"When was the last time your gun defended you from losing your freedoms?"

An influencer on social media who will remain nameless asked a similar question.

This is my reply.

The logic of this question is badly flawed if you're suggesting that because we've not yet had to use our guns to protect our rights from being taken away that it means we'll never have to use our guns to protect our rights from being taken away. Because that's what your question sounds like it implies. It also sounds like you may also be implying that we don't need our guns anymore.

You might think gun owners put too much faith in the guns we own, but I think you put too much faith in the law that was supposed to protect us from EXACTLY what's happening now in America.

Where's your law now to protect us from authoritarianism that's infecting our political system?

When the jackboots come to drag you or your neighbor away because the law was rewritten, what will you do then but call for help from someone who owns a gun?

Law is only powerful when the powerful follow the law.

When those that don't follow the law to begin with are in power, they rewrite the law to suit them, not you.

How then will you protect yourself and your rights?

Anyone asking “When was the last time you used a gun to protect your rights?” is missing the point.

The fact that we haven’t had to yet doesn’t mean we’ll never need to. That’s like saying you don’t need a fire extinguisher because your house hasn’t burned down.

You’re putting blind faith in the law to protect you, while ignoring the reality that laws only matter when those in power choose to follow them.

Authoritarianism doesn’t march in announcing itself, it rewrites laws, stacks courts, and turns the system against you. When that happens, the law isn’t your shield. It’s their weapon.

Law isn't worth the paper its printed on when it's ignored and rewritten by tyrants.

So what happens when the law no longer protects you? When your neighbor is dragged off because the rules were changed overnight, what will you do? You’ll wish someone had the means to resist. That’s why guns matter. Not because we use them every day, but because they’re the last line when everything else fails.

The law is not the end-all be-all. The Founding Fathers knew that when they drafted the Constitution. They weren’t naïve. They had lived under tyranny. They understood that the written word on paper is only as strong as the people willing to defend it.

That’s why the Second Amendment exists. It wasn’t just about hunting, and it wasn’t about sport. It was about making sure citizens could defend themselves and their rights when the law fails or when those in power corrupt it.

Those in power who don’t respect the law never follow it. They never have. They rewrite it. They twist it. They break it. They weaponize it. Then what?

Who protects you then? Words? Protest? Paper?

You can stand in the street with a sign that says the LAW matters, but a sign doesn’t stop a boot or a bullet.

You can quote the Constitution, but words don’t shield you from tyranny. When the people with guns and power don’t respect the words, the words alone won’t save you.

Someone must uphold the law for the law to protect the people. Otherwise the law is merely worthless feel-good words with no real meaning or protection.

Most anti-gun advocates put blind faith in the idea that the law will always be there to protect them. But what happens when it’s not? What happens when the law is rewritten? What happens when those in power don't respect the law like you do? What then?

What happens when the authoritarians don’t follow, respect, or even fear the law that’s supposed to protect you?

What do you do? How do you defend your rights?

History is filled with examples of laws being rewritten by authoritarian regimes.

Nazi Germany rewrote the Weimar Constitution and purged civil protections overnight.

Stalin’s Soviet Union criminalized dissent with new “laws” that gave the state unlimited power.

Mao rewrote China’s laws during the Cultural Revolution to silence opposition and erase individual rights. In Venezuela,

Hugo Chávez rewrote the constitution and stripped away checks and balances to secure his power. In every case, the people were told the law would protect them—until the law was used against them.

Tyrants don’t respect the law like you do. They are criminals.

They seize power, corrupt the courts, and rewrite the laws to give themselves more power.

So I ask you, how do you defend your rights against that without guns?

