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The Second Amendment - Commentaries
Personal Archives | 11-06-03 | PsyOp

Posted on 11/06/2003 6:19:06 PM PST by PsyOp

The Second Amendment - Commentaries (from the Good, the Bad, and the just plain Stupid).




"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." - Second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791.




If you believe the term "militia" means the National Guard then you must believe that freedom of speech is reserved for the Government Printing Office. - Unknown.


You [Minutemen] are placed by Providence in the post of honor, because it is the post of danger. The eyes not only of North America and the whole British Empire, but of all Europe, are upon you. Let us be, therefore, altogether solicitous that no disorderly behavior, nothing unbecoming our characters as Americans, as citizens and Christians, be justly chargeable to us. ­ Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, Charge to The Minutemen, 1774.


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be provided, at the charge and expense of the government of the United States, thirty thousand stand of arms, which shall be deposited by order of the President of the United States, at suitable places; for the purpose of being sold to the governments of the respective States, or the militia thereof, under such regulations, and at such prices as the President of the United States shall prescribe. - Fifth Congress of the United States of America, "An Act providing Arms for the Militia throughout the United States", July 06, 1798.


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. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed--but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government--and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws. - Edward Abbey, The Right to Bear Arms, 1979.


[The NRA] claimed that they vigorously fought [the Brady Bill] at every turn and every step... because it was the nose of the camel [under the tent].... Today we would like to tell you what the rest of the camel looks like. - Richard Aborn, President, Handgun Control, Inc., Dec. 8, 1993.


The individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a 'well regulated militia." Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected. - ACLU, Policy statement #47, 1996.


A militia law, requiring all men, or with very few exceptions besides cases of conscience, to be provided with arms and ammunition, to be trained at certain seasons; and requiring counties, towns, or other small districts, to be provided with public stocks of ammunition and entrenching utensils, and with some settled plans for transporting provisions after the militia, when marched to defend their country against sudden invasions; and requiring certain districts to be provided with field-pieces, companies of matrosses, and perhaps some regiments of light-horse, is always a wise institution, and, in the present circumstances of our country, indispensable. - John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776.

Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense. - John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-88.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws. - John Adams, ibid.



That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms... - Samuel Adams, Massachusettes Constitutional Convention, 1788.

And that the said Constitution [shall] 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 necessary for the defense 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 grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possesions. - Samuel Adams, ibid.



Mr. Madison has introduced his long expected amendments... The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people. - Fisher Ames, Letter to F.R. Minoe, June 12, 1789.


I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand. - Susan B. Anthony, July 1871.


Gun owners are the new niggers... of society. - John Aquilino.


Both the oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms. - Aristotle.

The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms: the sword and sovereignty ever walk hand-in-hand together. - Aristotle.

Those who possess and can wield arms are in a position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not. - Aristotle.

The farmers have no arms, the workers have neither land nor arms; this makes them virtually the servants of those who possess arms. In these circumstances the equal sharing of offices and honors becomes an impossibility. - Aristotle.

Let us then enunciate the functions of a state and we shall easily elicit what we want: First there must be food; secondly, arts for life requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants ... - Aristotle, Politics, c.334-23 B.C.

Citizenship ought to be reserved for those who carry arms. - Aristotle, ibid.

Those who are in sovereign control of arms are in a sovereign position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not. -Aristotle, ibid.



If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege. - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878.


