Editor’s Note: This is one of two columns about the Lincoln High School girls’ basketball controversy. Columnist Emily Garringer’s column can be found here.

Lincoln High School recently made the decision to cancel a promotional poster for its women’s basketball team. Its theme, “Mission: Impossible,” featured the athletes with toy guns, a concept immediately red-flagged by principal Albert Graziano. His rationale, as he stated in an e-mail, was “school violence or the image of violence of any sort is not the image of Lincoln High School.”

Many might wonder how a toy gun could be construed as violent, but that’s another matter. Graziano’s comments highlight a growing problem in America – a fear-based argument against firearms as nothing but an instrument of violence. This increasingly popular view threatens our freedom.

Fear has threatened the Second Amendment before. In response to Tommy gun-toting mobsters, the federal government passed the National Firearms Act of 1934, requiring the registration of certain weapons. Following two high-profile assassinations, came the Gun Control Act of 1968, requiring federal firearms licenses for gun dealers and serial numbers inscribed on every firearm. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 brought about background checks and waiting periods before a citizen could exercise his or her constitutional right to bear arms

Graziano is not lobbying for Handgun Control Inc., but his words and actions have sent a message to his students: guns – or the image of guns – are bad.

To be sure, guns in the wrong hands can be destructive. Much more often than not, however, they serve a righteous purpose.

Sporting and self-defense against individual acts of crime are righteous, but the drafters of the Second Amendment had a higher purpose in mind. The Founding Fathers insisted “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” because they were distrustful of standing armies and government itself. They saw the military might of a tyrannical Britain and knew the ultimate defense against such tyranny, or even foreign aggressors, was a gun in the hands of the private citizen.

It’s no mistake the right to firearms came second – not third or tenth – in the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment provides five freedoms, including freedom of the press, which serves as an early warning system of government corruption and misdealings against the people, and freedom of speech, which allows us to delve further into the issue by securing the opportunity to influence those around us on the joys of a free and open society. The Second Amendment protects us from government usurpation of those rights.

This isn’t about some ridiculous idea of a federal conspiracy to suddenly suspend the rule of law and the notion of democracy in favor of totalitarianism, but the slow erosion of rights continues today. In the eighteenth century, Britain did the same to the colonies – gradually adding taxes, restricting rights and even quartering British soldiers in civilian homes.

When the colonists had enough, they resorted to an insurgency. Guerrilla warfare was the only way to defeat Britain’s large, sophisticated force, and privately owned firearms played a key part in our victory.

Graziano has his heart in the right place – violence has no place in a high school. Unfortunately, he is afraid of toy guns because they represent the image of an exaggerated connotation. Like many of his fellow citizens, he has inappropriately correlated violence with guns instead of with individuals. This fear-based conclusion will certainly lead to more control of privately owned weapons and ultimately weaken our last line of defense.

– Aaron Gott is a senior in political science from South Amana. He is the Daily opinion editor.