We have all seen the polling numbers. For whatever they are worth, the polls show the Democrats’ numbers tanking. As we move from one disaster to the next, support for the leftists’ policies continues to wane. People don’t only vote in elections but also with their feet. Blue states are losing population as red states gain. More and more states are enacting Constitutional Carry and people are still buying firearms in record numbers with first time buyers representing a large chunk of these purchases.
What does all this mean, other than people are concerned over the state of this country? How does it factor into the debate over the Second Amendment and the preservation of individual rights? Simply stated, our Founders knew exactly what they were doing when they created our Federalist system. Alexander Hamilton explains how the powers of state governments ultimately can check federal overreach. In his address to the New York Ratifying Convention in 1788, Hamilton relates, “The state governments possess inherent advantages which will ever give them influence and ascendancy over the national government, and will forever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.” The Federal Government in many ways has become unresponsive to the will of the people. We see this everyday with the continual “tone deaf” hypocrisy of the left. From those calling for defunding the police while using tax payer money for their own security, to partying mask-less in a bar while backing mask mandates and “mask shaming,” Washington has become an elitist club for career politicians paying “lip service” to us peons whom they are supposed to represent. Again, Hamilton speaks to the importance of individual states to secure the rights of its citizens in his address to the New York Ratifying Convention. “Human affections, like the solar heat, lose their intensity as they depart from the center. …on these principles, the attachment of the individual will be first and forever secured by state governments.” It is because our Founders understood that those in powerful positions become separate from the real concerns affecting average Americans that our system gives citizens the power to halt federal overreach through the states. James Madison designed our system to protect the people through the powers granted to the states in the Constitution as he explains in Federalist 45 in 1788, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
It is now clear that it is within the States’ power and duty to stop the egregious trampling of this nation by the federal government and its unelected bureaucracy. Across the nation individual states are taking actions to secure the rights of the people, including the Second Amendment. The framers of the Constitution understood that power needed to remain close to the people. From Governor Abbott building a border wall to DeSantis refusing lockdowns and mandates, these actions serve as examples of the States’ pivotal role in the preservation of individual freedom. Millions of people could write President Biden everyday decrying gun control to no avail. But it is because Joe Manchin represents the State of West Virginia as a whole, and his West Virginian constituents desire to preserve the Second Amendment that his State’s will ultimately trumps his own party’s views and has kept the heinous House bills from reaching the floor of the Senate.
Across America, Second Amendment supporters are influencing their states to stand for the Constitution blocking many egregious gun laws and changing public opinion. The Founders knew that this would inevitably happen. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 48, “It will not be denied that the power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” Our Constitution was designed to use the States as our check on federal encroachment.
Our Federal System is a deliberately constructed gift. Madison studied human history and governments. He saw their failures and used this knowledge to design a system that when inevitably corrupted, could be corrected by the people through the States. We have the tools necessary to stop the anti-Second Amendment leftists. By building from local to state, then region to nation, red states are our firewall. We can ensure freedom is passed to our descendants. As Madison wrote in Essays of the National Gazette in 1792, “In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set an example…of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch in history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.” Our voice is being heard.
Our Federalist Gift