It is by these Confederates agreed that the charge of all just wars, whether offensive or defensive, upon what part or member of this Confederation soever they fall, shall both in men, provisions and all other disbursements be borne by all the parts of this Confederation in different proportions according to their different ability in manner following, namely, that the Commissioners for each Jurisdiction from time to time, as there shall be occasion, bring a true account and number of all their males in every Plantation, or any way belonging to or under their several Jurisdictions, of what quality or condition soever they be, from sixteen years old to threescore, being inhabitants there. And that according to the different numbers which from time to time shall be found in each Jurisdiction upon a true and just account, the service of men and all charges of the war be borne by the poll: each Jurisdiction or Plantation being left to their own just course and custom of rating themselves and people according to their different estates with due respects to their qualities and exemptions amongst themselves though the Confederation take no notice of any such privilege: and that according to their different charge of each Jurisdiction and Plantation the whole advantage of the war (if it please God so to bless their endeavors) whether it be in lands, goods, or persons, shall be proportionately divided among the said Confederates.
     It is further agreed, that if any of these Jurisdictions or any Plantation under or in combination with them, be invaded by any enemy whomsoever, upon notice and request of any three magistrates of that Jurisdiction so invaded, the rest of the Confederates without any further meeting or expostulation shall forthwith send aid to the Confederate in danger but in different proportions; namely, the Massachusetts an hundred men sufficiently armed and provided for such a service and journey, and each of the rest, forty-five so armed and provided, or any less number, if less be required according to this proportion. - The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England, May 19, 1643.


Any government that would attempt to disarm its people is despotic; and any people that would submit to it deserve to be slaves! - Stephen F. Austin, 1835.


There is no Constitutional guarantee for private ownership of firearms. - "A History of the Second Amendment", Austin American Statesman, April 3, 2000.


But above all, for Empire and Greatness, it importeth most; That a Nation doe profess Arms, as their principal Honor, Study, and Occupation. For the Things, which we formerly have spoken of, are but Habilitation towards Arms: And what is Habilitation without Intention and Act? - Francis Bacon, Essays or Counsels, Civil & Moral: Of The True Greatness of Kingdoms & Estates, 1625.


But if any one should ask: must the people, then, always lay themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny - must they see their cities pillaged and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to the tyrants lust and fury, and themselves and their families reduced by their king to ruin and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which Nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defense is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the King himself. - Barclay, Against Monarchy.


It is because the people are citizens that they are with safety armed. The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the government, not to the society; as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms and no possible disadvantage. - Joel Barlow, Equality in America, 1792.


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. - Michael K. Beard, President of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Washington Times, December 6, 1993.


Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. - Cesare Bonesana, Marchese Di Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764.

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. 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 guilty 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 armed 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. - Cesare Beccaria, ibid.

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. - Cesare Beccaria, ibid.



There is no individual right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. - Richard Benedetto, "Gun Rights Are A Myth", USA Today, December 28, 1994.


Fate saves the living when they drive away death by themselves. - Beowulf, c.900 A.D.


I say carry wherever you go regardless of whether it is legal or not. You don't need a "license" to save your own life. Americans are born with a CCW license. - Josh Bergman.


When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace. - The Bible, New Testament, Luke 11:21.

He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. - The Bible, New Testament, Luke 11:36.



Banning guns is an idea whose time has come. - U.S. Senator Joseph Biden (D), Associated Press interview, November 18, 1993.


Prevention of popular insurrection and resistance to the government by disarming the bulk of the people... is a reason oftener meant, than avowed, by the makers of forest and game laws. - Blackstone.


For, in principle, there is no difference between a law prohibiting the wearing of concealed arms, and a law forbidding the wearing such as are exposed; and if the former be unconstitutional, the latter must be so likewise. But it should not be forgotten, that it is not only a part of the right that is secured by the constitution; it is the right entire and complete, as it existed at the adoption of the constitution; and if any portion of that right be impaired, immaterial how small the part may be, and immaterial the order of time at which it be done, it is equally forbidden by the constitution. - Bliss vs. Commonwealth, 12 Ky., (1822).


Yes, I'm denying you your rights. - L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, questioned about constitutional rights at a "Save the Brady Bill" rally, cited by Steve Comus, Western Outdoor News, September 4, 1992.


We have a long way to go before we see a truly effective gun-control law in this country (the U.S.A.). But more and more, the lawmakers are understanding that the American people want change. The only people who still don't get it are the people over at the Evil Empire... the gun lobby. - James Brady of Handgun Control, Inc., in The Ottawa Citizen, April 23, 1994.

For target shooting, that's okay. Get a license and go to the range. For defense of the home, that's why we have police departments. - James Brady, Parade Magazine, June 26, 1994.



