Mark Graves/The Oregonian via AP

The Second Amendment was created with one purpose in mind, and – let’s be honest here – that purpose wasn’t hunting or even self-defense from criminals. While our Founding Fathers supported the right to have arms for those purposes, the primary motivation for the Second Amendment was to protect this country.

That thinking played into the potentially apocryphal comment made by Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, who argued that invading the United States would be a disaster because “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” I say it’s potentially apocryphal because no one has been able to confirm that the admiral actually said this, but it’s the kind of valid observation of America that Yamamoto was known to make.

In other words, much of our domestic tranquility – the fact that no nation wants to set foot on American soil and try to get rowdy – stems from the fact that we have an armed populace. And that matters these days. It matters because we do have people who are more than willing to get rowdy on American soil. We have enemies, both foreign and domestic.

On the domestic front, I mentioned Antifa and their willingness to take up arms. Now, that act alone doesn’t make them enemies. After all, if I want the means to defend myself and my nation, I have to support others’ right to do the same.

However, let’s also acknowledge the fact that Antifa has gotten far more violent than anyone on the Right has. From riots to countless cases of assault, Antifa has set themselves up as a group that is more than willing to resort to violence. Their ideology is predicated on violent response to what they perceive as fascism.

The problem is, anything to the right of Lenin is what they perceive as fascism. They feel it’s okay to attack anyone and everyone who is not of their exact ideology. In fact, they have.

Yet, they represent a tiny minority of the Left. Most leftists aren’t members of Antifa or even Antifa supporters. If they’re ambivalent, it’s because they only know what the media report, which tends to gloss over Antifa’s violence and pretend it’s really just free speech.

As things currently stand, it’s only a matter of time before these domestic enemies – after all, they want to overthrow not just the social order but the Constitution they argue is racist – decide to cross the line from just owning guns to using them on the innocent.

However, they’re not the only threat out there.

Ever since 9/11, Americans have been unable to delude themselves into believing that Islamic terrorism was simply a problem overseas. We got punched in the mouth. Hard.

While we took the fight to the enemy, we’ve had Islamic terrorism here on American soil. While the perpetrators of these attacks have tended to be either Americans or legal residents, the fact remains that the extremist ideology that motivates them is a foreign one. These foreign enemies seek to wreak havoc on our society, to elicit fear among the populace so that we’ll demand our government capitulates to the demands of the attackers.

We won’t, of course, because that’s not the American way.

However, people will still die. Innocent people.

Yet, the solution to keeping these enemies in check is the same. That check? The Second Amendment.

There is nothing better to combat the cowardice of Antifa or Islamic militants than an armed populace. Guns don’t endanger the public, they save lives.

Why else did the death toll from an attempted attack at an art show in Texas begin and end with the terrorists? That’s easy. Good guys with guns put them down like the rabid dogs they were.

Of course, we will never be able to prevent every terrorist attack. What we can do, however, is remember that the Second Amendment was meant to ensure “the security of a free state.” We can carry our firearms and we can train as much as humanly possible, learn as much as we can so that we are the most dangerous men and women in the room.

That way, if the terrorists come – be they Islamic pigs or Antifa pigs – we’re ready, willing, and able to put them down. That is what the Second Amendment is really about, and we need to be ready to remind all enemies, foreign and domestic, of that simple fact.