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"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."
-- The Constitution of the United States, Amendment II, proposed 25 Sep 1789; ratified 15 Dec 1791
(This one's got to be the first quote we list... it's the one that the left-wingers insist on violating most often!)
"To have really lived, you must have almost died. To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know."
-- Scrawled on a bunker outside Khe Sahn, RVN
"The Second Ammendment ain't about fucking duck hunting."
-- Raider, State President, Minnesota VNVMC
"For those who fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know."
-- Willie "Bo" Nelson, Mancelona, MI
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights."
-- Major General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps, 1930
"The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth."
-- George MacDonald Fraser
"There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure."
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
-- Adlai Stevenson, Jr., speech to the American Legion Convention, 1952
"Love work, hate domination, and do not let your name come to the attention of the ruling powers."
-- The Talmud, "Sayings of the Fathers"
"When the federal government is more concerned with militias than street gangs, then you know for certain that someone real high up
there is scared of something."
-- Right on the Web
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of
justice is no virtue!"
-- Senator Barry Goldwater
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in
silencing the one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
-- John Stuart Mill
"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However,
four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who's crazy?"
-- Andrew Ford
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless ONE of the duties of a good citizen, but it is not THE HIGHEST. The laws of
necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous
adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus
absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John B. Colvin, 20 Sep 1810
"Guns are not always the answer, but obtaining a firearm has saved the lives of many... While I favor keeping guns out of the hands of
felons, youths and the mentally impaired, I oppose adding more bureaucratic obstacles that attempt to fight crime by disarming its
victims."
-- Peter Kasler, NY Times, 13 Jul 91
"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny."
-- Edmund Burke
"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."
-- Andrew Ford
"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and 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."
-- Edward Abbey, The Right to Arms, Abbey's Road, 1979
"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
-- Thomas Jefferson.
"By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia', the 'security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms', our
founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental
tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important
declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For
that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important."
-- Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960
"In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it
does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms... The phrase "the people" meant the same thing in the Second
Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments-- that is, each and every free person. A select militia defined as
only the privileged class entitled to keep and bear arms was considered an anathema to a free society, in the same way that Americans
denounced select spokesmen approved by the government as the only class entitled to the freedom of the press." If anyone entertained
this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely
guarded secrets of the 18th century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis."
-- Stephen P. Holbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right
"It is my belief that there are `absolutes' in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words
meant, and meant their prohibitions to be `absolutes'."
-- Justice Hugo Black, The Bill of Rights, 35 NYU L.R. 865, 1970
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the
very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
-- Charles A. Beard, American Historian, (1874-1948)
"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime."
-- Miller v US, 230 F 2d 486, 489
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent... the greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis Brandeis
"I heartily accept the motto `The government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and
systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, - `That government is best which governs not at all'."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"In America, freedom and justice have always come from the ballot box, the jury box, and when that fails, the cartridge box."
-- Steve Symms, US Senator from Idaho, 1990
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
-- Dolores Ibarruri `La Pasionaria'
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government
from falling into error."
-- Robert H. Jackson, US Judge (1892-1954)
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in
government."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee
individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as
self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty..."
-- Don Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 1983
"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural
human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least to be cheap and is never free of cost."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what
is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner."
-- Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, Feb 1982
"If you are able to vote, then do so. There may be no candidates or issues you want to vote for... but there will certainly be someone or
something to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."
-- Lazarus Long
"Governments derive... 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. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, (absolute power or
influence of any kind) it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
-- US Declaration of Independence
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the
degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic
not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is
as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a
slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms.
But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses;
else he lives precariously, and at discretion."
-- James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: Or, an Inquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses, 1774-1775
"A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are
constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness."
-- Lao-Tzu
Great collection. Thank you.
Good reading.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Semper Fi
Excellent! Here's one of my favorites:
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our 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, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)
"The Second Ammendment ain't about fucking duck hunting."
Gary Condit (or William Jefferson Clinton) would have said: " "The Second Ammendment ain't about ducking f*ck hunting."
>Gun control is keeping a steady aim in high wind
>Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun!
>When the govt. fears the people; that's liberty. When the people fear >the govt.; that's tyranny!
>Weakness invites agression
>Happiness is a belt fed weapon!
>Ethnic Cleansing- Coming soon to a city or state near you, as soon as >they get our guns!
>Those who give up a little freedom for a little security, WILL SOON LOSE >BOTH >AND DESERVE NIETHER!
>Guns are like tattoos, after the first one you will always want to get >another.
>Nobody ever raped a .38
>Government Philosophy: If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is.
>"It is better to die on my feet than to continue living on my knees. " -
>Banning guns to reduce crime is like banning sex to reduce rape.
>Think globally. Act locally. SHOOT BACK!
>Burglars, thieves, beware of flying objects!
>Gun control is being able to hit your target.
>An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject
>Gun laws are enforced at gunpoint.
>Our safety, which art in hollow points ... Hydra-Shok be thy name.
>Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface.
>Another victory for Truth, Justice, and Automatic Weapons.
>My other auto is a Glock 21.
>If free speech includes topless dancing, why not carrying handguns?
>Will Work For Ammo.
>G = Guns, PG = Plenty of Guns, PG-13 = More than 12 guns...