Regarding the question that inspired this article, I could simply have answered the question with any of these questions to drive the point home:

• "When was the last time you used your fire extinguisher to put out a house fire—does that mean you don’t need one?"
• “When was the last time you used your seatbelt to survive a car crash—does that mean you don’t need one?”
• “When was the last time you used your health insurance—does that mean you don’t need it?”
• “When was the last time you used your smoke detector—does that mean it’s pointless?”
• “When was the last time you used your spare tire—does that mean you don’t carry one?”
• “When was the last time you used a parachute on a plane—does that mean planes shouldn’t have them?”
• “When was the last time you used your homeowner’s insurance—does that mean you should cancel it?”
• “When was the last time you used a life jacket—does that mean they’re useless?”
• “When was the last time you used your first aid kit—does that mean you don’t keep one?”

Now let's try to try to answer these questions...

Are they answerable? Is there a non-violent answer? How do you defend against violent oppression without the law? Is it even possible?

That’s the razor’s edge question. It is answerable, but the answer is brutal in its honesty.

Without the law, you’re left with only two defenses: other people, or force.

Community, solidarity, mass noncompliance (peaceful protest), those are non-violent options, and history shows they can work, but only under very specific conditions.

Gandhi’s movement against Britain, for example, wasn’t just passive resistance in a vacuum, it worked because the British still needed to appear civilized in the eyes of the world. They had a conscience they didn’t want to stain too openly.

The same is true for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement: non-violent protest had power because television beamed images of firehoses and attack dogs into millions of homes, and public shame acted as a weapon.

But what happens when the people in power have no shame or conscience?

When they don’t care about public opinion, when they don’t care about the law, when they don’t care about killing or disappearing their opponents, what happens then?

That’s where the non-violent playbook hits its limit.

Stalin didn’t care about protests. Mao didn’t care about moral arguments. Hitler didn’t care about being “called out.” They rewrote the rules, they controlled the narrative, and they answered peaceful resistance with brutal violence.

So the non-violent answer exists, it’s organizing, mass resistance, civil disobedience, public exposure, but it only works if those in power still feel bound by some external check: morality, world opinion, or even fear of destabilization.

Strip those away, and you’re left with the grim truth the Founders understood: the only way to defend against violence without the law is to be prepared to meet force with force.

That doesn’t mean you want violence. It doesn’t mean you reach for it first. It means you recognize that history is unkind to unarmed populations who trusted paper promises against men with guns.

The haunting question is: how much faith do you put in the conscience of tyrants? Because that’s what non-violent resistance ultimately bets on.

And here's the cold hard truth that pacifists and non-violent protesters refuse to admit. The tyrants count on you believing that the law will always protect you and they want you to believe that non-violent protest will always work to quell tyranny.

Tyrants want you to be passive, they want you to be pacifist because you're easier to control that way. Just as an abuser wants their victims to be passive and not fight back, so too do tyrants want the people to be passive and not fight back.

It's because tyrants are abusers and abusers are tyrants. It's the same old game, just on different scales. One is on a personal relationship scale the other is on a national scale.

Tyrants are criminals. When they control the law they control the people. It's how it works. There is no other last defense against violence but violence itself. If someone is beating you up and no one intervenes or you don't fight back, you will take a beating. But in a tyrannical nation the beating never stops and you will die if you don't defend yourself. Violence is never the answer until it is the only answer to prevent violent oppression. Force begets force ad infinitum, until tyranny is defeated.

If you believe the law alone will save you, you’ve already surrendered. If you believe non-violence alone will restrain men without conscience, you’ve already lost. The Founders knew this. History has proven it. And tyrants count on you forgetting it.

So the question is not whether guns are needed every day, it’s whether freedom can survive a single day without them.

I’ll leave you with this: when the law fails, when the courts are corrupted, when tyranny is no longer hiding but marching openly in the streets, what will you stand behind? Paper, or steel?

People love to say the pen is mightier than the sword. But that’s only true when the one holding the sword respects the words the pen has written. Yes, ideas are powerful, but the moment the man with the sword realizes that words mean nothing without enforcement, the pen shatters. That’s when laws become empty promises, and that’s when tyrants are born.

The pen is only mightier than the sword when the sword consents to be ruled by it.