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|  A Bill Concerning Slaves | No slaves shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. | |
| A Framer | Under every government the [last] resort of the people, is an appeal to the sword; whether to defend themselves against the open attacks of a foreign enemy, or to check the insidious encroachments of domestic foes. Whenever a people ... entrust the defence of their country to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that country will remain under the direction of the most wealthy citizens. | |
| Edward Abbey | The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government—and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws. | |
| John Adams | Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defence of the country, the over-throw of tyranny, or in private self-defence . | |
| John Adams | Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. Nor is there anything in the common law of England inconsistent with that right. | |
| Samuel Adams | If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. | |
| Samuel Adams | The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. | |
| Samuel Adams | And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. | |
| Saul Alinksy | How to create a socialist state by Saul Alinsky:\\
There are 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a socialist state. The first is the most important.\\\\
1) Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people.\\
2) Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.\\
3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.\\
4) Gun Control — Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.\\
5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).\\
6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children learn in school.\\
7) Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.\\
8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.\\ | |
| Henry Allen | Reporters today are far removed from America's founding values and are alarmed and contemptuous of gun owners as dangerous lower classes. | |
| Doug Bandow | Gun control has proved to be a grievous failure, a means of disarming honest citizens without limiting firepower available to those who prey on the law-abiding. Attempting to use the legal system to punish the weapon rather than the person misusing the weapon is similarly doomed to fail. | |
| Joel Barlow | [Individual disarmament] palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind; an habitual disuse of physical force totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression. | |
| Cesare Beccaria | False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty... and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree. | |
| Sir William Blackstone | And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense. | |
| David Boaz | Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government. | |
| Michael Boldin | Some people are calling for the federal government to restrict the right to keep and bear arms of people who are on the federal government’s terrorism watch list. This is not only unconstitutional, but sets an extremely dangerous precedent for all our rights. If the federal government can take away someone else’s right to defend themselves simply because it has unilaterally decided to place them on a secret, wildly inaccurate list that’s virtually impossible to be removed from, eventually, some bureaucrat is going to find some way to put you on that list for another reason. | |
| Michael Boldin | Whatever power you give politicians and bureaucrats to use against other people will eventually be used by future politicians and bureaucrats against you. | |
| James Bovard | As we learned from the Clinton administration and much of the media, a machine gun in the hands of a federal agent is now a symbol of benevolence and concern for a child's well-being. | |
| Sarah Brady | Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed. | |
| H. Sterling Burnett | Guns are used for self-defense somewhere between 800,000 and 3.6 million times per year .... Using firearm crime and defensive gun use figures most favorable to advocates for stricter gun control, ... the benefits from defensive gun uses exceed the cost of violent firearm crimes ... by between $90 million and $3.5 billion. Using the most credible estimate for defensive gun uses, the benefits range from $1 billion to $38 billion. Putting these dollar figures in more human terms: Guns save lives. The fact is that the best defense against violence is an armed response. For example, women faced with assault are 2.5 times less likely to suffer serious injury if they defend themselves with a gun rather than responding with other weapons or by offering no resistance. ... [P]ersons defending themselves with guns during an assault are injured only 12 percent of the time, compared to 25 percent for those using other weapons, 27 percent for those offering no resistance and nearly 26 percent of those who flee. ... [F]irearms are the safest, most effective way to protect oneself against criminal activity -- which is why American police officers carry guns rather than going unarmed or merely carrying knives. | |
| William S. Burroughs | After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell
wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. | |
| George W. Bush | The choice is his [Saddam Hussein's], and if he does not disarm, the United States of America will lead a coalition and disarm him in the name of Peace. | |
| Al Capone | You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word. | |
| Dennis Cauchon | Most reporters are very sympathetic to gun-control agendas and will skew or lie outright about facts to promote them. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce. | |
| Bill Clinton | There is no reason for anyone in this country -- anyone except a police officer or military person -- to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. | |
| Bill Clinton | The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people. | |
| Bill Clinton | If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution
inhibit the government's ability to govern the people,
we should look to limit those guarantees. | |
| Bill Clinton | When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities. | |
| Bill Clinton | We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans... | |
| Cockrum v. State | The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the "high powers" delegated directly to the citizen, and 'is excepted out of the general powers of government.' A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power. | |
| Cockrum v. State | The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the high powers delegated directly to the citizen, and is excepted out of the general powers of government. A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power. | |
| Rev. Nicholas Collin | While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny. | |
| Colorado Constitution | The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons. | |
| Communist Rules for Revolution | Communist Rules for Revolution... | |
| Connecticut Constitution | Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state. | |
| Maine Constitution | Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms; and this right shall never be questioned. | |
| Massachusetts Constitution | The people have a right to keep and bear arms for the common defense. And as, in times of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the Legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the Civil authority, and be governed by it. | |
| Michigan Constitution | Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state. | |
| Montana Constitution | The right of any person to keep or bear arms in defense of his own home, person, and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but nothing herein contained shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons. | |
| New Hampshire Constitution | All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state. | |
| Thomas Cooley | The right is general.
