Luis Valdes, Florida state director and national spokesperson for Gun Owners of America (GOA), says the Second Amendment is nothing new, and he advises Americans to take advantage of it.
"People have the right to be able to defend themselves and to use viable tools to defend themselves with," he states. "These aren't weapons of war; these are simply firearms. There's no distinction."
That fundamental notion, he says, goes back to before the United States Constitution was penned. It was evident in the Articles of Confederation and the Magna Carta.
"Our Founding Fathers fully understood that we, the American people, have the right to keep and bear arms," Valdes asserts.
In 1961, his family fled communist Cuba, where one of the first things the communist government enacted upon the people was gun control.
"After they did that, they went after our property, they went after our civil liberties, and they went after our lives," he accounts.
In a related op-ed, GOA begins by pointing out that the Biden administration continues to push gun control in America while Israel, lauded by gun control advocates for its strict regulations, has axed some of its own measures in response to the recent attacks.
"During the hours of the initial invasion, U.S. senators continued to tweet support for gun control while similar policies were resulting in deaths across the ocean," the piece states.
Israel, though, has seemed to realize that without access to firearms, its citizens have been helpless to defend themselves against the heavily armed terrorists.
On the issue of whether U.S. citizens should have fully automatic weapons, Valdes explains that the invention of machine guns dates back to before the nation's founding, so these types of automatic weapons are not a new idea.
"Going back through American history, what was considered a weapon of war is now considered the quintessential hunting rifle," he compares.
He acknowledges that as technology advances, things do change, but "our rights don't stop just because technology advances."
Finally, noting that every "despotic tyrannical regime in the history of mankind" has implemented gun control in one form or fashion, Valdes concludes, "The only thing that keeps people free are people that are armed."
