Posted on 06/20/2003 12:58:48 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo
I'm sure that all the victims of violence before the Fifteenth Century -- right back to poor old Abel -- will be relieved to hear that they didn't get killed after all! << /heavy sarcasm >>
One of the biggest lessons being taught here is the origin of rights, not the second amendment. Sadly, it is one that many, many Freepers have yet to learn. They think we get our rights from an omnipotent government.
Here are a few other good quotes:
Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, 7 October 1789: "The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."
Andrew Ford (UseNet): "The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood: The person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty! Are you free?"
Andrew Ford (UseNet): "Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what's happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759 (Franklin B. Historical Review of Pennsylvania. 1759): "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Bill McIntire, Spokesman for the National Rifle Association, on Norfolk, Va. council's vote to cancel four gun shows, 1992: "Banning gun shows to reduce violent crime will work about as well as banning auto shows to reduce drunken driving."
"Guns cause crime, like flies cause garbage." --Author unknown.
Byron C. Radaker, Chairman and C.E.O., Congoleum Corp.: "Our government has found that the most effective way to control a person is not by the ballot or the bullet, but rather by the 'bucket'. Today, in a country that fought a revolution to rid itself of a repressive government and excessive taxes, government takes 40 percent of everything we earn in the form of taxes."
California citizen attempting to purchase a firearm for self-defense during rioting in Los Angeles, week of 30 April 1992: "What do you mean 'wait fifteen days'? This is America!"
Daniel Webster: "God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."
Daniel Webster: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
David Veal (Usenet): "For every action there is an equal, and opposite, government program"
Edmund Burke (1729-1797): "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke, 1784: "The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion." [Contrast the above with U.S. Senator Joseph Biden's statement: "Banning guns is an idea whose time has come" as reported on 18 November, 1993, by the Associated Press.]
Edward Abbey: "The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy... 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."
"See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." --Frederic Bastiat
Gandhi: "You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won't help, but that is no excuse, you must still act."
George Bush, Made to Robert Sherman of American Atheist Press at the Chicago airport, August 27 1988. The exchange appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on Monday February 27, 1989. It can also be found in "Free Enquiry" magazine, Fall 1988 issue, Volume 8, Number 4, page 16.: "I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
George Washington: "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that's good ..."
H.L. Mencken: "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
James Earl Jones: "The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose."
James Madison: "Resistance to tyranny is service to God."
John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the USA, 471 (1787-88): "Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense..." [Contrast the above with Attorney General Janet Reno's statement: "Gun registration is not enough. I've always proposed state licensing... with some federal standards." as reported by the Associated Press and by ABC on 10 December, 1993.]
Leroy Pyle on Assault Rifles: "You didn't hear Elliot Ness whining about Al Capone's machine gun."
Mark Twain: "What if you were an idiot, and what if you were a member of Congress? But I repeat myself."
Robert Heinlein, in a 1949 letter concerning "Red Planet": "...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals...I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose."
Samuel Adams: "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Senator Edward V. Long: "The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens."
Dem Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (sponsor) during the floor debate of the Brady Bill, 1993 "I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns." "No, we're not looking at how to control criminals ... we're talking about banning the AK-47 and semi-automatic guns." "I'm not interested in getting a bill that deals with airport security... all I want to do is get at plastic guns."
Thomas Jefferson [A quote from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. Taken from Jefferson, On Democracy 20, S. Padover ed., 1939]: "And 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....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Tom Anderson: "I wonder why some of the so-called guardians of freedom are so anxious to register guns and so reluctant to register Communists."
Winston Churchill: "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 too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." - President Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)
Don't think of it as `gun control', think of it as `victim disarmament'. If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals.
"It appears that the murder rate inside prisons is ten times higher than that outside prisons. It must be due to all those Kalashnikov rifles that are issued to prisoners upon their incarceration." --Jeff Cooper in Guns & Ammo magazine, August, 1989.
"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." --Luke 22:36
The second amendent was crafted by the first Congress, although similar provisions existed in the Constitutions of some states, and also showed up in the state conventions which ratified the main body of the Constitution. Some states refused to ratify absent a bill of rights, others only ratified because they were promised that the first Congress would pass one and send it to the state legislatures for ratification. The BOR was passed in 1791, the peace treaty ending the revolutionary war was signed at Paris in 1783, even though the war itself ended a couple of years earlier, so we were not at war with England at the time, nor was the King George the lawful ruler, and had not been for over a decade. The memory was fresh however. The militia was not then defined in federal law, that came the following year.
Bottom line, you need to revise your arguements a bit. I find Hardy's "The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights" to be very good. Also see To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, Joyce Lee Malcom, Harvard University Press, 1994. Another good source of material is GunCite which contains a very meaty excerpt from Malcom's book.
They need to recall that no guns, nor even swords or knives, (unless you consider a boxcutter a knife, which it may technically be) were used on 9-11-2001, yet around 3000 people died.
Four guns in the right hands could have prevented those deaths, but the federal government in it's infinite (lack of) wisdom, forbade those "right hands" from having guns. Even now they continue to forbid it, unless those "hands" are those of volunteer Federal law enforcement officers (known as Federal Flight Deck Officers. (Wouldn't want to legitimize the notion that mere citizens could be armed in order to defend themselves and others, now would they?) See also ALPA who are not happy about many aspects of the FFDO program.
Still a very nice list, regardless.
Well, Ya learn something every day. It is a good quote, though.
Really just need to make it clear that while they were no longer at war with Britain, the war was not far in their past, and they all remembered it very well, including the reasons for it.
Even though they were now the government, for the most part, they still distrusted standing armies and government in general. As Ms. Malcom lays out, the reason for the second amendment, from a governmental perspective, is twofold, one to obviate the need for a standing army, which they considered extremely dangerous to liberty, and to provide a counterbalence to any armies that were raised under the Constitutional power (Art. I, sec. 8) to do so. (note the plural, armies, is in the Constitution. The Air Force can be considered an air army for Constitutional purposes) Evidence of their distrust can be found in the provision that appropriations for such armies can be no for no more than two years. Appropriations for a Navy (singular) are not Constitutionally so restricted. In the event Congress does appropriations for both for a single year.
Yes. The Almighty gave the Tiger, tooth and claw, the horse, swiftness of hoof and if cornered a hard and deadly kick. The concept of being "helpless" is foreign in nature. Every species has some means of self defense. Those who wish to disarm us, are committing the un-natural and subjecting the country to disorder during calamity or subjugation to dictatorship.
Excellent point! The exclusive defenders of the First Amendment, sacrifice the Second Amendment at their own peril.
Agreed! Too bad those "defenders" of the first will probably cheer when the 2nd gets chrushed.
The Left is always the living embodiment of Stalin's New Soviet Man.
We must seize the Senate next year and install judge's of matchless principle.
Those who acknowledge the presence of arms everywhere dissuades evil influence, i.e., more guns, less crime.
The statistically overwhelming majority of gun owners have not killed as many innocent victims as Senator Ted Kennedy (Whale-mASS).
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