The European Union’s decision to ration air conditioning to only the upper floors reserved for its top officials during last week’s brutal heatwave is less a quirky bureaucratic footnote and more a window into the mindset of centralized power. While rank-and-file staff sweltered in the lower levels of the Brussels headquarters, the insulated elite enjoyed climate-controlled comfort—an arrangement that critics rightly labeled neo-feudal. It’s a small but telling example of how institutions that claim to serve the people often end up serving themselves first, creating literal and figurative tiers of privilege that ordinary citizens are expected to accept without question.

For the 2A community, this story is a reminder that the same impulse to control and stratify access to basic necessities can easily extend to the tools of self-defense. When governments decide who gets relief from the heat—or who gets to keep and bear arms—they reveal a fundamental distrust of individual judgment. The EU’s climate hypocrisy is well documented: while preaching global carbon austerity to its subjects, its own leadership exempts itself from the discomfort those policies create. That pattern of “rules for thee, but not for me” is precisely why millions of Americans refuse to outsource their security to the same class of administrators who cannot even keep the lights (or AC) on for everyone equally.

Ultimately, the Brussels episode underscores why the right to keep and bear arms remains a vital check against concentrated authority. When institutions demonstrate they will prioritize their own comfort and control over the welfare of those they govern, free people are right to maintain the means to protect themselves rather than rely on the benevolence of a distant ruling class. The 2A isn’t just about guns; it’s about rejecting the feudal logic that some lives and some rights are more equal than others.