By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Massachusetts has been literally on the front lines of the battle for liberty and freedom in America, beginning in April 1775 and continuing even today against what Mike Harris, director of Public Affairs for the Massachusetts Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), called “hyper-majorities in both houses (of the legislature), the Governor’s office, all constitutional offices and beyond.”
“We are under constant barrage,” Harris told gun rights activists from across the nation during his remarks at the recent Gun Rights Policy Conference.
Harris’ comments, delivered in a rapid staccato mixing history with current conditions, recalled a tourism advertising campaign in Massachusetts back in the 1980s, which declared the “Spirit of Massachusetts is the Spirit of America.”
“Yet as I’m standing here in this incredible country 251 years old,” he observed, “unfortunately that could not be further from the truth. Our state’s history is being stolen from us again; stolen from the patriots and lovers of liberty that made our state what it is. Our commonwealth is no longer where liberty resides.”
Harris began his remarks with a history lesson starting with the arrival of the Puritans in the early 1600s.
“We were America’s first frontier,” he stated. “We were also America’s first front line.”
Shift forward about 155 years to April 19, 1775 and the little villages of Lexington and Concord.
“On a cold April morning in 1775,” he said, “something happened in Massachusetts that changed the course of human history. The alarm went out, ‘the Regulars were coming for the battery.’ Husbands, brothers, fathers and sons left the warmth of their homes and families to stand in the way of almost certain death. These armed citizens stood in the way of the most powerful military in the world.
“At the old North Bridge in Concord,” Harris continued, “they fired on the most powerful army in the entire world. That day, Massachusetts became the place where the American revolution moved from an argument about liberty to a fight for it.
“It began with armed citizens who understood something that we seem to have forgotten,” he explained, “that liberty is not given by the government. It is to be protected from the government. That distinction is incredibly important, because 251 years later we find ourselves having a remarkable conversation in Massachusetts about what liberty actually means.
“The right to keep and bear arms is not foreign to Massachusetts,” Harris declared, “it’s part of our DNA and because of those men, it’s part of the DNA of the United States of America.
“If you are a freedom loving American, Massachusetts is our home, and it’s being stolen from us,” he stated.
Quoting President Calvin Coolidge, Harris said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.”
“GOAL exists in a world of persistence,” he commented. “We have no choice.”
GOAL was this year’s recipient of the “Affiliate of the Year” award from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The award was presented during the Gun Rights Conference.
“Just two years ago,” Harris recalled, “we were hit with the worst set of Second Amendment infringements in the country at the time. Chapter 135 hit every single aspect of firearms ownership in the Commonwealth, 116 pages, 154 sections; a behemoth bill that reads like a gun controller’s dream.”
The fight is on to repeal that legislation, and Massachusetts voters will have their say Nov. 3.
“Whenever I appear at events like the GRPC,” Harris acknowledged, “I am often asked ‘Why do you stay?’ I stay because Massachusetts is worth saving. I stay because Massachusetts is my home. I stay because Massachusetts is America’s home. I stay because I want this fight. I want this fight for my children, I want this fight because of the traditions and freedoms that we established in our great commonwealth, and the birthplace of freedom should not be let go.”