It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision
that the right to keep and bear arms
was only guaranteed to the militia;
but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent.
The militia, as has been explained elsewhere,
consists of those persons who, under the law,
are liable to the performance of military duty,
and are officered and enrolled for service
when called upon. . . .
[I]f the right were limited to those enrolled,
the purpose of the guarantee might be defeated altogether
by the action or the neglect to act
of the government it was meant to hold in check.
The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is,
that the people, from whom the militia must be taken,
shall have the right to keep and bear arms,
and they need no permission or regulation of law
for that purpose. | |
| Jeff Cooper | An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it. | |
| Tench Coxe | The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. | |
| Tench Coxe | Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms. | |
| Dalai Lama | If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. | |
| Charles de Montesquieu | It is unreasonable ... to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life. | |
| Declaration of Independence | But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. | |
| Brannon P. Denning | Note, however, that trying to ban guns because of strong moral disapproval of them or because of claims that they are 'scary' or that they may be used in crimes would not constitute a 'compelling state interest' any more than an attempt to restrain publication of a book on moral grounds would be. The concept of a 'compelling state interest' cannot swallow up the very right guaranteed in the first place. | |
| Anthony J. Dennis | The Nazis, for example, used a national firearms registration system eventually to confiscate all guns and, as they deemed necessary, to execute gun owners. | |
| Robert Dowlut | Because this right [of self-defense] cannot be effectively exercised with bare hands, the right to keep and bear arms is the only efficient way to secure the fundamental right of self-defense. | |
| Robert Dowlut | Gun control stems from racist roots, and ... it undermines feminism by send[ing] women the message that they should not use force to defend themselves. | |
| Lt. Lowell Duckett | Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates. It's quicker to pull your Smith and Wesson than to dial 911 if you're being robbed. | |
| Clint Eastwood | At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that? | |
| Joycelyn Elders | It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school. | |
| Rahm Emmanuel | We're bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns. | |
| Don Feder | What is a left-wing socialist but a Marxist without a gun? | |
| Dianne Feinstein | Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe. | |
| Dianne Feinstein | I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me. | |
| Jim Florio | There are some weapons that are just so dangerous that society has a right and the obligation even to take those weapons out of circulation. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! | |
| David D. Friedman | Suppose one little old lady in ten carries a gun. Suppose that one in ten of those, if attacked by a mugger, succeeds in killing the mugger instead of being killed by him -- or shooting herself in the foot. On average, the mugger is much more likely to win the encounter than the little old lady. But -- also on average -- every hundred muggings produces one dead mugger. At those odds, mugging is an unprofitable business -- not many little old ladies carry enough money to justify one chance in a hundred of being killed getting it. The number of muggers declines drastically, not because they have all been killed but because they have, rationally, sought safer professions. | |
| R. Buckminster Fuller | The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. | |
| Markus T. Funk | Murder rates in "gun controlled" areas, such as Mexico and South Africa, are more than twice as high as those in the United States. Conversely, countries such as Switzerland, New Zealand, and Israel, which have household gun ownership rates comparable to those in the United States, have much lower rates of crime and violence. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. | |
| Michael Gartner | There is no reason for anyone in this country, anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. I used to think handguns could be controlled by laws about registration, by laws requiring waiting periods for purchasers, by laws making sellers check out the past of buyers. I now think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution. | |
| Jean Genet | Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun. | |
| Hermann Goering | Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat. | |
| Kenneth Goff | This manual of the Communist Party should be in the hands of every loyal American, that they may be alerted to the fact that it is not always by armies and guns that a nation is conquered. | |
| Judge Ron Greenburg | The right just doesn't exist. Clearly, the states no longer need protection from the federal government disarming their "well-regulated" militia. The Second Amendment no longer speaks to us. The Second Amendment has no modern day application. The Second Amendment is dead. | |
| Edwin Arthur Hall | Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took their power from the German and the Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo, the Ogpu, and the Cheka. Just as sure as I am standing here today, you are going to see this measure followed by legislation, sponsored by the proponents of such encroachment upon the rights of the people, which will eventually deprive the people of their constitutional liberty which provides for the possession of firearms for the protection of their homes. I submit to you that it is a serious departure from constitutional government when we consider legislation of this type. I predict that within 6 months of this time there will be presented to this House a measure which will go a long way toward taking away forever the individual rights and liberties of citizens of this Nation by depriving the individual of the private ownership of firearms and the right to use weapons in the protection of his home, and thereby his country. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | But if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights | |
| Alexander Hamilton | The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. | |
| Handgun Control, Inc. | The thought that average citizens will somehow be better able to successfully defend themselves more effectively than our nation's trained professionals is absurd. | |
| Paul Harvey | They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here? | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. | |
| Patrick Henry | Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? | |
| Patrick Henry | The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. | |
