Kirk: Hong Kong Is the Best Argument for the 2nd Amendment Imaginable

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, along with possibly the First Amendment, is the most often discussed and most often misunderstood.
This simple sentence, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” has been the subject of more hyperbole and irresponsible misinterpretation than perhaps any other contribution from our Founders.

But let’s first turn our attention to the protests in Hong Kong, which started on June 9 in dramatic reaction to a proposed extradition law. The law would allow China to compel the mostly autonomous “special administrative region” of Hong Kong to ship people across the Pearl River estuary to the mainland for trial. The citizens are right to fear this strong-arm control, because today’s modern archipelago of gulags resides squarely within mainland China. This is the same China that Napoleon referred to as “a sleeping giant” and warned to, “let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.”

In the middle of their brave stand for freedom—and shamefully, barely reported upon in the mainstream press—Hong Kong protesters have been carrying the American flag and singing our National Anthem as they stand in defiance of the Chinese Goliath before them. Their love of American-style liberty has led to condemnation by some American liberals, who go so far as to equate Hong Kong protesters with white supremacists.

To the contrary, these courageous protesters are practicing civil disobedience in a way that would have made Gandhi proud. Of course, Gandhi was protesting against the 20th century British and, as Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, if you were going to defy an empire, that was the one to pick. Since the Brits relinquished their rights in Hong Kong back in 1997, the new Chinese landlord hasn’t been quite as lenient.

In stark contrast to the American-style liberty they seek to harness, gun ownership is not a right in Hong Kong. Under the Firearms and Ammunition Ordinance, private ownership of guns, legal or otherwise, is estimated at only 3.60 per 100 residents among the its 7.4 million Hongkongers. In other words, gun ownership is extremely limited and highly controlled. Compare those numbers with the United States, where three-in-ten people own a gun and another 11 percent of people say they live in a house with someone who does. Of those who own a weapon, 66 percent say they own more than one, and 29 percent own five or more.

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