The House passage of our bill is a victory for this country! Common sense wins out. I'm just so thrilled and excited. The sale of guns must stop. Halfway measures are not enough. - Sarah Brady, July 1, 1988.

We must get rid of all the guns. - Sarah Brady, speaking on behalf of HCI with Sheriff Jay Printz & others on "The Phil Donahue Show", September, 1994.

Unless they're a fugitive or a felon, or adjudicated mentally ill, we're not against them buying guns at all. - Sarah Brady, October 1997.

They are looking only to protect gun owners' quote - and I stress that - rights, because I don't believe gun owners have rights. The Second Amendment has never been interpreted that way. Now I am not for taking guns away or denying guns to law-abiding citizens, but I don't think it's a constitutional right that they have, and every court case that's ever come down has shown that. - Sarah Brady, "Handguns in America", Hearst Newspapers Special Report, October, 1997.



It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the 'Saturday Night Special' is emphasized because it is cheap and being sold to a particular class of people. The name is sufficient evidence - the reference is to "niggertown Saturday night." - B. Bruce-Briggs, Public Interest, 1976.


Some of the public safety concerns which we imagined or anticipated a couple of years ago, to our pleasant surprise, have been unfounded or mitigated. - Fairfax County VA Police Major Bill Brown, The Alexandria Journal, July 9, 1997.


If their assaults be verbal, their defense must be likewise verbal; if the sword be drawn against them, they may also take arms, and fight either with tongue or hand.... - Stephan Junius Brutus, A defense of Liberty Against Tyrants, 1579.


The assertion of a right at ridiculous lengths--the absolutization of it, in the manner of the American Civil Liberties Union--is a way of undermining it. If the Constitution says you can say anything you want under any circumstances, then you can shout "fire" in a crowded movie theater. If you have the right to remain silent in all circumstances, then you can decline to give testimony vital to another citizen's freedom and rights. If you insist that a citizen has the right to own a machine gun, you discredit his right to own a pistol or a rifle. - William F. Buckley, Jr., "Exit Gun Control," townhall.com, April 10, 2002.


Nothing will make a nation so unconquerable as a militia, or every man's being trained to arms. - James Burgh.

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. And though for a while, those, who have the sword in their power, abstain from doing him injury, yet by degrees he will be awed. - James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses, 1774.



After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. - William S. Burroughs.


Passing more gun laws will not stop crime, I think we should more strictly enforce existing laws and try and heal our nation's social woes instead of passing more laws. - George W. Bush.


You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. - Johnny Carson.


An armed society is a free society. - Howie Carr, Boston Herald columnist.


Armas para que?" ("Guns for what?"). - Fidel Castro, Cuban Dictator; establishing a policy to prevent others from ending his "presidency" the way he began it - overthrowing Batista.


The great advantage of arming pilots... is not that they could shoot a hijacker. It's that they would deter terrorists from trying to hijack a plane at all. If all their trouble is going to lead them to the business end of a .45, Al Qaeda operatives will have a strong incentive to look for softer targets. An armed pilot is not a perfectly risk-free option. But compare it to the dangers of unarmed pilots. - Steve Chapman, "Guns In The Cockpit: A Boon to Security," townhall.com, May 27, 2002.


Let's start with the earnest Rosie O'Donnell. She radiates sincerity. She has some facts at her command. And yet, when Cokie Roberts asked about Paramount's role in producing entertainment that glorifies violence, O'Donnell stashed her halo and resorted to a staunch defense of the industry that butters her bread. People all over the world see our movies, she countered, but suffer nowhere near the level of gun violence we do. So it's the guns.
     Yet O'Donnell does not explain why this nation, which has always had ready access to guns, did not suffer the kind of gun violence it now does 50 or 75 years ago. Most men over 50 can recall learning to shoot when they were barely into adolescence. Yet they would no more have taken a gun to school and shot their classmates than they would have gone to school naked. - Mona Charen, "Moms Yes, Gun Control No," May 16, 2000.