| Patrick Henry | Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing
degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own
defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our
own possession and under our own direction, and having them under
the management of Congress? If our defence be the_real_object of
having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more
propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? | |
| George Herbert | One sword keeps another in the sheath. | |
| Charlton Heston | As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated. | |
| Charlton Heston | Here's my credo. There are no good guns, There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people. | |
| Toyotomi Hideyoshi | The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. Therefore, the heads of provinces, official agents, and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government. | |
| Adolf Hitler | This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilised nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future! | |
| Jacob G. Hornberger | Of course, the proponents of political tyranny are usually well-motivated. Those who enacted the gun-registration law in California point to criminals who have used semiautomatic weapons to commit horrible, murderous acts. But the illusion -- the pipe dream -- is that bad acts can be prevented by the deprivation of liberty. They cannot be! Life is always insecure. The only choice is between liberty and insecurity, on the one hand, and insecurity and enslavement on the other. The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government. This is why the gun owners of California might ultimately go down in history as among the greatest and most courageous patriots of our time. | |
| Hubert H. Humphrey | Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how
popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite
safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary
government, and one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible. | |
| Suzanna Gratia Hupp | How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]. | |
| Zachariah Johnson | The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them. | |
| George Jonas | The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties. | |
| Don B. Kates, Jr. | Ironically, the only gun control in 19th century England was the policy forbidding police to have arms while on duty. | |
| Robert J. Kukla | Those who have sought the most in gun control have sought the least in the punishment of criminals. | |
| Benedict D. LaRosa | Since independence in the fourteenth century, the Swiss have been required to keep and bear arms, and since 1515, have had a policy of armed neutrality. Its form of government is similar to the one set up by our Founders -- a weak central government exercising few, defined powers having to do mostly with external affairs and limited authority over internal matters at the canton (state) and local levels. | |
| Richard Henry Lee | To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. | |
| Robert E. Lee | With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword... | |
| Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class). | |
| Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie. | |
| Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. | |
| John Locke | [F]or nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 pounds that way. | |
| John R. Lott, Jr. | If the rest of the country had adopted right-to-carry concealed-handgun provisions in 1992, about 1,500 murders and 4,000 rapes would have been avoided. | |
| Nelson Lund | [T]he police do not and cannot protect law-abiding citizens from criminal violence. ... This thought may not occur to wealthy people who can shelter themselves in low-crime enclaves and who care not at all about their less fortunate neighbors. But no one knows it better than the police, who scrupulously preserve their own right to carry firearms on and off duty (and often after they retire as well) even while some of them advocate disarming those whom the police cannot protect. | |
| Donald S. MacAlvaney | Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As long as they keep their guns in their hands, whatever happened here [China] will never happen there. | |
| General Douglas MacArthur | Wars are caused by undefended wealth. | |
| Niccolo Machiavelli | Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised.... | |
| Niccolo Machiavelli | When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you. | |
| James Madison | The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. ... Besides the advantage of being armed, ... the existence of subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. ... [The governments of Europe] are afraid to trust the people with arms. ... Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. | |
| James Madison | Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. | |
| James Madison | Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. | |
| James Madison | An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government. | |
| Joyce Lee Malcolm | The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government. | |
| Joyce Lee Malcolm | It was during the eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny. | |
| George Mason | To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them. | |
| George Mason | Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. | |
| George Mason | That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State... | |
| George Mason | [W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia. | |
| H. L. Mencken | The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights. | |
| Howard Metzenbaum | What good does it do to ban some guns. All guns should be banned. | |
| Miller v. U.S. | The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime. | |
| Alanna Mitchell | Jim Creechan, a University of Alberta sociologist, said some of the love of guns may have its roots in Alberta's pervasive free-enterprise model of behaviour. 'It's the whole idea that the individual is more important than the collective.' | |
| Tim Moen | I want gay married people to be able to protect their marijuana plants with guns. | |
| James Monroe | Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny. | |
| Prof. Dean Morris | I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ...no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun. | |
| Lyle Myhr | When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet. | |
| National Police Officers' Association of America | We feel that an American citizen of voting age and good character should have the right to purchase without restriction a handgun, pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun, or like item without interference by a government body. | |
| Huey P. Newton | Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up. | |
| Huey P. Newton | The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas.
