"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. 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."
Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and punishment - (1764).
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."
Patrick Henry during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)
"...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 the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."
Alexander Hamilton
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
Samuel Adams (1780)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
George Mason, 3 Eliot, Debates at 425-426.
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the right of resistance? Let them take arms...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
"Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense."
John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787-1788).
"A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms …To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms . . . "
Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters From the Federal Farmer 53 (1788).
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason, during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)
"The said Constitution be never construed …to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
Samuel Adams, during Massachusetts's Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788).
"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? 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 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
'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 . . . . The mind that aims at a select militia [note: like the National Guard], must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle.'
Richard Henry Lee, Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, ed. Walter Hartwell Bennett
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense...." Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers No.28
"Who are the militia? are they not ourselves?...Congress has 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 the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."
Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette February 20, 1788
"The constitution ought to secure a genuine militia and guard against a select militia. .... all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments to the community ought to be avoided."
Richard Henry Lee
"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."
Tench Coxe in Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution
"The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . .(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison of Virginia, The Federalist, No. 46
"The defense of one's self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law."
James Wilson, The Works of James Wilson 335 (J.D. Andrews ed. 1896).
"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."
John Adams, Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1763,reprinted in The Works of John Adams 438 (Charles F. Adams ed., 1851).
"What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen...The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year."
Alexander Hamilton The Federalist Papers, No. 29.
Nor do any other natural rights! That's what makes them natural rights. Natural rights, are for all Americans, however, not just the protected cop class.