A Second Amendment group warned this week that the recent events in Ukraine underline that gun rights are a basic human right. 

"While we’ve seen reports that the Ukraine Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) has voted to ease restrictions allowing civilians to carry arms outside their homes,” said Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “in our country this has been the constitutional law of the land since our nation was founded. The right of the people to keep and bear arms has protected this country since the beginning, and what is happening right now in Ukraine should be a lesson to all of those who push for citizen disarmament and a ban on private gun ownership how perilous that would be."

The Rada this week moved to pass the rough equivalent of the U.S. Second Amendment the day prior to a multi-faceted invasion from neighboring Russia. Cutting to the chase, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said, "We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country."

Soon after, Ukraine's Interior Ministry announced at least 18,000 AKs had been handed out to the eager citizens in Kyiv, the threatened country's capital, then followed it up with instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails. 

Gottlieb pointed out that the U.S. Bill of Rights was penned by men who had just fought a war for independence. 

"They returned to their homes from battlefields, not from some deer hunting camp," said Gottlieb. "The right to keep and bear arms has never been about shooting ducks, but about protecting our right as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to defend our homes and families immediately against the kind of international outrage now unfolding in eastern Europe."

The gun rights advocate contended that ardent national anti-gun organizations on this side of the globe are often fine with restrictive firearm laws, regardless of the real-world consequences. 

"We can only hope that gun prohibitionists, or at least their supporters in the establishment media, learn something from this tragedy," said Gottlieb. "To live in peace, one must always be prepared to defend it."

Banner image: An AK at play somewhere in the USA. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)