It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there.
The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand.
They make the racist secure in his racism.
The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation. | |
| Huey P. Newton | Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves. | |
| Nunn vs. State | 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the milita, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right. | |
| P. J. O'Rourke | When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people. | |
| Thomas Paine | From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms!\\
Through the land let the sound of it flee;\\
Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer,\\
In defense of our Liberty Tree. | |
| James Paterson | ... in all countries where personal freedom is valued, however much each individual may rely on legal redress, the right of each to carry arms -- and these the best and the sharpest -- for his own protection in case of extremity, is a right of nature indelible and irrepressible, and the more it is sought to be repressed the more it will recur. | |
| Pennsylvania Gazette | The loyalists in the beginning of the late war objected to associating, arming and fighting, in defense of our liberties, because these measures were not constitutional. A free people should always be left... with every possible power to promote their own happiness. | |
| People vs. Zerillo | The provision in the Constitution granting the right to all persons to bear arms is a limitation upon the power of the Legislature to enact any law to the contrary. The exercise of a right guaranteed by the Constitution cannot be made subject to the will of the sheriff. | |
| Jesse Lee Peterson | We are good citizens, and we cannot protect ourselves because you allow the criminals to run wild. ... I'd like you to come and live in the inner city for a week and see the importance of having a weapon. ... Go after the criminals and not the good people. | |
| Mario Puzo | A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. | |
| Ayn Rand | There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns. | |
| Ayn Rand | Do you wish to know when that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading
is done, not by consent, but by Compulsion -- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing --
when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by
work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming
self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make
terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. | |
| Ronald Reagan | The NRA believes America's laws were made to be obeyed and that
our Constitutional liberties are just as important today as 200 years ago.
And by the way, the Constitution does not say
Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms.
The Constitution says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed.' | |
| Ronald Reagan | Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! | |
| Daniel A. Reed | [S]ince 1933 those in control of the Government, realizing that the power to tax is the power to destroy,
have appeared before the Committee on Ways and Means with the proposal to tax firearms. While they narrowed it down to machine guns on the
ground that it would prevent bandits from using firearms of a certain size, yet the thought was there of getting control of the private firearms of this
country. I know that our chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and others on that committee were on the alert, sensed the danger, and
accordingly went no further than partial taxation and regulation, but I think every member of the committee saw the purpose and the motive of the
proposed tax. | |
| Charley Reese | It is both illogical and inconsistent for a government to say people have a right to life and a right
to self-defense but no right to own the tools necessary to defend their lives. It is illogical for a government that says its police have no obligation
to provide individual protection to deny people the means to protect themselves. It is immoral for a government that repeatedly releases
predators to prey on people to tell those victims they cannot have a weapon for self-defense. It’s stupid for a government that can’t control
criminals, drugs or illegal immigrants to claim it can take guns away from criminals only if honest folks will give up theirs. Gun-control
proposals are also an insult. Gun control by definition affects only honest people. When a politician tells you he wants to forbid you from owning a
firearm or force you to get a license, he is telling you he doesn’t trust you. That’s an insult. The government trusted me with a M-48 tank and
assorted small arms when it claimed to have need of my services. It trusts common Americans with all kinds of arms when it wants them to go kill
foreigners somewhere—usually for the financial benefit of some corporations. But when the men and women take off their uniforms and return to
their homes and assume responsibility for their own and their families’ safety, suddenly the politicians don’t trust them to own a gun. This is pure
elitism. . . . Gun control is not about guns or crime. It is about an elite that fears and despises the common people. | |
| Janet Reno | Waiting periods are only a step.
Registration is only a step.
