Liberty On Trial
Anyone who knows me knows I am a huge proponent of personal liberty, and that our constitutionally protected rights become toilet paper for the masses in the absence of the Second Amendment. Our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed — the Founders wrote it plain as day in the Bill of Rights. And yet here we are, almost 250 years later, watching that right get chipped away in a constant fucking barrage.
I was scrolling the news this morning when one headline stopped me cold: a Nogales man was sentenced to 32 months in prison for pointing a gun at a Border Patrol agent… on his own property. Federal agents, out looking for “bad guys,” trespassed onto his land.
Dig a little deeper, and it gets even crazier. Court records say the agent had drawn his weapon first, aiming at the man’s pit bull. The man — still on his own land — reacted by pulling his own firearm. You know, doing exactly what the Founders envisioned when they wrote the Second Amendment.
And for that, he’s headed to prison.
Why doesn’t this bother every liberty-loving citizen in this country? The man was protecting his own land. That is precisely what the Second Amendment was designed to protect. This should infuriate every single American. It shouldn’t matter that the aggressor wore a federal badge. In fact, the courts should default to the citizen every time it’s a question of federal power versus personal liberty. If they don’t, then liberty isn’t just slipping — it’s already gone. What the actual fuck?
Law enforcement does not have carte blanche to storm onto whatever property they want. Not in America. Not ever. If we give that away, we are no different than Nazi Germany. The Founders knew this after watching the British go door-to-door in search of black powder, firearms, and anything that could be used as a weapon. That’s why they codified these rights in the very First United States Congress.
How far we have drifted.
I am certain that today, half this country reads that headline and thinks, “Justice served. Don’t point guns at law enforcement.”
That half is dead wrong.
This is exactly what American patriots were doing in the Revolutionary War — pointing guns at their overlords, their cops. That’s how we created the land of opportunity.
And yet, in the 250 years since, we’ve managed to recreate the Gestapo in our own image, cloaked as a benevolent force we call cops.
Clearly, we need law and order. Without it, the world is chaos. But balancing personal liberty must be at the forefront of every judge’s mind when deciding cases — and nothing could be farther from the truth today.
I have a buddy with a PhD in philosophy. We talk often about liberty and the ideals the Founders were chasing. He brings up one point again and again: the Founders got it wrong when they forgot to enshrine justice as a fundamental right. He’s not wrong. They had a nearly perfect idea — but if justice had been written into the framework alongside liberty, judges would have no choice but to do the right thing.
In this case, the right thing would have been to congratulate the man for protecting his land and his family. Instead, he’s going to spend three years in prison for acting nobly.
And that is a goddamned travesty.
