The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their
possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types
of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the
collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings.
-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi, dictator of Japan, August 1588
You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to
follow the first one.
-- Rush Limbaugh, in a moment of unaccustomed profundity 17 Aug 1993
“The great object is, that every man be armed. [...]
Every one who is able may have a gun.”
-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 14 1788
Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic
weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple
weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the
weak.
-- George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", 1945
The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most
governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right
within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies
are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear
arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited,
liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of
destruction."
-- Henry St. George Tucker (in Blackstone's Commentaries)
If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are
perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today,
I would pick BATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms].
-- U.S. Representative John Dingell, 1980
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.
-- Jeff Snyder
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government,
no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to
keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is
just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard
against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which
historically has proved to be always possible.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1960
“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only]
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 to your walks.”
-- Thomas Jefferson, writing to his teenaged nephew.
That the said Constitution shall never be 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...
-- Samuel Adams, in "Phila. Independent Gazetteer", August 20, 1789
The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant
that government governs only with the consent of the governed.
-- Jeff Snyder
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one
may have to back up his acts with his life.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, "Beyond This Horizon", 1942
Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the
effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the
mercy of the state, unable to resist.
-- Robert Anson Heinlein, 1949
Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty,
will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.
-- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.
The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale
developments with armed security guards -- and who want to keep other
people from having guns to defend themselves. But what about
lower-income people living in high-crime, inner city neighborhoods?
Should such people be kept unarmed and helpless, so that limousine
liberals can 'make a statement' by adding to the thousands of gun laws
already on the books?"
--Thomas Sowell
“To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
-- George Mason, speech of June 14, 1788
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?
-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens
of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
-- James Madison, The Federalist Papers
“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look
upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
-- Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession
or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches
in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the
preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot
say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear
such an instrument. [...] The Militia comprised all males
physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.
-- Majority Supreme Court opinion in "U.S. vs. Miller" (1939)
If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation
should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of
criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so
after a century and a half of trying -- that they must sweep under the
rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the
northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both
Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 -- establishes the repeated,
complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.
-- Senator Orrin Hatch, in a 1982 Senate Report
No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession
of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.
-- "Political Disquisitions", a British republican tract of 1774-1775
When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".
-- Claire Wolfe, "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution"
According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of
the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that
only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured,
as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These
percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively
comply with the felon's demands. Three times as many were injured if
they used other means of resistance.
-- G. Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research,"
Law and Contemporary Problems 49, no. 1. (Winter 1986.): 35-62.
[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under
the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In
that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in
prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at
fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake."
-- Charlton Heston, FOX News Sunday, 18 May 1997
Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what
the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An
armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the
final defense against tyranny.
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.
-- Edward Abbey, "Abbey's Road", 1979
(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by
claiming it's not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging
others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they
don't like.
-- Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School
“Gun control” is a job-safety program for criminals.
.. a government and its agents are under no general duty to
provide public services, such as police protection, to any
particular individual citizen...
-- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)
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.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book