"The fight for freedom is God's fight. Freedom is an eternal law of God. Men cannot break it with impunity, but can only break themselves upon it. When a man stands for freedom, he stands for God. As long as he stands for freedom, he stands with God. And were he to stand alone, he would still stand with God. Any man will be eternally vindicated and rewarded for his stand for freedom." -- Ezra Taft Benson

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -- Declaration of Independance 1776

"When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom." -- Thomas Paine

"A large problem in America today is the enormous size of the federal government. The Constitution does not give the federal government many of the powers that have been wrongfully assumed. You know when $87,000,000,000 is less than one percent of the federal budget that there is a major problem with the checks and balances that were set in place by the Founding Fathers of this nation." -- Anonymous 2003

"Freedom and Justice come out of a box. Sometimes it is out of a jury box and sometimes it comes from the ballot box. Other times it comes from a gun magazine box." -- Unknown

"Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful." -- C.S. Lewis

"What has made the state such a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven." -- F. Holderlin

"It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains." -- Patrick Henry

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." -- Mohandas Gandhi

"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." -- G. K. Chesterton

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." -- George Washington

There is a connection between heaven and earth. Finding that connection makes everything meaningful, including death. Missing it makes everything meaningless, including life.

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." -- George Washington

"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; he who dares not is a slave." -- William Drummond

"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

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." -- Plato

"You know your country is dying when you have to make a distinction between what is moral and ethical, and what is legal." -- John De Armond

"That government is best which governs least." -- Thomas Jefferson

"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." -- 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution

"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; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." -- The Virginia Declaration of Rights, Section 13

"The Declaration of Independence, which underlies the Constitution, holds that the rights of the people come from God, and that the powers of the government come from the people. Let me repeat that: According to the Declaration of Independence, the rights of the people come from God, and the powers of the government come from the people. Unless you grasp this basic order of things, you’ll have a hard time understanding the Constitution."-- Joseph Sobran

"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, page 334.

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law. In areas where our people are the constant victims of brutality, and the government seems unable or unwilling to protect them, we should form rifle clubs that can used to defend our lives and our property in times of emergency, such as happened last year in Birmingham, Plaquemine, Louisiana; Cambridge, Maryland; and Dan ville, Virginia. When our people are being bitten by dogs they are within their rights to kill those dogs. We should be peaceful, law-abiding--but the time has come for the American Negro to fight back in self-defense whenever and wherever he is being unjustly and unlawfully attacked."-- Malcolm X in a press conference, New York City, March 13th 1963

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -- Thomas Paine

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."-- James Madison

"Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them [firearms]; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves." -- Thomas Paine

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage." -- Fraser Tyler, English historian

"It is the soldier, not the reporter who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer who gives freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag and whose coffin is draped by the flag who allows the protester to burn the flag." -- Unknown

"This can only mean that the commentary has displaced the original text, and that “We the People” have been supplanted by “We the Lawyers.” We the People can’t read and understand our own Constitution. We have to have it explained to us by the professionals. Moreover, if the [Supreme] Court enjoys oracular status, it can’t really be criticized, because it can do no wrong." -- Joseph Sobran

"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, Edict of March 18, 1938, H.R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler's Table Talks 1941-1944 (London: Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1953, p. 425-426).

"I think -- you know, we can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles -- it's something I strongly support -- we can't be so fixated on that that we are unable to think about the reality of life that millions of Americans face on streets that are unsafe, under conditions that no other nation -- no other nations -- has permitted to exist."-- Bill Clinton, former United States President

"Some in positions of authority fear an armed populace because of their thirst for unbridled power. These know that firearms in the hands of the common citizen place a check against them." -- Anonymous

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." -- George Washington

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." --Winston Churchill

The Fruits of Gun Control

The Totalitarian Body Count

The syndicated columnist, Walter Williams, who happens to be a college professor, has recently finished a study of governmental murder and has concluded that in the twentieth century far more people were killed by their own governments than died in war. Statistics are always questionable, but Williams' come out as follows:

Killed in Warfare: 39,000,000

Killed by Lenin and Stalin: 62,000,000

Killed by Mao Tse-tung: 35,000,000

Killed by Hitler: 21,000,000

These are the leaders, and the figures are beyond comprehension, but coming down to more comprehensible numbers we find that 2 million were killed in Turkey, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.5 million in Mexico, and 1 million by Tito in the Balkans. It should be noted that the time over which these atrocities were perpetrated has a bearing on the magnitude of their atrocity. Combined executions committed by Lenin and Stalin, for example, were spread over 70 years between 1917 and 1987. Mao's murders took place over about 37 years between 1949 and 1987, so his intensity could have been greater. Hitler's 21 million were murdered over a much shorter period, and so the intensity factor pretty well evens out, but the fact remains that vastly more homicide was perpetrated in this century of slaughter by governments against their own people than by armies against enemies. Man's inhumanity to man seems more virulent when it is domestic.

Jeff Cooper's Commentaries, Volume 3, No. 11 September 1995

If you own a firearm for self defense purposes, I would highly recommend that you attend Front Sight Firearms Training Institute located near Las Vegas, Nevada (www.Frontsight.com).