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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. | |
| 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. | |
| Aristotle | Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms. | |
| Roger Baldwin | I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself. … Communism is the goal. | |
| Roger Baldwin | I joined. I don’t regret being a part of the Communist tactic, which increased the effectiveness of a good cause. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the Communists wanted. | |
| 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. | |
| David Boaz | Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government. | |
| Sarah Brady | Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed. | |
| 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. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce. | |
| Joseph S. Clark | [The program of American disarmament outlined in State Department Paper 7277] is the fixed, determined and approved policy of the government of the United States. | |
| 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 | 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 | The Bush administration continues to coddle China, despite its continuing crackdown on democratic reform, its brutal subjugation of Tibet, its irresponsible export of nuclear and missile technology... Such forbearance on our part might have made sense during the Cold War when China was the counterweight to Soviet power. It makes no sense to play the China card now when our opponents have thrown in their hand. | |
| 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. | |
| Communist Rules for Revolution | Communist Rules for Revolution... | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Alan Dershowitz | Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like. | |
| Albert Einstein | I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. | |
| 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. | |
| Dianne Feinstein | Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe. | |
| 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! | |
| 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. | |
| Elbridge Gerry | What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. ...Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins. | |
| Mikhail Gorbachev | Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep. | |
| 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. | |
| Stephen P. Halbrook | Such questions have never been discussed in scholarly publications because the Nazi laws, policies, and practices have never been adequately documented. The record establishes that a well-meaning liberal republic would enact a gun control act that would later be highly useful to a dictatorship. | |
| 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. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice. | |
| Dennis Hennigan | ...The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to guarantee the existence of state military forces that can serve as a counterweight to a standing federal army. Thus, it seems fair to say, the scope of any rights enjoyed by the states under the 2nd Amendment would be determined by the goal of preserving an independent military force not under direct federal control. | |
| 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? | |
| Adolf Hitler | The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so. Indeed I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order. | |
| Adolf Hitler | The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. | |
| 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! | |
| 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. | |
| Tokugawa Ieyasu | To come to know your enemy, first you must become his friend, and once you become his friend, all his defences come down. Then you can choose the most fitting method for his demise. | |
| William Ralph Inge | The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot. | |
| 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 | 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 | No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. | |
| 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. | |
| George F. Kennan | Popular revolt against a ruthless, experienced modern dictatorship, which enjoys a monopoly over weapons and communications, ... is simply not a possibility in the modern age. | |
| Neal Knox | Certainly there are examples of countries where the people remain relatively free after the people have been disarmed, but there are no examples of a totalitarian state being created or existing where the people have personal arms. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 | Destroy the family, you destroy the country. | |
| 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. | |