>Handgun Control Incorporated - America's Pro-Rapist Lobby
>Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
>Gunfighting Rule #1 - You must have a gun.
I'm just here for moral support. Ignore the gun.
>If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
>If guns cause crime then video cameras cause porn!
>If guns cause crime, why are we arming police officers?
>Safe sex is wearing your .45 to bed.
>Law of Combat: Automatic weapons - aren't.
>Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.
>The best defense is to stay out of range.
>A sucking chest wound is natures way of telling you to slow down.
>Turned in my guns, all I got was these crummy leg-irons.
>Unknown to the Wicked Witch, the squirt gun was loaded.
>What this country needs is a good 5 dollar plasma weapon.
>Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons.
>But do you trust the government with fully-automatic assault rifles?
>Censorship: The reaction of the ignorant to freedom.
>Enslavement is like old age, it creeps up on you.
>If it saves just ONE life, enslaving you is worth it.
>It's not the bullets that kill you, it's the holes.
>Only Tyrants and Criminals need fear an armed citizen.
>Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
>You want to threaten my freedom, and you expect me to be nice?
>My horse got shot, so I had to break his leg ...
>If it can't overheat, it doesn't have enough firepower!
>"If someone comes to kill you, arise and kill him." The Talmud
>Never draw fire; it irritates the people around you.
>Incoming fire has the right-of-way.
>You want "knockdown power?" Get an M1A1!
>64,999,999 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
>An AR15 IS crime control.
>You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive!
>"Stop, or I'll say stop again." -- British Police
>Guns cause crime like wet streets cause rain..
>"One man with a gun can control 100 without one." - Lenin
>America was created and preserved for 200 years by armed free men.
>Blaming the gun for murder is like blaming the typewriter for libel..
>Gun Control : Job Safety For Criminals.
>NRA Life Member JFK was shot by ACLU Member L.H. Oswald!
>Swords were given to men, that none might be slaves ...
>Gunpowder and alcohol DO mix - but it tastes awful.
>Guns don't kill people; massive tissue trauma does.
>Guns don't kill people...unless you throw it REAL hard.
>Happiness is a one inch pattern at 100 yards!
>I live in a quiet neighborhood, they use silencers.
>Those who beat their guns into plowshares'll plow for those who don't.
>Warning! Driver carries no more than $50 in ammunition.
>If you're happy and you know it, clank your chains!
> If you plan to rob someone, would YOU pick a car with an NRA >sticker?
> 911- Government sponsored Dial a Prayer.
> This country was FOUNDED by religious nuts with guns!
>> guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms -- Don Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 1983
This guy's a socialist gun grabber without a doubt. He believes in prohibiting any type of arms he doesn't like. He'd fit right in with the brady bunch since he doesn't have a clue what "shall not be infringed" means.
>> While I favor keeping guns out of the hands of felons, youths and the mentally impaired -- Peter Kasler, NY Times, 13 Jul 91
Another gun grabber who thinks that by calling people names (felon) he has the right to take away their God given unalienable right of self defense.
I hate to keep harping on this but most of these are largely useless because they do not include sources. One wonders why it so difficult for those who circulate these quotations to do this!
Here's some quotes from guys above who get it:
"It is my belief that there are `absolutes' in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions to be `absolutes'." -- Justice Hugo Black, The Bill of Rights, 35 NYU L.R. 865, 1970
My personal favorite:
"The Second Ammendment ain't about fucking duck hunting."
-- Raider, State President, Minnesota VNVMC
"The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime." -- Miller v US, 230 F 2d 486, 489
Those are great quotes, too. Here's one I heard from a friend of mine, on the subject of self defense:
There's only one way to deal with sheep-killing dogs, and it's not to put more restrictions on the sheep.
O.K, here’s an extensive set of pro- and anti-gun quotes, most of which include sources. If anyone has sources for the few missing ones, I’d greatly appreciate receiving an e-mail about them. Due to the size of this list, I’m posting it in several parts:
PRO-GUN QUOTES:
"Before a standing army can rule the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States." — Noah Webster, An Examination of The Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787
"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." — Thomas Jefferson, Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Smith, Paris, November 13, 1787
"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 those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty-so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator-and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the quality alone ought to suffer? 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 unarmed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree." — Thomas Jefferson, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in "On Crimes and Punishment", 1764
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. 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." — Thomas Jefferson, (source unknown)
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense." — John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-88
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." — Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
"A free people ought . . . to be armed . . ." — George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790, printed in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790.
"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. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." — Patrick Henry, spoken during Virginia's ratification convention, June 14, 1788
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our 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, (source unknown)
"if the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recorse left but the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramont to all forms of positive government." — Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist Paper No. 28
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large, is that they be properly armed." Alexander Hamilton — The Federalist Papers , 184-8
"...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, The Federalist Papers No. 29
James Madison, in The Federalist No. 46, confidently contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European despotisms which he contemptuously described as "afraid to trust the people with arms." He assured his fellow citizens that they need never fear their government because of "the advantage of being armed." (The actual quote is: "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.")
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." — James Madison, Virginia Convention speech, June 16, 1788
Many years later, James Madison stated that "[A] government resting on a minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace."
