A gunman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis during the first Mass of the school year, killing two children (ages eight and ten) and injuring seventeen people, fourteen of them children. The Heritage Foundation's articulation of the Second Amendment emphasizes a well-armed citizenry to defend against tyranny, invasion, and domestic dangers. That vision contrasts with evidence that firearms have killed more children than any other cause for three consecutive years and that states with the most permissive gun laws have higher child gun death rates. The prioritization of an armed populace elevates a freedom ideal above demonstrable threats to childrens' lives.
The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that published the blueprint for the second Trump Administration with Project 2025, has an article on its website titled "The Essential Second Amendment." It begins, "The right to keep and bear arms is premised on self-defense. A well-armed citizenry secures a free state by protecting the nation and its individuals from three distinct threats: tyranny, foreign invasion, and domestic dangers such as crime and civil unrest."
This morning, while students were celebrating the first Mass of the school year, a shooter killed two children, ages eight and ten, and injured seventeen other people, fourteen of whom were children. It is impossible to claim guns as our guard against "domestic dangers" when firearms killed more children than any other cause-more than cancer, more than car crashes-for three years in a row.
The Heritage Foundation tells us that a "well-armed citizenry acts as a major check on the ability of would-be tyrants, enabling the people to forcibly resist oppression." And yet we can guess what might happen if residents of Washington, D.C., watching federal troops descend on their city, threatened to take up arms against their oppressors. The right wing's vision of the Second Amendment is premised on a fantasy of what Heritage calls "a truly free society." That fantasy is evidently more valuable than life itself.
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