Last week’s installment of this annually updated series–enter “guns and liberty 2026–in the SMM homepage search bar to find the entire series–asked a fundamental question: Do human beings have an unalienable right to self-defense? There is no question the founding fathers of our constitutional, representative republic—we are not a democracy and absolutely not “our democracy,” thank God–-believed they do–-they must–-and they acknowledged–-not created–-that unalienable, individual right in the Second Amendment. This was finally–-in 2008 and 2010 respectively–-affirmed in the Supreme Court’s decisions acknowledging, for the first time in American history, that right: the Heller decision, and the McDonald decision, which applied the right to the states, and in June of 2022, the Bruen decision, which made absolutely clear Americans have the unalienable, individual right to keep and bear arms, not just at home, but in public.  What good is a fundamental, unalienable right to self-defense that doesn’t apply wherever one might need it?

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