From the Athens News, Athens, OH.
http://www.athensnews.com/issue/article.php3?story_id=21703Native-American speaker touts 2nd Amendment rights
2005-09-29
By Angela Rito
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
A Native-American professor from Oklahoma defended the Second Amendment in a speech at Ohio University's Bentley Hall on Tuesday night.
"Owning a weapon is a precious freedom," declared David Yeagley, a member of the Comanche Nation.
Yeagley's speech, entitled "He Who Takes My Weapon Is My Enemy: An American Indian View of the Second Amendment," was sponsored by the OU Second Amendment Club and Young America's Foundation.
Yeagley is a columnist for the Internet magazine Front Line, in which he advocates conservative ideas from a Native-American viewpoint. The liberal arts professor holds degrees from Oberlin, Yale, Emory, the University of Hartford and the University of Arizona and currently teaches at the University of Oklahoma.
The professor talked about the importance of owning a weapon in Native-American society, citing his recent visit with an American Indian friend on the reservation who had killed the deer that he and his family ate for dinner that night. "A gun is like a part of clothing for Indians today," Yeagley said.
Yeagley spoke of his Native-American heritage, citing the Comanche Indians as having once been considered the largest hunting empire in America. "They were not known for peace or tranquility," he acknowledged. However, Yeagley said that the Comanches were not a warlike nation that actively took over other territories; they merely intimidated other Indian nations in order to keep them off of their lands.
"Land and resources are valuable assets," said Yeagley. "If you have them, someone will want to take them."
The professor questioned why someone would want to take away another person's gun. "Do they want to prevent you from protecting what you have?" he asked.
Yeagley cited some statistics from the book "Seven Myths of Gun Control" by Richard Poe in his speech, including research that rejects the "myth" that the right to bear arms increases violent crime and the alleged misconception that guns pose a threat to children. He said that when guns are not being used for hunting animals, they are usually possessed for the sake of protection from criminals. "In most cases of criminal encounter the gun doesn't even have to be used," he said. "Merely brandishing it causes the criminal to flee."
The professor said that the surrender of arms suggests submissiveness to the government, which by definition should be "of the people, for the people and by the people." "Muslims? Mexicans? Egyptians? Who is the enemy on this land this day to protect yourself from?" Yeagley asked. "Could it possibly be the U.S. government?
"In modern history, every nation that has disarmed its people has turned into a tyrannical, oppressive government," Yeagley commented, repeating a common refrain among gun-rights advocates, "from Stalin to Castro and even Hitler."
Yeagley suggested that gun control "infantilizes" citizens. "It's like saying, 'You can't be trusted to take care of yourself. Give me your weapon and I will take care of you instead,'" he said.
The lecturer mentioned several 17th-century laws that actually required the possession of guns in Virginia and Connecticut, one of which even enforced bringing rifles to church. "Have we come full circle or what?" he asked.
Yeagley argued that no human should have such power over another as to take away his or her weapon (though most so-called gun control doesn't involve "taking" guns, but rather registering them or limiting their sale).
"Giving up your gun to someone else on demand is called surrender," Yeagley said. "It means that you have given up your ability to protect yourself to a power that is greater than you."
The professor closed by proclaiming his and other Native Americans' pride in the United States despite the gun-control issue. "America," he said, touching the U.S. flag, "what a great country."
Yeagley has appeared on Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" and has spoken at colleges and churches all over the country.
