Will Riley of "Stand for the Second": "There Is a Human Right to Defend Yourself from Tyrannical Government"
“For me, this isn’t about getting to the range. This isn’t about hunting, I’m not a hunter. This is about people’s rights. This is about human rights. And I think people often forget that there is a human right to defend yourself from a tyrannical government.”
On May 2, Breitbart News reported that students in schools around the country walked out of class in order to show support for gun rights via the “Stand for the Second” event. The event was organized by Will Riley, and he sat with Breitbart News for the upcoming episode of the podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins.
We asked about the motivation for the pro-gun walkout, and he said:
What drove me to action was I saw the response of the mainstream media to the movements of my peers — the March for Our Lives, the Enough walkouts during the national day of action — and I saw how the media was responding to that by creating this false narrative that my generation is somehow united behind gun control. I wanted to dispel that myth.
Riley made clear that he does not own a gun, that his ultimate motivation to “Stand for the Second” is his desire to preserve and/or recover founding principles and ideals.
He said, “For me, this isn’t about getting to the range. This isn’t about hunting, I’m not a hunter. This is about people’s rights. This is about human rights. And I think people often forget that there is a human right to defend yourself from a tyrannical government.”
He added, “My political concerns are very similar to Thomas Jefferson. I am very concerned with natural rights and the constitutional protections thereof.”
I have found it quite interesting how much coverage the pro-Second Amendment student walkouts received in the mainstream media: Zero. Nada. Crickets. One might almost think there was a dominant narrative that they wanted to promote, and that no deviations from that theme were permitted! But no, that couldn't be, could it? The news media is supposed to objectively report the facts... right?
"I saw how the media was responding to that by creating this false narrative that my generation is somehow united behind gun control. I wanted to dispel that myth."
As one young friend of mine commented, "this kid gets it."
P.S. Here's a map, published originally on CNN, showing the locations of walkouts during Stand the Second:
Was this event as big as the gun-ban protests? Probably not. It certainly didn't get the level of media and political support they did, the infusion of funds, or the adult "advisors." But I'm not sure I'd trust any of the mainstream media to provide accurate accounting, so we may never know for sure. But this map certainly demonstrates that it was not a small or local event!
What is particularly interesting to me is the number of walkouts in the Northeast, the West Coast, and the urbanized liberal enclaves in the Midwest, south of the Great Lakes. These are all areas which already have strict gun-control laws, and (if you believe the national narrative) want more. Clearly, not everyone who lives there agrees!