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person." — James Madison's version of what would later be the Second Amendment
"(The Constitution should be) never 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; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of their grievances: or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures." — Samuel Adams, U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788; as reported in "Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer", August 20, 1789
"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purpose without resistance is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms..." — Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
In his influential Commentaries on the Constitution, Joseph Story emphasized the importance of the Second Amendment. He described the militia as the "natural defence of a free country" not only "against sudden foreign invasions" and "domestic insurrections," but also against "domestic usurpations of power by rulers." He went on to state that "[t]he right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
"Whenever, therefore, the profession of arms becomes a distinct order in the state . . . the end of the social compact is defeated . . . . No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and the soldier in those destined for the defence of the state . . . . Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen." — Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, (source unknown)
"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 and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." — Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer 53 (1788)
At Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification convention in 1788, George Mason argued the importance of the militia and right to bear arms by reminding his compatriots of England's efforts "to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them . . . by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." On June 1, 1788, he also clarified that under prevailing practice the militia included all people, rich and poor. "Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." Mason is generally acknowledged to be the author of the Second Amendment.
Writing after the ratification of the Constitution, but before the election of the first Congress, James Monroe included "the right to keep and bear arms" in a list of basic "human rights" which he proposed to be added to the Constitution.
Zachariah Johnson told the Virginia convention their liberties would be safe because "The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them. The government is administered by the representatives of the people, voluntarily and freely chosen. Under these circumstances should anyone attempt to establish their own system [of religion], in prejudice of the rest, they would be universally detested and opposed, and easily frustrated. This is the principle which secures religious liberty most firmly. The government will depend on the assistance of the people in the day of distress." — 3 Elliot, Debates at 646
"Congress shall have no power to disarm the milita. 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 either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." — Tench Coxe, writing as "the Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 1788
"...[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property...Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." — Thomas Paine, Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775
"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty." — Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Aug. 17, 1789, Annals of Congress, I:750
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion." — Andrew Fletcher (1655-1716), quoted by James Burgh (1714-1775), Political Disquisitions: Or, an Inquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses, 1774-1775
"The right of citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurption and arbitraty power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." — Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries On The Constitution, 1883
"The right of the people to bear arms in their own defence, and to form and drill military organizations in defence of the State, may not be very important in this country, but it is significant as having been reserved by the people as a possible and necessary resort for the protection of self-government against usurpation, and against any attempt on the the part of those who may for the time be in possession of State authority or resources to set aside the constitution and substitute their own rule for that of the people." — 19th Century Judge Thomas M. Cooley, The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America
"The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step -- in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come -- is to teach men to shoot!" — President Theodore Roosevelt's last message to Congress
"In the event of central tyranny, state governments could do what colonial governments had done in 1776: organize and mobilize their Citizens into an effective fighting force capable of beating even a large standing army." — Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights as a Constitution, Yale Law Journal, 1991 (Amar then goes on to quote Madison's Federalist No. 46 writings as one example).
"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." — Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, Feb 1982
"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." — Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota)
"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
"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." — Mahatma Ghandi
"By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia', the 'security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms', our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important." — Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." — Lyndon Johnson
"Sure we'll have fascism in America, but it'll come disguised as Americanism." — Huey Long
"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type legislation should have no difficulties drawing upon long lists of crime rates 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." — Sen Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution
"Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered—one does not usually lead to the other— it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed." — Daniel D. Polsby, Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 73, Number 3, Fall 1997
"When the history of the 20th century is finally written, one of its key features will be the wanton slaughter of more than 170 million people, not in war, but by their own government. The governments that led in this slaughter are the former USSR (65 million) and the Peoples Republic of China (35-40 million). The point to remember is that these governments were the idols of America's leftists. Part of the reason for these and other tyrannical successes was because the people were first disarmed." — Walter E. Willaims, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, in a commentary for the April 2001 issue of America's First Freedom.
"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. Wear a gun to someone else's house, you're saying, 'I'll defend this home as if it were my own.' When your guests see you carry a weapon, you're telling them, 'I'll defend you as if you were my own family.' And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible: 'I don't trust you unless you're rendered harmless'!" - L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach
"No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before." — Colin Greenwood in the study Firearms Control, 1972
"...The authors take Dodge City in 1871, as the archetype of lawlessness in American history. Yet its murder rate was only half that of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in 1990, a rate of 80 per 100,000 annually, meaning that your chances of being murdered over a lifetime in the city are about 1 in 16. Indeed, among children under 12, murder is now the leading cause of death in Washington." — National Review Nov, 4 1991, Paul Johnson's review of the book by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, The Great Reckoning: How the World Will Change in the Depression of the 1990's
."..and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." — Jesus Christ, Luke 22:36 NKJV
"One of the ordinary modes by which tyrants accomplish their purpose without resistance is by disarming the people and making it an offense to keep arms." — Aristotle, The Politics 218, Thomas A. Sinclair translation, Penguin Books, 1962
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." — Voltaire
"Those that beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those that don't." — Unknown
"(The 2nd Amendment) does not say 'shall not be infringed, unless the weapon in question is really scary.' They're SUPPOSED to be scary. The occupants of Washington City are supposed to go to bed every night, wondering if anything they've done today will get them what it got Charles the First in 1649, or Louis XVI in 1793." — Vin Suprynowicz, JFPO web site
"The society of late twentieth century America is perhaps the first in human history where most grown men do not routinely bear arms on their persons and boys are not regularly raised from childhood to learn skill in the use of some kind of weapon, either for community or personal defense - club or spear, broadsword or long bow, rifle or Bowie knife. It also happens to be one of the rudest and crudest societies in history, having jubilantly swept most of the etiquette of speech, table, dress, hospitality, fairness, deference to authority and the relations of male and female and child and elder under the fraying and filthy carpet of politically convenient illusions. With little fear of physical reprisal Americans can be as loud, gross, disrespectful, pushy, and negligent as they please. If more people carried rapiers at their belts, or revolvers on their hips, it is a fair bet you would be able to go to a movie and enjoy the dialogue from the screen without having to endure the small talk, family gossip and assorted bodily noises that many theater audiences these days regularly emit. Today, discourtesy is commonplace precisely because there is no price to pay for it." — Samuel Francis, Chronicles
"In its unanimous decision Friday, the Ohio First District Court of Appeals likened the city suit against gun makers to the 'absurdity' of suing the makers of matches because of losses from arson." — Newspaper account of the dismissal of a frivilous lawsuit against a gun manufacturer.
