(Photo courtesy of ACLU) “Trump has signed numerous executive orders since taking office on January 20th.”
Nate Coady
Connector Staff
On Friday, February 7, President Donald Trump enacted an Executive Order aimed at protecting Americans’ Second Amendment rights. The order also instructs the Attorney General, the recently sworn-in Pam Bondi, to review any rules by the Department of Justice, reports by the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, or actions taken by other federal agencies from January 2019 to January 2025 that infringe or could infringe on Second Amendment rights. Titled “Protecting Second Amendment Rights”, the Executive Order follows a litany of other orders signed shortly after President Trump was inaugurated, including, but not limited to, immigration, infrastructure, foreign affairs, and domestic policy.
I believe this order is particularly brazen because of the implications it asserts. Within the first one hundred words of the order, a claim is stated: “Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.”
Do all other rights held by Americans truly require a foundation in the right to bear arms? The wording in the order shifts The Second Amendment’s historical purpose to a prerequisite for all civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution, fundamentally changing its purpose.
Let us look at the actual wording of the Second Amendment. Ratified along with the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights in 1791, the second was written as this: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” See how it is similar to the wording in Trump’s Executive Order? Instead of referring to the necessity of protecting a “free state”, the order replaced that clause with “maintaining all other rights held by Americans”. The difference is enormous.
When the Second Amendment was ratified, early America was grappling with independence from Britain and fears of slave uprisings. Permissible violence was an entirely different concept. A gun, which at the time bore no resemblance to the mass-produced weapons we have today, at best-ensured security against a hypothetical tyranny, and worst provided anti-federalists with assurance against slave rebellions. Today it should be considered differently.
I believe– and I hope I am not the only one– we live in a society where both those threats are wholly irrelevant. To say that the right to bear arms is necessary to all other rights promised to citizens of this country not only purports the archaic goals of the Second Amendment, but ushers in an era where violence is thought of as a safeguard to freedom instead of reason and discussion.
While I do believe the right to self-defense is unalienable and a necessary right to individuals in this country, I do not agree that taking up arms should be the foundational support to the rights we have as citizens of a modern democracy. I understand that the right to self-defense has been enshrined by law and expanded to the individual. The Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that individuals have a right to bear arms “unconnected with service in a militia”, a concept regarded as necessary to personal security.
However, I believe citizens should not confuse a fundamental right to self-defense with a reliance on violence as a tool to secure fundamental freedoms. We live in a modern nation where our liberties should be secured by institutions, not by a skepticism that insists guns are essential to a “free state”.
