Knowles: George Washington said,
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined."
Washington also said,
"The Constitution should never be construed
to prevent a people of the United States,
who are peaceable citizens,
from keeping their own arms."
Jefferson said this
when he was drafting the Virginia Constitution:
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
If only he could see our debates
of gun control today. He would be horrified
and rolling over in his grave.
The framers were very clear on what they thought.
Knowles: In the most extreme case,
this means that the Second Amendment exists
in case the United States citizens
have to take up arms against a foreign invader
or even against their own government.
That's a radical statement,
but the framers were fairly radical people
in certain ways.
It is to protect our ability
to take up arms against our own government
if push comes to shove,
if we absolutely must as a last resort.
It's funny because when
you're having the gun control debate with somebody,
this is the point at which their argument flips.
The argument first begins as,
"Why do you need an AR-15 to hunt deer?
It's so powerful. Nobody needs a gun that powerful."
Then, when you explain to them the reason for
the Second Amendment, they say
that the AR-15 is not powerful enough.
They say, "There's no way those guns are powerful enough.
There's no way that you could fight off your own government. You're crazy."
You say, "Wait, two seconds ago you were just saying
that the guns are too powerful."
They say, "Yeah, but that was then. This is now.
The guns aren't powerful enough."
Let's indulge in this.
They bring up the zombie apocalypse scenario.
This is the zombie apocalypse.
The United States government, which we all enjoy,
has turned tyrannical.
[Audience laughter]
Knowles: They're going to come around.
They're going to go house to house
and take all of our stuff
and start oppressing us.
We should point out that
this isn't totally unbelievable.
It might be unlikely for now,
but we've seen this happen in Western democracies very frequently,
even over the last hundred years.
In just the last hundred years,
Western liberal democracies
have turned tyrannical multiple times.
In the 20th century, it happened in Germany.
It happened in Italy.
It happened in France.
It happened in Spain.
That is not a good track record
for unarmed citizens in Western democracies.
To say it could never happen here
is just ignoring the historical record.
Certainly it could happen here.
We hope that it doesn't happen here.
The other part of this argument is that
there is no way the American citizens,
armed with their formally powerful,
now not very powerful guns,
could fight off the government.
I would like to point out a couple geographic
and historical examples here.
To begin, the United States is absolutely gigantic.
It's a gigantic country.
First, if the zombie apocalypse happened,
there's a fair chance that
certain Americans would defect from
their newly tyrannical government
and would help out the people,
servicemen, police, that sort of thing.
Now, consider the case of the war in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is roughly the size of Texas.
It's roughly the size of one US state.
We have been at war in Afghanistan.
We have brought the full might of the United States military,
as well as that of our coalition of allies, to fight in Afghanistan,
and we have not successfully been able to maintain order in
that area for 16 years.
Afghanistan is just a few months away
from being the longest war
in the history of the United States.
We have not been able
to successfully occupy a country the size of Texas.
If the zombie apocalypse happened
and the United States turned tyrannical,
I think we'd be okay
because that country is 1/50 the size
of the United States, as a matter of the states.
Our country is much larger than Afghanistan.
Of course, it probably won't get to this point.
It's unlikely, I would agree with that.
I think the framers would agree with that.
It's not unlikely because
things could never get this bad.
The reason that it's unlikely is because
we have an armed citizenry.
The very existence of an armed citizenry
is a good indication that
politics is not going to devolve
and get truly horrific.
Whenever those would-be tyrants,
those would-be authoritarians say,
"I think I'm going to start oppressing people today,"
they would look around and say,
"There are 300 million guns in this country,
more guns than people.
Maybe I'd better hold off."
That's a good indication.
Those are just the facts of the Second Amendment.
Those are just the observable facts:
why it was written, what it means, and what it protects.