"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." — Peter Venetoklis
"Gun Control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins." — Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Vanity Fair, 9/99 page 165
"A textual analysis of the Second Amendment supports an individual right to bear arms." — Ruling of federal district judge Sam R. Cummings, in U.S. v. Emerson, 2000
"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
Other decisions by U.S. Courts of Appeals recognizing that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right include the First (Cases v. U.S., 1942), Fifth (U.S. v. Bowdach, 1977), Eighth (U.S. v. Hutzell, 2000), Tenth (U.S. vs. Swinton, 1975), and 11th Circuits (Gilbert Equipment Co., Inc. v. Higgins, 1990). Also, the U.S. Supreme Court recently recognized the Second Amendment as an important individual right in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 2805, 120 L.Ed.2d 674, 696 (1992) and U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1991).
In "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control", (Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997), Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck analyzed data from the Department of Justice (1979-1985 National Crime Survey public use computer tapes). He found victims that defended themselves with a gun against a robbery or an assault, had the least chance of being injured, or of having the crime completed. Doing nothing, trying to escape, reasoning with the offender, or physical resistance (other than with a gun), all had higher probabilities of injury and crime completion. Using more recent data, Lawrence Southwick Jr. found that "victims using guns were consistently less likely to lose cash or other property than other victims, and also establishing that this was true regardless of what weaponry was possessed or used by the offenders." Another study also "found that burglaries in which victims resisted with guns were far less likely to be completed."
"Victims were less likely to report being injured than those who either defended themselves by other means or took no self-protective measures at all. Thus, while 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent." — National Institute of Justice publication, Firearms and Violence
"The frequency with which gun owners accidently shoot a family member in the course of defensive gun use is less than 2 percent . The number of gun defenders who lost a gun to the criminal is less than 1 percent." — Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.
"If defensive gun use is common then many criminals should certainly have encountered armed resistance. Professors James D. Wright and Peter Rossi surveyed 2,000 felons incarcerated in state prisons across the United States. Wright and Rossi reported that 34% of the felons said they personally had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"; 69% said that they knew at least one other criminal who had also; 34% said that when thinking about committing a crime they either 'often' or 'regularly' worried that they "[m]ight get shot at by the victim'; and 57% agreed with the statement, 'Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.'" — James D. Wright & Peter H. Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms (1986). See Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda? by Don B. Kates, et. al. Originally published as 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 513-596 (1994).
"By comparing criminal victimization surveys from Britain and the Netherlands (countries having low levels of gun ownership) with the U.S., Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck determined that if the U.S. were to have similar rates of 'hot' burglaries (that is, burglaries occurring while the homeowner was present) as these other nations, there would be more than 450,000 additional burglaries per year where the victim was threatened or assaulted. (Britain and the Netherlands have a 'hot' burglary rate near 45% versus just under 13% for the U.S., and in the U.S. a victim is threatened or attacked 30% of the time during a "hot" burglary.)" — Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.
"Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners, indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem." — Gary Kleck, Point Blank: Handgun Violence In America
"A Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report found that only 1.7% of federal inmates who possessed a firearm during their offense reported the gun was purchased or traded at a gun show. Another study, by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), supports the BJS report, indicating that less than 2% of guns used by criminals came from gun shows." — Institute For Legislative Action, 2/16/01
"When I began my research on guns in 1976, like most academics, I was a believer in the 'anti-gun' thesis. ... It seemed then like self-evident common sense which hardly needed to be empirically tested. ... [But] the best currently available evidence, imperfect though it is (and must always be), indicates that general gun availability has no measurable net positive effect on rates of homicide, suicide, robbery, assault, rape, or burglary in the U.S. ... Further, when victims have guns, it is less likely aggressors will attack or injure them and less likely they will lose property in a robbery. ... The positive associations often found between aggregate levels of violence and gun ownership appear to be primarily due to violence increasing gun ownership, rather than the reverse." — Prof. Gary Kleck, Florida State Univ, Sch of Criminology from a speech given to the Nat'l Academy of Sciences, 1991, as reported by Don B. Kates, Jr. in "Shot Down", National Review, March 6, 1995, pages 49-54.
