Lately a new affront to the Second Amendment's protection of the right of the people to keep and bear arms has been under way in the DHS. The Founders of our republic clearly viewed rights, including the Second Amendment, as universal rights which are inherent in all men. The Declaration of Independence even says that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

It would be too lengthy to do so here, but an excellent collection of the Founders' statements on the universality of the rights, and the right to keep and bear arms in particular, can be found in a friend of the court brief by Michele L. Lombardo, et. al.

The clear intent of the Constitution hasn't bothered the folks at DHS any more than has the law telling them to send the pilots packing, so to speak. They seem to have taken a liking to an idea popular at the UN instead. The UN has been attempting to impose a gun control treaty on the US. It would require registration of all guns, and the stated intention of the promoters of this treaty, on the record, is to keep guns out of all private hands (or "non-state actors" in UN-speak).

That means that if your government is trying to wipe you and the rest of your minority group out (for example, 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda), it is wrong for you to take up arms because you are not the government.

The application of this amazing view at the Department of Homeland Security is to deny refugee status to minority groups in Burma who have been targeted for genocide. The immediate problem concerns 9,800 Karen refugees whose main crime, other than not being ethnic Burmese, is that many of them are Christians. To keep from being exterminated, some of them have taken up arms (as a "non-state actor!").

The Department of State has given a green light to allowing the Karen refugees asylum status in the United States. The DHS refuses to issue a waiver (which is necessary under our PATRIOT and REAL ID Acts). The DHS anti-gunners are holding to the UN view of the "right of the government to keep and bear arms" rather than the Founders view that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

Now that the Karen freedom fighters have actually been designated a terrorist organization by the DHS, which means "the US government" to foreign governments, the neighboring rulers of Thailand are getting ready to scoop up these unwanted minorities (they are not Thai either) and throw them into Burma from the refugee camps along the border areas they have inhabited for some time.

If that happens, and when the Karen run out of their limited supplies of ammunition, the genocide will begin. All of which could be prevented if the folks at DHS were told by the President (their boss) to issue the waiver, declassify the Karen as terrorists, and let these freedom fighters enter the US. Other countries would also be willing (and have been willing) to admit Karen refugees, but this is coming to an end if the US continues to label these victims of oppression as terrorists.