The Second Amendment is rather unique in the world. While there are the odd countries that say they respect gun rights, such as Mexico, the reality is that there’s a ton of wiggle room in their constitutions that translates into, “We do, and we don’t…but mostly, we don’t.”
As this piece is published, I can walk into a gun store, plop down the money, get the background check, and head home with my new gun. Others will have to wait for a few days or longer, but there’s a lot less “Mother, may I?” here than elsewhere in the world.
And as my friend Dan Wos notes over at Ammoland, some folks in those other countries are kind of jealous.
In an era when people around the world are debating freedom, safety, and government power, one truth stands firm: rights are only preserved if they are exercised, and rights abandoned are rarely restored.
As Americans, we are heirs to a constitutional tradition unlike any other country. We place individual liberty at the center of our national identity. At the heart of that tradition stands the Second Amendment, a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, securing not just the ability to own firearms but the broader principle of self-governance.
But as we look beyond our borders, a different pattern is evident. Nations that once embraced firearm ownership as a normal aspect of life, countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, for instance, have gradually imposed sweeping gun bans. For many citizens, these restrictions have led to limits on their speech, independence, and personal freedom. Their experiences compel us to acknowledge that when governments limit the means by which citizens safeguard themselves, they often redefine the very concept of freedom itself.
The irony of this stolen freedom is that over time, many people can be conditioned to accept it.
The U.K. is an example of incremental control with lasting impact.
The United Kingdom’s move toward near-total handgun prohibition began in the late 20th century, culminating in extensive bans following the 1996 Dunblane tragedy. While the justification was public safety, the effects extended far beyond firearm ownership. Today, the U.K. public has one of the most limited sets of firearm rights among Western democracies, and many citizens feel that decisions about personal protection are no longer theirs to make. The pattern is clear. Once the government has the leverage to violate one fundamental right, it becomes easier for it to expand its authority into others. This isn’t about whether British citizens are safe or unsafe. It’s about whether they retain the sovereign right to choose.
And many no longer do.
Obviously, Dan gets into a lot more than this, and you should go and read his whole piece over there, but this makes the point well enough for our purposes here and now.
Let’s understand that before England cracked down on gun ownership, it wasn’t particularly easy to own a gun. You could, but it wasn’t what we would consider acceptable. After Dunblane, though, they did what a lot of other nations do and decided everyone else has to pay the price.
It should be noted that it didn’t end their mass shootings. They’ve had a number of them since Dunblane, though none quite as bad.
As Dan points out, though, without the right to keep and bear arms preserved in a constitution, it was relatively trivial for the UK to erase any semblance of such a right from its nation. It wasn’t something that required a lofty bar to be met, just a simple vote from Parliament. That’s it.
He also mentions Canada, which we’ve covered a fair bit here. They, too, had no preservation of the right to keep and bear arms. Now, all their modern sporting rifles are prohibited. People who own them currently can’t even take them out and shoot them. All they can do is wait for the government’s so-called buyback to roll out and hope they’re not completely screwed over with regard to compensation.
Throughout the world, there are people who see the right to keep and bear arms as sacrosanct as we do. Their governments, however, were never predicated on protecting that right, among others, and so they can only wish they had a Second Amendment.
Years ago, I remember chatting with a guy from the UK who was among those numbers. More than 20 years ago, he was someone who was lamenting how the government was trying to crack down on carrying knives. He had a job that required it at the time, so he could avoid too much harassment, but the whole idea seemed bizarre to me.
I live in the South, where I was born and raised. A pocket knife was considered an essential part of everyday carry, even before the term entered the lexicon, and here he was having to justify carrying such a tool, simply because bad actors were using those in significant numbers after their access to guns became troublesome.
He would have killed to have Second Amendment protections so he could have a gun or two.
So would a lot of other people throughout the world. That’s something to be thankful for this coming week, don’t you think?
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights, much as we’ve seen them do in other countries.
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