"OCTOBER 20, 2000 — Data released last week by the FBI shows that gunshot wounds inflicted during crimes dropped to 39,400 from 64,100 nationwide between 1992 and 1997 -- a decrease of 40%. But during the same five years, the number of guns in America surged to 230 million from 205 million, according to the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers." — Libertarian Party web site
"There are more than 20,000 gun laws currently on the books." — Libertarian Party web site
"A mid-1990's Gallop Poll and the National Institute of Justice reported that Americans owned 192 million guns — 70 million rifles, 65 million handguns, 49 million shotguns and 8 million other long guns. Almost 6 million households with children have guns." — America's First Freedom, July 2001 P. 16
"Since 1994, 1,597 of the 130,000 police officers in "gun free" South Africa have been killed in the line of duty. By contrast, New York City lost 3 of its 41,000 officers last year, all due to car accidents." — America's First Freedom, July 2001, P.26
"On the whole, citizens are more successful gun users than are the police. When police shoot, they are 5.5 times more likely to hit an innocent person than are civilian shooters." — David Kopel, Trust The People: The Case Against Gun Control, CATO Institute Policy Analysis No. 109
"Liberalizing concealed carry laws won't lead to a return to the Wild West - though it wouldn't be bad if it did. ... in 19th Century cattle towns, homicide was confined to transient males who shot each other in saloon disturbances. The per capita robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City's. The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown." — David Kopel, "Have Gun, Will Eat Out", Wall Street Journal, 28 Feb 1994
"Physicians and public-health researchers tend to be quite knowledgeable about medicine and public health. Unfortunately, some of them get the idea that they are also experts in other areas — like nuclear war, or gun violence. Thus, in the 1980s, the group Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) promoted unilateral American nuclear disarmament as the proper scientific response to nuclear danger. Philosophical pacifism was masquerading as science. PSR's Dr. Helen Caldicott predicted in 1984 that nuclear war with the USSR was a mathematical certainty if Ronald Reagan were re-elected." — Dave Kopel, National Review Online, Feb. 27, 2001
"The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our hands. It has been there all along. In a nationwide study, Don Kates at the St. Louis University School of Law found that police succeed in wounding or driving off criminals only 81% as often as armed citizens and are 15% more likely to be wounded or killed themselves. More than FIVE TIMES as many cops shoot some innocent individual in the process as civilians do." — L. Neil Smith, The Atrocity Engineers
"On Monday, a 15-year-old boy opened fire on his classmates in Santee, California, killing two and injuring 13 others at the Santana High School. The suspect, Charles Andrew Williams, was described as a "scrawny" kid who had been picked on by bullies. Over the previous weekend, he had joked about shooting up his school. The story made the front page of almost every major American newspaper, was the lead item on the nightly network news, and is generating around-the-clock discussion on cable TV networks. The crime also prompted new demands to restrict or outlaw guns. Meanwhile, on February 26, a 19-year-old student at the University of California at Santa Barbara plowed his car -- traveling at 60 miles an hour -- into a crowd of college students in Isla Vista, killing four and critically injuring one. The suspect, David Attias, shouted, "I'm the angel of death!" as he was taken away from the scene. He was described by fellow students as troubled, and was known in his dormitory as "Crazy Dave." That story was relegated to the inside of most newspapers, and generated scant attention on network or cable news shows. The crime prompted no demands to restrict or outlaw automobiles." — Libertarian Party press release, March 8, 2001
"School shootings have declined throughout the 1990s, to the point at which a child now has less than a one-in-2-million chance of being killed in school. Today a student is more likely to be killed by lightning than in a school homicide. And it is not just school shootings that have declined: According to the Centers for Disease Control and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, fights, gun possession and overall school crime are down, too."..."Though crime dropped 20 percent nationally from 1990 to 1998, (TV) network coverage of crime increased 83 percent during that period, according to a recent study prepared by the Berkeley Media Studies Group and the Justice Policy Institute." — New America Foundation fellow James Foreman, Jr., The Washington Post, April 23, 2001, page A15
"Research has shown that every year, more than 2.4 million people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals. Of these, more than 192,000 are women defending themselves against sexual assaults. Firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives." — America's First Freedom, April 2001, page 24
"Although 80 million Americans own firearms, accidental deaths involving firearms are roughly equivalent to accidental bicycle deaths." — William Zimsky, The Durango Herald, Feb. 11, 2001
"I use my gun the same number of times I've used my fire detector, my smoke detector, my fire insurance, my earthquake insurance. Which is to say, never. And always." — Clarence Martinelli, 70-year-old school crossing guard and racial unity activist, as told to the Los Angeles Times.
"Cigarette lighters cause more fatal accidents for children than do guns. In 1984, the number of accidental deaths from all types of guns for children under the age of 5 was 34, while that same year 90 children aged 0-4 were killed by cigarette lighters." — Centers for Disease Control, Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, March 11, 1988, p. 145; Consumer's Research, May 1988, p. 34.
