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.
more Pennsylvania Gazette quotes
Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.
more H. Beam Piper quotes
The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.
more William Pitt quotes
[T]he next time you read or hear about a murder victim, a rape victim or an assault victim, I want you to preface it with the word 'unarmed' so that murder victims become 'unarmed murder victims'; this is especially true in rape. How many times have you read, 'An unidentified woman, heavily armed with a semi-automatic weapon was raped by a man wielding a knife.' No answer is necessary, right?
more The Liberty Pole quotes
The power of nullification plays an important role in the criminal justice system. ... Because an accused criminal is restricted in the defenses he or she can raise, the law recognizes only certain defenses and justification, and correspondingly, limited evidence. The jury’s power to nullify provides an accommodation between the rigidity of the law and the need to hear and respond to positions that do not fit legal pigeonholes, such as claims of spousal abuse before the battered-spouse syndrome received acceptance. Jury nullification permits the jury to respond to a position that does not have the status of a legally recognized defense. The power to nullify guarantees that the jury is free to speak as the conscience of the community.
more Anne Bowen Poulin quotes
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals -- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government -- that it is not a charter _for_ government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government.
more Ayn Rand quotes
A people who mean to continue free must be prepared to meet danger in person; not rely upon the fallacious protection of mercenary armies.
more Edmund Randolph quotes
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
more Ronald Reagan quotes
There are some who've forgotten why we have a military. It's not to promote war; it's to be prepared for peace.
more Ronald Reagan quotes
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.'
more Ronald Reagan quotes
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
more Ronald Reagan quotes
For too long, the world was paralyzed by the argument that terrorism could not be stopped until the grievances of terrorists were addressed. The complicated and heartrending issues that perplex mankind are no excuse for violent, inhumane attacks, nor do they excuse not taking aggressive action against those who deliberately slaughter innocent people.
more Ronald Reagan quotes
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.
more Charley Reese quotes
The purpose of the right to bear arms is twofold; to allow individuals to protect themselves and their families, and to ensure a body of armed citizenry from which a militia could be drawn, whether that militia’s role was to protect the nation, or to protect the people from a tyrannical government.
more Glenn Harlan Reynolds quotes
In the early and mid-1970’s, public advice was to cooperate with robbers and rapists in order to minimize personal injury. Appeasement, in other words. While this may be good advice in some circumstances, as general behavior it makes crime more rewarding. A nation of sheep is nice for wolves.
more Morgan Reynolds quotes
Today, the people who would use guns to violate rights have little trouble getting them, while those who would use them to defend their rights have increasing trouble getting them. ... Gun control is in effect a subsidy for criminals.
more Sheldon Richman quotes
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.
more Sheldon Richman quotes
BATF is a bureaucracy that has outlived its mission. Prohibitionist ended a half century ago. Eliot Ness is no longer needed to chase down gangsters and their untaxed profits from bootlegging. Today no one smuggles tobacco. Treasury agents no longer have anything to do but harass innocent gun owners. The committee [Senate Judiciary Committee] concluded that BATF was a rogue operation that trampled all over the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. Following the congressional hearings, the Treasury Department was so embarrassed by the documented abuses that it drew up plans to abolish the agency. However, it was unable to do so, because neither the customs Bureau nor the Secret Service would accept the transfer of discredited BATF agents into their organization.
more Paul Craig Roberts quotes
I don’t know why liberals want to disarm the law-abiding population, but I do know that not a single argument proffered stands the light of facts. Armed citizens deter far more crimes than the police, and far more lives are saved by the intended victim being armed than are lost in firearm accidents.
more Paul Craig Roberts quotes
In March, 1982, Kennesaw, Georgia, passed a mandatory gun ownership ordinance which requires all heads of households to own a firearm—handgun, rifle or shotgun. In 1982, our crime against persons, which include murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and residential burglary, decreased 74%. In 1983 these same crimes decreased [an additional] 46%. ... I would also like you to be aware that our population has increased in excess of 20% since 1982. We have had no accidents nor incidents involving our citizens with regards to firearms. ... It is a pleasure to see our senior citizens strolling the streets at night without fear of becoming a victim of violent crime.
more Robert L. Ruble quotes
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.
more Carmine Sarracino quotes
By a Declaration, Liberty is born. With Courage she is nourished, and with unceasing Commitment she is guarded.
more Eric Schaub quotes
I am not free until I say so. And there's a good chance I am going to have to fight once I do. Ever since I declared my Independence, I have had to support and defend it.
more Eric Schaub quotes
No, there is a limit to the tyrant's power!