The prohibition of private firearms is the goal. | |
| Janet Reno | Gun registration is not enough. | |
| Glenn Harlan Reynolds | A 'well regulated militia' was thus one that was well-trained and equipped, not one that was 'well-regulated' in the modern sense of being subjected to numerous government prohibitions and restrictions. | |
| Sheldon Richman | If you own your life, then you have the right to defend yourself against anyone who would deprive you of it. ... And, if you have the right of self-defense, it follows that you have the right to act ... to obtain means appropriate to that defense. That brings us to firearms, particularly the handgun, which so many people would outlaw. The handgun has been called the equalizer ..., and for good reason. It affords smaller, weaker people the chance to defend themselves against bigger, stronger people who threaten them. Handguns offer the otherwise defenseless a convenient, practical, inexpensive method of safeguarding themselves and their families. Banishing handguns -- even if the big and strong were also denied them -- would leave the small and the weak defenseless. | |
| Will Rogers | Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom. | |
| George L. Roman | I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. | |
| Carmine Sarracino | I know, both by reason and by experience, that if you ever need a gun, whether in Katmandu or Los Angeles, at that moment you will have never needed anything so badly in your life. | |
| Justice Antonin Scalia | Nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to 'the people' refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention 'the people,' the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset... The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms... The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.' | |
| Nelson Shields | I'm convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. Of course, it's true that politicians will then go home and say, 'This is a great law. The problem is solved.' And it's also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time. So then we'll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal. | |
| Nelson Turner Shields, III | The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition ... totally illegal. | |
| L. Neil Smith | People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. | |
| L. Neil Smith | Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow. ... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone -- the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the 'great equalizer.' Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. | |
| Josef Stalin | If the opposition (citizen) disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves. | |
| State Gazette (Charleston) | No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen. | |
| State vs. Kerner | The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions. | |
| Howard Stern | When you think about it if somebody is a legal and responsible gun owner, let’s say in Massachusetts, why all of a sudden when he crossed the border is he an outlaw? | |
| Mark Steyn | If gun control bore any relation to homicide rates, Washington, DC would be the safest place in the country. | |
| Josh Sugarmann | Handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. | |
| The Washington Times | [President Clinton] ... ordered the Justice Department to begin studying gun licensing, registration, and collection proposals. | |
| William R. Tonso | [T]hroughout history the unarmed have been safe only as long as the armed (criminals or government agents) have allowed them to be safe. We should beware of any politician, bureaucrat, or intellectual who claims the Second Amendment is outdated, or that it does no more than guarantee the National guard’s right to bear arms. Many of these same people did their best to obstruct investigations of government wrongdoing at Ruby Ridge and Waco. | |
| Mao Tse-tung | Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' Our principle is that the [Communist] Party commands the gun and the gun will never be allowed to command the Party. | |
| Bishop Desmond Tutu | Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility. | |
| United Nations' World Constitution | The age of nations must end... The governments of the nations have decided to order their separate sovereignties into one government to which they surrender their arms. | |
| U.S. Constitution, Second Amendment | 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. | |
| Armando Valladares | Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do. | |
| Lon VanOstran | Using the power of the law to ensure that the law abiding are at the mercy of the lawless is an act of barbarism beyond the realms
of logic. The dreamers and fools who force us to endure the carnage should be on trial along with the criminals they are creating.The world is not
made more civil by forcing the civilized to be the victims of the predators. How dare you, any of you, refuse good law abiding citizens the right
to defend themselves in a country where there were 25,000 murders, 105,000 reported rapes, and 975,000 armed robberies LAST YEAR? | |
| George Washington | Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. The church, the plow, the prairie wagon, and citizen's firearms are indelibly related. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable. Every corner of this land knows firearms, and more than 99 99/100 percent of them by their silence indicate they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference; they deserve a place with all that's good. When firearms go, all goes; we need them every hour. | |
| George Washington | The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend on God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die. | |
| Walter E. Williams | The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny. | |
| Wilson v. State | To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm ... is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege. | |
| Claire Wolfe | Like ‘em or hate ‘em, these once peaceful gun owners of the ‘90s are feeling a lot like Jews of 1939 Germany. Maligned, lied about, persecuted and threatened. Afraid, confused and angry. | |
| James D. Wright | It perhaps goes without saying that the ‘average’ gun owner and the ‘average’ criminal are worlds apart in background,
social outlooks, and economic circumstances. The idea that common, ordinary citizens are somehow transformed into potential perpetrators of
criminally violent acts once they have acquired a firearm seems farfetched, most of all since there is substantial evidence that the typical gun owner is
affluent, Protestant, and middle-class. | |
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