"Gun-control means hitting the target. Crime-control means identifying, arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning (or, when appropriate executing) [criminals] with due process of law." — Tom Clancy, quoted on the Usenet discussion group alt.books.tom-clancy
"Switzerland is a land where crime is virtually unknown, yet most Swiss males are required by law to keep in their homes what amounts to a portable, personal machine gun. The same situation exists in Israel, whose armed forces are similar to the Swiss model:Many citizens keep their military weapons--the well known Uzi submachine gun, for example--in their coat closets." — Tom Clancy
" 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 lose." — James Earl Jones
"At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that?" — Clint Eastwood in Parade Magazine, January 12, 1997
"I didn't see any NRA officials killing babies in Waco..." — P. J. O'Rourke
"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." — Edward Abbey
"Our analyses provide no evidence that implementation of the Brady Act was associated with a reduction in homicide rates. In particular, we find no differences in homicide or firearm homicide rates to adult victims in the 32 treatment states directly subject to the Brady Act provisions compared with the remaining control states." — Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 284 No. 5, August 2, 2000)
"To this day, it is 1999, isn't the male primarily responsible for the physical defense of the American home? If you hear a creak on the floor downstairs in the middle of the night, the woman never says, 'Let me check.' You have to check. And you're supposed to go downstairs and confront whoever's down there with Plan B, whatever it happens to be, 'My good man, please give me that firearm and leave the premises'? I mean, give me a break! The reason men are more pro-gun is because they are responsible for the physical protection of the American home." — Chris Matthews, host of CNBC's Hardball
St. Gabriel Possenti, the patron saint of handguns: Canonized by the Vatican in 1920, Gabriel Possenti was an otherwise humble seminarian who brandished two hanguns to save the Italian town of Isola from brigands.
"He who goes unarmed in paradise had better be sure that that is where he is." — James Thurber
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." — Sigmond Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
"Banning gun shows to reduce violent crime will work about as well as banning auto shows to reduce drunken driving." — Bill McIntire, Spokesman for the National Rifle Association
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." — Solomon Short
"We learn from Soldier of Fortune magazine that when Senator Arlen Specter issued a request last summer for the names of all known militia members at least one citizen did what he could do to help. He sent Specter a copy of the local phone book. According to the Founding Fathers, almost everybody not in the military is in the militia." — Jeff Cooper
"A gun is no more responsible for killing people than a spoon is responsible for making Rosie O'Donnell fat." — Travis McGee
"The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20." — Sam Cohen
ANTI-GUN QUOTES:
"Like flat earth fanatics, Second Amendment fanatics just don't get it. Facts are facts. The earth is not flat. And Constitutional law is Constitutional law. The Second Amendment is not absolute. It does not guarantee the mythical individual right to bear arms we will hear argued for today. The gun lobby and its friends in Congress can line up professors of history and law from here to NRA headquarters and back. They can all swear what they think the Second Amendment means, and how many angels can dance on a pinhead. But the settled law is flatly against them." — U.S. Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY), co-sponsor of the Brady Act, in a statement before the U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Crime, April 5, 1995.
"And, I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I'd walk to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me." — U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), during U.S. Senate hearings on terrorism held in Washington, D.C. on April 27, 1995
"I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers." — Allan Rock, Canada's Minister of Justice Maclean's "Taking Aim on Guns", April 25, 1994, page 12.
" ... protection of life is NOT a legitimate use for a firearm in this country sir! ... Not! That is expressly ruled out!" Allan Rock, Canada's Minister of Justice VCR taping at the Triwood community centre in Calgary Dec.1994
"Therefore, where a firearm is prohibited because it is deemed an unacceptable risk to public safety, it is not in the public interest to compensate those who may have owned the firearm when the decision was implemented." — Allan Rock, Canada's Minister of Justice Letter received by National Firearms Association (Australia)
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall." — Adolf Hitler, Edict of 18 March 1939
"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA — Ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State." — Heinrich Himmler
"Juden haben waffen!Juden haben waffen! [The Jews have arms...]" — Astonished outcry of retreating German soldier. Israel Gutman,"Resistance: the Warsaw Ghetto uprising". New York: Houghton Mifflin.1994.207, A publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
"The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. [...] They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results." — Prime Minister Benito Mussolini before the Italian Senate, June 8, 1923
[To insure quick Communist victory in civil warfare, there] "arises the necessity of disarming the bourgeoiseie and arming the workers, of creating a Communist army. . " — Leon Trotsky, "Manifesto of the Communist International to the Proletariat of the entire World" in A Documentary History of Communism, ed. Robert V. Daniels (New York: Random House, 1960), Vol. 2, p. 90.
"Only the Soviets can effectively arm the proletariat and disarm the bourgeosie. Unless this is done, the victory of socialism is impossible." — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Lenin’s Collected Works, Theses and Report on Bourgeoisie Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, March 4, 1919, Vol. 28, p. 466.
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."— Joseph Stalin, Reply to the discussion on the Political Reports of the Central Committee, Dec. 7, 1927. Stalin, Works, Vol. 10, p. 378.
