The Battle of Brooklyn began not with a thunderous volley but with the crack of a single musket in a watermelon patch on the night of August 26, 1776, when a Maryland rifleman spotted British scouts creeping toward American lines. That lone shot ignited a chain reaction that would see Washington’s army nearly annihilated, yet it also revealed the indispensable truth that a free people’s survival rests on the right to keep and bear arms. The Maryland 400—ordinary farmers and tradesmen—held the line long enough for the Continental Army to slip across the East River under cover of fog, their sacrifice proving that disciplined, privately armed citizens could blunt the world’s finest professional force. For today’s Second Amendment community, the lesson is unmistakable: the same individual marksmanship and resolve that bought Washington’s escape at Brooklyn still underpins the constitutional guarantee that the people, not the government, remain the ultimate check on tyranny.