Two-out-of-three Americans recognize that their constitutional right to own a gun was intended to ensure their freedom.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of American Adults think the purpose of the Second Amendment is to make sure that people are able to protect themselves from tyranny. Only 17% disagree, while another 18% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Not surprisingly, 72% of those with a gun in their family regard the Second Amendment as a protection against tyranny. However, even a majority (57%) of those without a gun in their home hold that view.

Many gun control advocates talk of the right to gun ownership as relating to hunting and recreational uses only.

While there are often wide partisan differences of opinion on gun-related issues, even 54% of Democrats agree with 75% of Republicans and 68% of those not affiliated with either major party that the right to own a gun is to ensure such freedom.

As Americans search for answers to the Newtown shooting, attitudes on gun ownership are “not likely to change in a nation where six out of 10 adults would rather live in a neighborhood where they can own a gun and most would feel safer if their children attended a school with an armed security guard.” Scott Rasmussen explains in his latest weekly newspaper column that if Congress is “not willing to go as far as the president wants on gun control, perhaps they… might take stronger action on mental health issues or increase the penalties for crimes committed with a gun.”

In the wake of last month’s horrific elementary school massacre in Connecticut, 51% favor stricter gun control laws. There is strong support for background checks of gun owners, but a plurality believes dealing with mental health issues will lead to more effective results. Fifty-nine percent (59%) think Congress and President Obama are likely to create stricter gun control laws.

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The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on January 16-17, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of all Americans continue to believe that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. Just 17% disagree. These views haven’t changed in nearly four years of surveying.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The amendment is part of the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court has ruled that this does guarantee an individual’s right to own a gun.

The NRA is now viewed favorably by 49% of Americans and unfavorably by 41%. This includes 25% with a Very Favorable opinion of the influential gun-rights organization and 23% with a Very Unfavorable one. The NRA’s favorables are down slightly from 54% in July 2011, but its unfavorable are unchanged.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe in America today there is too much government power and too little individual freedom. Sixty percent (60%) feel the federal government today does not have the consent of the governed.

Americans are now evenly divided over whether the federal government is a protector of individual rights or a threat to those rights.

But even before the Newtown shootings, Americans rated the freedoms of speech and religion as more important the freedom of the press and the right to bear arms. Seventeen percent (17%) believe there is too much individual freedom in the United States today.

It ain't Alex Jones, but you can't have everything http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/gun_control/65_see_gun_rights_as_protection_against_tyranny

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9uLE9cD_u8"]Do Americans Think We Face Tyranny? - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1rMoZ9LK7A"]Criminals And Their Guns! - Inmates Tell Fox News Where They Got Weapons - YouTube[/ame]

Sounding the same themes of class warfare that propelled his re-election campaign, President Barack Obama devoted his second inaugural address to laying out his second term agenda: a struggle to undo the seeming injustices of America's past, and to overcome the army of straw men that stand in opposition to progress.

In the process, President Obama attempted nothing less than an assault on the timeless notion of liberty itself:

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society's ills can be cured through government alone.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

After praising the "collective" and mocking the notion that America is a "nation of takers," President Obama targeted the political opposition. He targeted those who "deny" climate change, attacked those who allegedly refused to reward the elderly for their contributions, and defied critics whom he said wanted "perpetual war." He attacked the rich--as he has done so often over the past four years--and painted a caricature of an unjust nation: "...our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it....We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few."

President Obama's address failed to deliver on promises earlier in the day by senior political adviser David Axelrod that the speech would sound themes of national unity on a day of national "consecration." Instead, the president sounded combative themes familiar from his divisive first term, albeit wrapped occasionally in the lofty rhetoric of "hope" and "tolerance," and punctuated by the repeated refrain: "We, the People."

He acknowledged Americans have diverse concepts of liberty, but insisted that these could all fit together under the collective mission of the government to achieve its redistributive aims. Days after describing Republicans as determined to hurt the poor and elderly, he accused his opposition of intolerance: "We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate."

The president cited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is celebrated today, citing his "I Have a Dream" speech, implying that when Dr. King told America that "our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth," he was referring not to civil rights but to the mighty will of the state.

President Obama also spoke out in favor of gay rights and immigration reform, acknowledging groups of voters that were central to his re-election effort--yet for whom he did not fulfill many of his first-term pledges. He touched on three historic locations--"Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall"--critical to the history of the women's rights movement, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement, respectively.

Throughout his address, the President maintained his voice in a near-shout. This was not an historic address, a reflection on a moment in history; it was an exhortation to political action, in contrast to the political reality of a divided Washington, in defiance of the profound economic challenges still facing the American people.

It was a declaration of political war on individual liberty. It was a wasted opportunity--and a warning.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/21/Second-Inaugural-Address-Obama-Declares-War-on-Liberty-As-We-Know-It