BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today urges all Americans to celebrate “Patriot’s Day,” the 231st anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord that ignited the American Revolution and led to the addition of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
“On this date in 1775,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb, “America’s Colonial Militia laid the foundation for our Second Amendment, resisting an effort by British troops to seize their firearms. British forces paid dearly for that attempted gun grab, and the world learned just how valuable our forefathers considered their right to keep and bear arms.
“The principle those courageous militia irregulars defended is as important today as it was at Concord Bridge and on the Lexington village green,” Gottlieb continued. “There are times today when the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms is the deciding factor between public safety and anarchy; between life and death.
“After five long years of revolution, it should be no mystery to anyone why our Founding Fathers made a specific point of including a guarantee in our Constitution that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” he observed. “History has shown time and again that the right to bear arms in this country insures the right of self-defense and self-preservation. It protects our personal liberty, and has often provided the only means for private citizens to defend their homes, families, businesses and neighborhoods.
“This Second Amendment right,” Gottlieb noted, “is not about hunting or target shooting, it’s about freedom and defense. It is the great insurance policy against tyranny, and it has kept our country free for more than two centuries.
“Today’s gun grabbers don’t march in red coats down country roads,” Gottlieb concluded. “They skulk through the halls of Congress and state legislatures. Yet, their goal is the same. They would disarm us, steal our liberty and destroy our way of life. But like those early patriots, whose courage led to the birth of the greatest nation on Earth, today’s law-abiding gun owners, and particularly we here at the Second Amendment Foundation, will meet them with the firm resolve to defend our heritage, and our most important civil right.”