Opinion
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October 28th, 2023 was National First Responders Day, which recognizes the work of police officers, firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, and others who provide emergency care.
These individuals certainly deserve our respect, support, and appreciation. However, as anyone who cherishes the Second Amendment knows, the real “first” responders are those American citizens who are the first to face a threat, whether that be from a deranged lunatic, home invasion, carjacking, housefire, or wild animal.
I believe the entire idea of what constitutes a “first responder” needs correction, and the Second Amendment community should work publicly to advance this correction.
In reality, those professionals customarily considered “first responders” are, in fact, second or third responders to dangerous situations. It is critical to the Second Amendment movement that it is understood that the real “first” responders are almost always ordinary American citizens. The citizen who first encounters the person having a heart attack in the mall; the citizen who sees the criminal holding up a cashier across the street; the citizen attacked by a violent thug; the citizen who notices that the neighboring house is on fire: these are the true first responders.
In my view, accurately identifying the true “first responders” is mission critical to ensuring that our country and its political leaders give credit to ordinary citizens, generally, and to American gun owners, specifically, for the invaluable role they play in protecting their countrymen from life’s dangers—whether from crime, illness, fire, and even animal attacks.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already confirmed this notion concerning the Second Amendment.
Our Founding Fathers drafted the Second Amendment recognizing that its primary purpose was self-defense against all forms of tyranny– and this is one important reason why it is so important to remember my point about first responders.
Now, I do not mean to discount the heroism of those police officers, firefighters, and others who perform an invaluable service to our country. But they are not the only ones who contribute to protecting our society.
It is the ordinary American citizen, whether that person be a stay-at-home mom, teacher, accountant, shopkeeper, or truck driver, who has as much of an opportunity to help protect our society from harm as anyone who receives a paycheck from the government.
Several years ago, I wrote a book called Duped: How the Anti-Gun Lobby Exploits the Parkland School Shooting. There, I referenced the famous economist Milton Friedman. Friedman said that there were two types of money in the world: your money and everyone else’s money. By this quip, he meant that when you spend the money that you earn, you are very careful with how you spend it. You are conscious of spending it in a way that is most beneficial to you and your family. In contrast, when the government spends money, it spends the money of other people, and as Friedman wrote, it was typically the case that the government misspent money.
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I discuss in Duped how this is analogous to the way self-defense works in modern society. There are two types of lives in the world: your own life and the lives of everyone else. As a practical matter, humans value their own lives and the lives of their loved ones far more than they do a stranger’s life. So, how is this relevant to the conversation about first responders? No one has a greater incentive to save your life and the lives of your loved ones than you do, in the same way, that no one is more interested in how you spend your money than you do. This is simply human nature.
To close: you and your loved ones are more incentivized to defend your own life than anyone else will be.
And, even at their best, professional “first responders” are almost always going to arrive on the scene after you. This is not to denigrate those who do the necessary, lifesaving work of showing up to emergencies, but rather to elevate those citizens who are first in the line of fire. So, while we should thank our police officers, firefighters, EMTs, and others who risk their lives for the safety of others, we must remember the important lesson that we are our own first responders.
We must also remember that when danger comes knocking, it is usually the case that the police, fire and emergency personnel who arrive at the scene are in fact NOT first responders—– but are really “second responders.”
About Mark W Smith
Constitutional attorney and bestselling author Mark W. Smith, host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment channel on Youtube, is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. His Second Amendment scholarship has been cited by many attorneys and judges, including by attorneys in legal briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen and in U.S. v. Rahimi.
His most recent book is DISARMED: What the Ukraine War Teaches Americans about the Right to Bear Arms.
