Like clockwork, every time there is a shooting, the cry rises from the left that we need gun control. This demand runs the gambit from a tragic school shooting to a couple of failed assassination attempts on their least-favorite presidential person in the whole wide world.

The logic of a gun-free zone from coast to coast seems to suggest that without any firearms, school shootings and feisty ex-presidents would never be targets and fair game. It is the very existence of the weapon itself, apparently, that lures a person to wield it for nefarious purposes.

I grew up hearing the right’s counterpoint to this logic, summed up in one particular mantra:

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

However, when I used this gun-grab argument twenty years ago on a liberal relative of mine, he flipped the logic on me. He said, “Well, yes, of course. That means anyone in possession of a firearm would then be considered a criminal—whether they are an actual criminal or just an ordinary citizen—both would be equally guilty.”

My relative was right. He was also ahead of his time.

Today’s progressives have sought to criminalize those who use their weapons in self-defense. Recent examples include Kyle Rittenhouse, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, and Jake Gardner. Each of these citizens protecting their life and property reached varying degrees of national notoriety. And one, sadly, met a very tragic end.

In fact, to make a powerful closing argument to his new book, No Second Amendment, No First, author and pundit John Zmirak uses his epilogue to recount in detail what a person who knew Jake exceedingly well wrote anonymously—the heartbreaking story of a Marine and Iraq and Haiti combat veteran, Jake Gardner.

Gardner faced a grand jury after having to defend himself by fatally shooting a man who was choking him from behind during a “mostly peaceful” BLM riot in Omaha, Nebraska. Gardner pleaded several times for the man to stop, but the man, a violent, previously convicted criminal, continued his vicious attack.

A couple of quotes from the horrific incident and subsequent grand jury indictment leading to Gardner’s tragic end sum up the narrative:

Jake faced possible terms of 94 years in prison for unjust charges. This for having the courage to defend his own life [as well as his property] from a violent multiple felon who was actively trying to choke him to death, all of which was captured on high resolution video.

…

After the corrupt decision of the grand jury based on falsified evidence was revealed, Jake lost all hope in the legal system and tragically ended his own life on September 20, 2020.

The anonymous author of this short bio of a wonderful patriot concludes:

[Jake] was a man that fought valiantly against terrorism and violent extremism in Iraq, Haiti, and Omaha. He was, truly, a Superman.

In Zmirak’s well-researched book, with a foreword by Eric Metaxas and an opening quote from Tulsi Gabbard, he makes the case for, quite simply, self-defense.

Self-preservation is inherent in life itself, within every living creature, but foremost in human beings. In chapter after chapter, Zmirak points out how this simple fact of life—and of preserving life itself—eventually morphed from a proper, Biblical worldview to a progressive “hive mind.”

On a larger scale, Zmirak covers the historical patterns of how entire nations were able to enslave and control their own populations, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela to Cuba to Cambodia to China to North Korea to many, many other countries. It began by disarming the citizens. Once the government had the guns, what they ordered was obeyed. Opposing speech would be censored—and lethally, when necessary.

“How do you think the Soviets managed to send some twenty million people to the Gulag?” Zmirak posits.

Zmirak outlines how this gun confiscation can start small, and perhaps initially by targeting only select groups, and eventually lead to total populations being left defenseless—and speechless.

In one chapter, Zmirak sees the “Harmony of the Old Testament and the New” with this issue of proper defense. Within that “harmony,” the author shows how many “progressive Christians” have accepted antithetical reasoning, including championing “[c]onfiscating citizens’ guns, rendering them completely dependent on Caesar for protection against violent crime and defenseless against any mob violence and possible future tyranny.” (Do we hear echoes here of the Jake Gardner story?)

A pastor once said that a person can become so open-minded that their brains fall out.

Ultimately, Zmirak’s goal in No Second Amendment, No First is “to show that the Christian view of the person, correctly understood, demands broad rights of self-defense for ordinary citizens—against both illegal violence and the prospect of tyrannical governments.”

Zmirak warns that we need to fight back against “impatient innovators [who] kick aside the tenets of Natural Law, Christian morality, the dignity of man, and the rights of the individual.”

There is certainly a reason that our wise Founders followed up the First Amendment, protecting free speech, with the Second, the right to bear arms. Zmirak writes:

The Founders protected the right to keep and bear arms not simply because they saw it as the last defense against tyranny. They did so also because they viewed the Second Amendment’s protection of private firearms ownership as essential to preserving all the other liberties guaranteed in the Constitution.

No Second Amendment, No First is an excellent way to garner the intellectual weaponry necessary to fight the good fight for these crucial life-and-death issues.

A version of this review appeared originally at American Thinker.

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Albin Sadar is the author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, as well as the children’s book collection, Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries. Albin was formerly the producer of “The Eric Metaxas Show.”