When the oppressed man finds no justice,
When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals
With fearless heart to Heaven,
And thence brings down his everlasting rights,
Which there abide, inalienably his,
And indestructible as stars themselves.
The primal state of nature reappears,
Wherein man confronts his fellow man;
And if all other means shall fail his need,
One last resort remains—his own good sword.
The dearest of our goods we may defend From violence.
We stand before our country,
We stand before our wives, before our children!

more Friedrich Schiller quotes
It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.
more Rick Scott quotes
A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.
more Lucius Annaeus Seneca quotes
A great fortune is a great slavery.
more Lucius Annaeus Seneca quotes
The State…has had a vested interest in promoting attitudes that would tend to make us skeptical of our own abilities, fearful of the motives of others, and emotionally dependent upon external authorities for purpose and direction in our lives.
more Butler D. Shaffer quotes
GDP is an important metric for determining how much the United States could afford to spend on defense, but it provides no insight into how much the United States should spend. Defense planning is a matter of matching limited resources to achieve carefully scrutinized and prioritized objectives. When there are more threats, a nation spends more. When there are fewer threats, it spends less. As threats evolve, funding should evolve along with them. ... Unfortunately, setting defense spending at four percent of GDP would shield the Pentagon from careful scrutiny and curtail a much-needed transparent national debate.
more Travis Sharp quotes
The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war.
more Roger Sherman quotes
Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken.
more Algernon Sidney quotes
[T]here is a difference between lions and asses; and he is a fool who knows not that swords were given to men, that none might be slaves, but such as know not how to use them.
more Algernon Sidney quotes
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.
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
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.
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
[O]ne who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous bodily injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety....
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
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.
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? ... How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself?
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
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... The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.
more Jeffrey R. Snyder quotes
The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that the pickpocket doesn't get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.
more Joseph Sobran quotes
At what exact point, then should one resist the communists? ... How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if during periods of mass arrests people had simply not sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. ... The Organs [police] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers ... and notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.
more Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.
more Lysander Spooner quotes
[F]or everybody has a natural right to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on earth.
more Lysander Spooner quotes
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?
more Howard Stern quotes
[T]his is why the tyrants are moving so quickly to take away our guns. Because they know in their hearts that if they continue the way they’ve been going, boxing Americans into smaller and smaller corners, leaving us no freedom to decide how to raise and school and discipline our kids, no freedom to purchase (or do without) the medical care we want on the open market, no freedom to withdraw $2,500 from our own bank accounts (let alone move it out of the country) without federal permission, no freedom even to arrange the dirt and trees on our own property to please ourselves ... if they keep going down this road, there are going to be a lot more Carl Dregas, hundreds of them, thousands of them, fed up and not taking it any more, a lot more pools of blood drawing flies in the municipal parking lots, a lot more self-righteous government weasels who were “only doing their jobs” twitching their death-dances in the warm afternoon sun ... and soon.
more Vin Suprynowicz quotes
I think the inherent right of the government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster is basic -- basic.
more Arthur Sylvester quotes
For as long as one hundred of us shall remain alive, we shall never in any wise consent submit to the rule of the English, for it is not for glory we fight, nor riches, or for honour, but for freedom alone, which no good man loses but with his life.
more The Declaration of Arbroath 1320 quotes
[N]one are so emboldened as thugs who, in spite of the law are armed, in confrontations with law-abiding citizens who, because of the law, are disarmed.
more The New American quotes
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
more Preamble To The United States Constitution quotes
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