"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." — Mao Zedong, Problems of War and Strategy, Nov 6 1938 (published in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, 1965)
"In 1986, while governor of Massachusetts, (Michael) Dukakis in effect enunciated the program associated with the anti-gun view: 'I do not believe in people owning guns. Guns should be owned or possessed] only [by the] police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.'" — Don B. Cates, Jr., Bigotry, Symbolism And Ideology In The Battle Over Gun Control, Public Interest Law Review, Copyright, 1992, National Legal Center for the Public Interest
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." — Sir Alex Fraser Tyler (1742-1813)
"The Militia Laws should be repealed and none suffered to be re-enacted, & the Arms of all the People should be taken away, & every piece of Ordnance removed into the King's Stores, nor should any Foundry or manufactory of Arms, Gunpowder, or Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without License; they will have but little need of such things for the future, as the King's Troops, Ships & Forts will be sufficient to protect them from any danger" — William Knox, Under Secretary of State in the British Colonial Office, What is Fit to be Done with America? 1777.
"...it's just under 11 children a day in the United States dying from gun violence." — HCI President Michael Barnes, speaking before the U.S. Judiciary Comittee's hearing on John Ashcroft's Attourney General nomination, January 19, 2001. (To reach 11 children, HCI counts anyone under age 20 as a child, obscuring the fact that most of these deaths are assaults and suiciudes among 15- to 19-year olds. If you insist on counting anyone under 20 as a child, the actual number of accidental deaths is 17 times lower than this figure.) — America's First Freedom, April 2001, page 64.
"Investigate the NRA with renewed vigor. Print names of those who take NRA funds. Support all causes the NRA opposes. The Times-Herald is right. The work a day guy doesn't envision total confiscation, but many with the real power to sway public opinion and effect change in America do." — T. Winship, Editor - Boston Globe, in Editor and Publisher Magazine, April 24, 1993, pg. 24
"The only way to discourage the gun culture is to remove the guns from the hands and shoulders of people who are not in the law enforcement business." — New York Times, September 24, 1975
"The Brady Bill's only effect will be to desensitize the public to regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation." — Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, April 5, l996.
"There is no reason for anyone in this country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution." — Michael Gartner, former NBC News President, USA Today, January 16, 1992
"Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation." — Charles Krauthammer, columnist, Washington Post, April 5, 1996
"Gun violence won't be cured by one set of laws. It will require years of partial measures that will gradually tighten the requirements for gun ownership, and incrementally change expectations about the firepower that should be available to ordinary citizens." — New York Times, December 21, 1993
"We are inclined to think that every firearm in the hands of anyone who is not a law enforcement officer constitutes an incitement to violence. Let's come to our senses before the whole country starts shooting itself up on all its Main Streets in a delirious kind of High Noon." — Washington Post, August 19, 1965 "By a curiosity of evolution, every human skull harbors a prehistoric vestige: a reptilian brain. This atavism, like a hand grenade cushioned in the more civilized surrounding cortex, is the dark hive where many of mankind's primitive impulses originate. To go partners with that throwback, Americans have carried out of their own history another curiosity that evolution forgot to discard as the country changed from a sparsely populated, underpoliced agrarian society to a modern industrial civilization. That vestige is the gun -- most notoriously the handgun, an anachronistic tool still much in use." — Time, April 13, 1981
"We will never fully solve our nation's horrific problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture and sale of handguns and semi-automatic weapons." — USA Today
"I say 'sorry'. It is 1999, we have had enough as a nation. You are not allowed to own a gun and if you do own a gun, I think you should go to prison." — Rosie O'Donnell, Rosie O'Donnell Show, May 1999
"Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership? ...(W)ho can still argue compellingly that Americans can be trusted to handle guns safely? We think the time has come for America to tell the truth about guns. They are not for us. We cannot handle them." — Los Angeles Times
"Repealing the Second Amendment is no cause for the faint-hearted, but it remains the only way for liberals to trigger an honest debate on the future of our bullet-plagued society. So what if anti-gun advocates have to devote the next 15 or 20 years to the struggle? The cause is worth the political pain. Failing to take bold action condemns all of us to spend our lives cringing in terror every time we hear a car backfire." — USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro, September 17, 1999
"Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago....[The government should] deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrasing Amendment." — George Will, 1991
"I'm convinced that we have to have Federal legislation to build on. We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily--given the political realities--going to be very modest... Our ultimate goal--total control of handguns in the United States--is going to take time... The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered, and the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns, and all handgun ammunition totally illegal." — Nelson T. Shields III, Founder of Handgun Control Incorporated (HCI)
"To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes." — Sarah Brady, Tampa Tribune, Oct 21, 1993
"...I don't believe gun owners have rights." — Sarah Brady, Hearst Newspapers Special Report, "Handguns in America" October 1997
"The NRA is bound and determined not to allow the Brady Bill to be enacted. And they're a fearsome opponent. They see this as `threshold' legislation. Because they realize if we get the Brady Bill to President Clinton and he signs it into law, then the door will be wide open for further gun control legislation. Of course, we hope that's true because, as you know, our campaign to enact a National Gun Policy to combat gun violence doesn't end with the Brady Bill - it just begins." — Sarah Brady, HCI newsletter, Spring 1993
"It [the Brady Bill] is not a panacea. It's not going to stop crimes of passion or drug-related crime." — Sarah Brady, Washingtonian Magazine, March 1991
"We believe that if any gun dealer, manufacturer, or gun owners wants to test the law in court, they should be given every opportunity. Arrest them. Put the burden on them to prove the law is too vague." — Louis Tolley, HCI Handgun Control Inc., on HCI's position concerning the Roberti-Roos assault weapons ban, 1991.
