Lessons from Tiananmen Square,-- And why judges like Sonia Sotomayor should study their historyby Erich PrattSometimes a pithy bumper sticker can say it all. Twenty years ago, many gun owners silently protested the horrificevents of June 4, 1989 with this simple adage: "China has guncontrol."To be more specific: China's gun control applied to anyone outsideof the military and the police -- a truth that was pounded into theskulls of thousands of university students during what became knownas the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The military government respondedto student protesters in 1989 with gunfire and tanks, killingthousands of defenseless people. The brutality of that day caused one Chinese professor to beginquestioning his hope in "science and democracy." That professor,Hong Yujian, is now a Christian pastor in Vancouver, Canada.Before his conversion, however, Yujian wanted to understand what itwas that had made the American dream work. So he studied America'sfounding documents and was struck by phrases like "all men arecreated equal … they are endowed by their Creator with certainunalienable rights."Hong was blown away. "There is nothing like this in Chinesethinking," Hong told World magazine. "But if you cut out theCreator, you cut out the root of democracy."Wow, what a revelation! Our rights come from God. Isn't it amazingthat former communists understand this, but our intellectual elitesare trying hard to forget it?Take Sonia Sotomayor, the justice who has been nominated by PresidentObama to take the place of retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S.Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor has rejected the notion that ourrights come from God. In United States v. Sanchez-Villar (2004), shestated that "the right to possess a gun is clearly not afundamental right."That's not what our Founding Fathers believed. They understood thatour rights come from God, and as such, are unalienable. In otherwords, no government official -- or judge -- can take them away orrestrict them in any way. The Second Amendment even captures thissentiment by stating the right to keep and bear arms "shall not beinfringed." Elbridge Gerry, who was a delegate to the Constitutional Conventionand one of the first U.S. Congressmen, agreed that our rights werenon-negotiable. He said that "Self defense is a primary law ofnature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish;  theimmediate gift of the Creator,  obliges everyone … to resistthe first approaches of tyranny."Gerry rightly believed that no law could justifiably abolish ourrights. But when judges like Sotomayor start deciding which rights wehave or don't have, then all of our rights are in jeopardy. This was certainly the case in China where for decades -- evencenturies -- they have not respected the people's right to keep andbear arms … or their other rights for that matter. If you are astudent today in China, you will not read about the Tiananmen SquareMassacre in your textbooks or hear about it from your teachers orfind articles about it on the Internet. It's all been blocked andexpunged by the government filters.It's interesting that tyrants don't like the freedoms that weprotect in the First and Second Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Inour U.S. Congress, the very politicians who hate the Second Amendmentare the ones who have tended to support laws like the McCain-Feingoldlaw (which punishes people, under certain circumstances, for merelycriticizing elected officials) and a reincarnation of the UnFairnessDoctrine (which would punish broadcast stations for having "toomuch" conservative talk radio).We either work to protect our right to defend ourselves or,eventually, we will even lose our right to protest the infringementsthat are taking place.Thankfully, the resistance has already started. At least 35 stateshave introduced Tenth Amendment resolutions in recent months, puttingthe federal government on notice that it has far exceeded itsconstitutional powers. This is not just a Republican revolution … it is a bipartisanmovement of legislators (and citizens) across the country who are fedup with a government that keeps taking away more and more of ourfreedoms. And while these Tenth Amendment resolutions are a welcome first step,some states are now looking to veto (or get around) unconstitutionalfederal laws. More than a dozen states have rejected the federal REALID Act -- which establishes the equivalent of a National ID card. And Montana has just enacted a law that could invalidate most federalgun control laws inside the state. According to the statute, any gunmade in the state is exempt from federal regulations.On June 4, you can expect to see rallies in our nation's capital toprotest the Tiananmen Square Massacre on its 20-year anniversary. Andthat's a good thing.But if Washington doesn't change course and stop infringing uponAmerican rights, such protests will be less than mouse squeakscompared to the firestorm that will erupt across this great land.*********************************************************************Erich Pratt is the Director of Communications for Gun Owners ofAmerica, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members. GOA is located at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151 and at http://www.gunowners.org on the web.