As I’m sitting here and watching the Virginia rally unfold from the comfort of my office, I can’t help but comment on some of the videos and pictures happening there. One video in particular came from a Buzzfeed reporter showing armed citizens walking to the 2A rally, most of them carrying rifles.

The morning commute #Richmond2ARally pic.twitter.com/gW946MyflH

— Andrew Kimmel (@andrewkimmel) January 20, 2020

This single video has caused copious amounts of pearl-clutching and fearmongering from the left. Here are some of the responses I received when I commented on the video.

Yeah just look at em there, practicing their right to peaceably assemble with their firearms and not cause any trouble. The founders would be furious!

What nefariousness awaits us? I dare not wonder. https://t.co/Prf2Ht0XyK

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) January 20, 2020

You’re ridiculous. You puff yourself up and say people are trying to take your guns away. Keep your guns if they make you feel like a man. Just don’t defend semi automatic weapons which have been used in this country to slaughter large groups of people.

— Srchgarvey#🌊Resist🌊ProudNeverTrumper🌊 (@srchgarvey) January 20, 2020

Now, if these were Muslim Americans wearing head scarves, to protect from the cold, out here demonstrating their 2nd Amendment Right, it would be called terrorism.

What pisses me off, is 9 of every 10 of these ‘men’ (I use that loosely), have never served a day in the military.

— Dharma (@dharma_junkie) January 20, 2020

Did they tell their mommy where they were headed when they came out of the basement ?

— Hud Allison (@HudAllison) January 20, 2020

https://twitter.com/BarbaraBergfeld/status/1219299471798022146?s=20

But if POC did this, there would be outrage

— Daksi79 🧢 (@Daksi79) January 20, 2020

A bunch of closet cases playing army

— Andrew Bridge, MEd, JD (@AndrewInEcuador) January 20, 2020

https://twitter.com/twat20201/status/1219297759951540224?s=20

Add them all together and they still don’t have 6 inches of penis.

— Tom (@tominhawaii) January 20, 2020

Bunch of idiots

— 🄷🄴🄰🅃🄲🄷🄴🄲🄺 (@DJHEATLIVE) January 20, 2020

This is the typical response you get from anti-gun folks. Much of it is ad-hominems or baseless claims made in ignorance, but there were a couple of responses that actually got my attention and I felt needed an answer. What’s more, I feel it’s a response that needs to be spoken about more often.

I don't understand open carry laws. Why are they carrying assault rifles in town? I thought the whole point of the 2nd amendment to give people the tools to violently overthrow a tyrannical government. But that's not what they're going to do (unless it is).

— ☀️ idspispopd 🌙 (@Bhaal_Spawn) January 20, 2020

There’s nothing “peaceful” about assembaling with firearms. It’s a silent threat the entire time.

— Renee (@Inkweaver313) January 20, 2020

Both of these women were wrong, but there was an element of truth to the theme of their tweets. That the presence of firearms was an overt threat.

There are a few corrections I would make, first.

For one, it’s clear that these people intended no harm and that they were practicing their right to peaceably assemble while practicing their 2nd Amendment right to carry firearms. There wasn’t anything disruptive about it. They didn’t start pointing their guns at anyone, no one was shot, and a violent takeover did not occur.

But the idea of the guns being a threat is true. They are, in a way, a threat. A threat that is both symbolic and very literal.

The reality is that guns are a weapon of destruction. That’s their purpose. We can say they’re for defense or hunting, and that’s correct, but they’re for defense and hunting because they have the ability to take life. We don’t just acknowledge that. We count on it.

The founders, who created the 2nd Amendment, counted on this fact too. They had just gotten done dealing with overbearing government and didn’t want to take the chance of relying on the government it was creating at the time to behave. It had seen the power of normal armed citizens as it watched them defeat the greatest army in the world in that age.

So yes. In a way, the gun grabbers are correct. The guns being carried around by normal citizens are a threat, but not to the people. It’s a conscious reminder to the government that in the event they begin acting more like a monarchy and not the elected government body put there by the people, then there will be consequences.

Our government is full of checks and balances, but the final check is the armed populace. When all other steps to curtail government within government fail, the armed peoples of the United States of America are there to set the government back on track.

If, God forbid, it ever comes to that, it will be bloody and people will die. However, this is the contingency plan that was thought up long ago and cherished ever since. Not every country has this right set in stone as we do, and because of that, you can see how the governments of other countries treat their citizens, even in the west. Currently, in England, you can be arrested for making non-politically correct jokes.

(READ: UK Court Sends Man to Jail for Nazi Joke, Proving How Valuable Our Free Speech Rights Are)

I think we should be a little more bold about what the 2nd Amendment is really about because, at the end of the day, it’s one of the most empowering rights that we have. It’s so important that the founders put it at the very beginning of the Constitution so that everyone knew and understood that should the pen fail, the sword will come into play.

The rally today in Virginia was peaceful and judging by the pictures and videos, it would appear a lot of people actually had a good time. There wasn’t that sense of anger and aggression that you see in leftist rallies. They were citizen warriors, but they were happy warriors. They didn’t destroy anything and everyone was respectful for the most part.

And they were armed.

This is the American people. The one the media doesn’t want you to get to know. They laugh, joke, get along, break bread, converse about ideas and topics, all while carrying around weapons of destruction. The moment you try to take these freedoms away, this happy populace, by design, will turn deadly serious.

Carrying these weapons around like they were wasn’t just an exercise of these rights. It was a reminder.