Representatives to move with alacrity in passing Second Amendment Protection Legislation. Failure of the states to act according to the present threat makes our fellow citizens and our entire Constitutional Republic easy prey for our predatory “enemies, domestic.”

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The Second Amendment was given to us for such a time as this. It plainly states, “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  Our God-given “unalienable right” to self-defense is doubly guaranteed to many citizens in their state constitutions. Missouri’s Article 1, Section 23 is one such example, later strengthened in 2014 by the passage of the “Missouri Right to Bear Arms, Amendment 5.”

The meaning of those words in the Second Amendment included in our Bill of Rights—without which the original thirteen states would never have ratified our Constitution— runs much more profoundly in our national identity and consciousness than commonly considered.

The Bill of Rights delineates many of the most essential of our individual “unalienable rights.”  The individual liberties there listed have deep roots in Western culture, first recognized by Magna Carta, then by the English Bill of Rights, and then in the Charters of the British Colonies of the Americas. Each represents human efforts to establish governments that conform to the “Laws of Nature and of Natures God.”  They confirm that such rights, not granted by human institutions, may therefore not be denied by any government.

The Second Amendment is derived from an unalienable right possessed by mankind from the beginning of time — the individual’s absolute right to protect himself and his property. Throughout all ages, that right of self-protection has been exercised with the use of available weapons: fists, rocks, clubs, spears, arrows, swords, knives, and guns, to name but a few. Restricting or nullifying the Second Amendment makes tragic situations such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech as inevitable as they are predictable. Mandating gun-free zones announces to the bad guys that it’s open season on law-abiding citizens; places where our Bill of Rights is suspended; where every citizen’s natural, God-given, unalienable right to self-defense is outlawed.

Simply put: The mass murder of disarmed citizens is a GOVERNMENT-CAUSED preventable assault against the American people. Our fellow citizens will continue to be slaughtered en masse as long as we impose these Constitution-free “killing fields” on our communities.

This brings us to a crucial aspect of Federalism as an ideal system for defending and preserving our individual rights to life and liberty, coined here: the “Duality of Protection Principle.”  Its source can be found in the Constitution and strengthened by the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

The Duality of Protection Principle affirms that our federal government has not only the right but the sacred duty to protect American citizens from state governments gone rogue. At the same time, each sovereign state possesses the same right and duty to protect its own citizens’ liberties from a federal government gone rogue.

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