This Saturday, students, teachers, and various activists gathered in Washington, and in cities across the country for a protest they called the “March For Our Lives.” It is an ironic name in many respects.
Our Founding Fathers believed fervently that their most important bequest to future generations was civil and religious liberty, which they understood was a gift from God. Our federal system was crafted with the primary aim of preserving this liberty, and from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror millions of Americans have fought and died to defend it. Indeed, whether gun control proponents acknowledge it or not, the right to keep and bear arms is one of the essential liberties that hundreds of thousands of Americans paid the ultimate price to preserve.
It is these men and women who, across the generations, have truly “marched for our lives.” Their sacred legacy deserves our respect and protection, regardless of one’s political affiliation or ideological bent. Calls for restricting or banning firearms at these protests and at the walkouts that preceded them reveal an astonishing ignorance of or lack of appreciation for the inestimable sacrifice that has preserved the essential liberties that are our inheritance. Our forebears agreed with British statesman Edmund Burke that society is an eternal contract between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. Those who are living are obligated to live in a manner worthy of the legacy that prior generations crafted, often at great expense in treasure and blood. The living are further obligated to impart to future generations the priceless inheritance they received from their ancestors. As the Second Continental Congress declared in their 1775 explanation of the causes and necessities of bearing arms against British oppression and aggression, “honor, justice and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.”
Fortunately, our Founding Fathers gave us an effective and timeless means of honoring the intergenerational contract that so many of them fought and, in many cases, died to preserve. In their genius, they created a government limited by a fixed Constitution that is intentionally difficult to alter. This imparted a permanence to the document that, among other things, provides important and lasting protections for individual liberty. Notably, the Bill of Rights shields a number of potentially unpopular but vital activities (such as speech and keeping and bearing arms) from government infringement, even if sizable majorities of the populace are hostile to these liberties.
A small but vocal minority of our population demonstrated across the country on Saturday. The results of their actions are yet to be determined. Will these protesters rise to the challenge, turn away from their hostility, and ultimately fulfill their indispensable role in the eternal contract that has underpinned our civilization from its inception? Or will they walk out on this sacred obligation and squander the priceless heritage of liberty that they have been bequeathed at the expense of incalculable sacrifice? Time alone will tell.
David A. Raney is a professor of history and holds the John Anthony Halter Chair in American History, the Constitution, and the Second Amendment at Hillsdale College