"Our goal is to not allow anybody to buy a handgun. In the meantime, we think there ought to be strict licensing and regulation. Ultimately, that may mean it would require court approval to buy a handgun." — President of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Michael K. Beard, Washington Times 12/6/93 p.A1.
"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it." — Dianne Feinstein, United States Senator, HCI - Handgun Control Inc. Board Member
"The national guard fulfills the militia mentioned in the 2nd amendment. Citizens no longer need to protect the states or themselves." — U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein
"Our ultimate goal--total control of handguns in the United States--is going to take time ... The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered, and the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns, and all handgun ammunition totally illegal." — Nelson T. Shields, Founding Chair of HCI, in a letter to Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Founding Chair of HCI - Handgun Control Inc.
"There is no reason for anyone in this country - anyone except a police officer or military person - to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns." — President Bill Clinton while signing the Brady Bill in 1993
"As much as I oppose the average person's having a gun, I recognize that some people have a legitimate need to own one. A wealthy corporate executive who fears his family might get kidnapped is one such person. A Hollywood celebrity who has to protect himself from kooks is another. If Sharon Tate had had access to a gun during the Manson killings, some innocent lives might have been saved." — Joseph D. McNamara, San Jose, CA ex-Police Chief and Handgun Control, Inc. spokesman, "Safe and Sane",1984, p. 71-72.
"What good does it do to ban some guns? All guns should be banned." — former Ohio Senator Howard Metzanbaum
"I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than the police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers... no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun." — Professor Dean Morris, Director, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, in testimony to Congress
"You can't get around the image of people shooting at people to protect their stores and it working. This is damaging to the [gun control] movement." —Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, in The Washington Post, May 18, 1993, referring to the Korean shopkeepers who guarded their property with "assault weapons" during the L.A. riots.
"Assault weapons... are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." — Josh Sugarmann, Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation, March 1989
"... many Americans do believe that handguns are effective weapons for home-defense and the majority of Americans ...believe the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms. Yet, many who support the individual's right to own a handgun have second thoughts when the issue comes down to assault weapons. Assault weapons are often viewed the same way as machine guns and `plastic' firearms -- a weapon that poses such a grave risk that it's worth compromising a perceived constitutional right." — Josh Sugarmann, Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation, March 1989
"One tenet of the National Rifle Association's faith has always been that handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. For once, the NRA is right and America's leading handgun control organization [Sarah Brady's Handgun Control, Inc.] is wrong. Criminals don't buy handguns in gun stores. That's why they are criminals." — Josh Sugarmann, then communications director for the National Coalition to Ban Handguns ("The NRA Is Right," The Washington Monthly, June 1987)
"We urge passage of federal legislation--and meanwhile, in its absence, the partial remedy of state law--to prohibit, with few and narrowly drawn exceptions, the private ownership and possession of handguns, much the way existing laws prohibit machine guns, grenades and cannons. — Adopted by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Board of Directors in September 1976; see national ACLU policy #47, Gun Control
"No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence." — Ann Landers, Director, Handgun Control, Inc.
"We favor nothing less than total ban on the sale and manufacture of all handguns, with exception for police, military personnel and pistol clubs... that most persons possessing firearms are a menace to themselves and their families. . that private ownership of handguns also be prohibited." — Common Cause testimony to a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee, June 1972
Transcript from U.S. v. Emerson:
Judge Garwood: "You are saying that the Second Amendment is consistent with a position that you can take guns away from the public? You can restrict ownership of rifles, pistols and shotguns from all people? Is that the position of the United States?"
Meteja (attorney for the government): "Yes"
Garwood: "Is it the position of the United States that persons who are not in the National Guard are afforded no protections under the Second Amendment?"
Meteja: "Exactly."
Garwood: "Membership in the National Guard isn't enough? What else is needed?"
Meteja: "The weapon in question must be used IN the National Guard."
"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. — Majority Supreme Court opinion in "U.S. vs. Miller" (1939)
Thanks. I will reciprocate:
"Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shogun or a rifle." Malcolm X, April 3. 1964. (Source: "The Ballot or the Bullet," reprinted in Irving J. Rein, ed., *The Relevant Rhetoric* (New York: The Free Press, 1969, 67-68. Originally published in *Malcolm X Speaks* ((New York: Merit Publishers, 1965)
You might also enjoy this:
"The lesson this [a successful example of resistance to lynchers] teaches and which every African American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give." Civil rights leader Ida B. Wells.
Source: Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases (New York, 1892), 22-23.
"The Second Ammendment ain't about fucking duck hunting." -- Raider, State President, Minnesota VNVMC
It is not from hordes of deer, that the security of a free states needs defending.
The Wells quote is an excellent one - I'm surprised it isn't used more often!
I'm more of a Marlin man myself, but the point is a good one. I'm sure there are a few Korean shopkeepers in Los Angeles that would agree with it.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke- "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-
I love Andrew Fords: ""25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who's crazy?" Especially since I live in one of these open carry states. However, does anyone know what year this was said, and whether or not the math is unchanged (25 states, half of all murders)?
impressive list of quotes, thanks
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