Do I wish America had never stockpiled millions upon millions of guns in the first place? Yes. Do I wish it were possible to keep guns from criminals through licensing and registration? Emphatically yes. But public policy cannot be based on wishes.
     The key to Columbine and the other acts of savagery in modern America is, to borrow a Vietnam-era phrase, a matter of "hearts and minds," not guns. We have a huge job of soul searching to do as a nation. Is it the flaccid morality we've preached? Is it the entertainment we permit? Is it the collapse of the family? Is it the sunset of the traditional, religious understanding of life? These are not answers. But they seem good places to start. - Mona Charen, ibid.

We have always had bullies. Yet for hundreds of years, kids endured bullying without resorting to murder. We have always had guns, and young people arguably had greater access to them 50 years ago than they do today. Yet our parents' generation would no more take a gun to school and shoot their tormentors than fly to Mars.
     Yes, it was partly because they believed in God and the Ten Commandments. But more immediately, they feared the certain terrible judgment of their families, friends and neighbors. Fear of what the neighbors would think is a great and powerful weapon of civilization, and judgment is its indispensable sword.
     Most Americans today pride themselves on being "nonjudgmental." It hasn't yet dawned on most of them that the body count in our high schools is their reward. - Mona Charen, "How to Stop School Shootings," townhall.com, March 27, 2001.



If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I would never lay down my arms--never, never, never! - Lord Chatham, exclamation in Parliament, November 18, 1777.


Gun control is a loser at the polls, and Democrats know it, even if they are loath to admit it publicly. Now, along comes Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to put a fly in the ointment by introducing a bill that puts gun control back in the spotlight and Democrats on the spot. Hatch's bill would repeal the District of Columbia's gun control law, one of the nation's toughest....
     In 1976, the Washington, D.C., city council made it illegal for city residents to own guns. The new law required anyone who owned a legally registered gun to bring the firearm into the Metropolitan police headquarters to re-register it or face future prosecution. At the time, I owned a revolver, which I had purchased after my husband was mugged in broad daylight, hit over the head with a two-by-four in front of our then 7-year-old son....
     I'll never forget the day I took my handgun downtown to re register it under the new ordinance. The line stretched for several city blocks around the police headquarters and down toward Constitution Avenue. I was six months pregnant with our second child. My ankles were swollen, the sun and humidity were unbearable, and the gun--a .357 Magnum--weighed heavily in my purse. After waiting in line for a couple of hours and making little progress toward the police station, I gave up and went home. I worried all night that, with the new gun law's effective date just days away, I was about to become a felon.
     The law had no effect in reducing Washington's appalling violent crime rate. - Linda Chavez, "Firearms In The Capital City," townhall.com, July 23, 2003.

There's no correlation between tough gun laws and lower crime. Indeed all the liberal prognostication on Florida's "right to carry" law, the first in the nation in 1987, proved wrong. Not only did Florida's streets not turn into public shooting galleries, as liberals predicted, but 24 other states have followed suit. There has been no discernible increase in violence as a result and not a single conviction of a permit-holder for killing an innocent party. Linda Chavez, ibid.



Allowing rifle training while decrying gun violence doesn't send a mixed message any more than does supporting a wrestling team while opposing schoolyard brawls. - Editorial, Chicago Tribune.


I don't see why people buy assault weapons and nuclear arms for fun, a family could have a domestic incident that could get out of hand and they may use those weapons. - Jean Chretian, Prime Minister of Canada.


We are all of us carried along by a fiery zeal to recover our liberty; our arms cannot be wrested from our hands. - Cicero.

And indeed, gentlemen, there exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our own lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right. - Cicero.

Civilized people are thought by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself. They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power. - Cicero.



The concept of a militia embodies the idea of an extra-ordinary and largely voluntary participation in the war by the whole population, with its physical strength, its wealth, and its loyalty. The less the institution resembles this model, the more a militia will become a regular army under another name. It will then have the advantages of a regular army, but it will also be lacking in the advantages of a genuine militia: a reservoir of strength that is much more extensive, much more flexible, and whose spirit and loyalty are much easier to arouse. These factors are the essentials of a militia. Its organization must leave scope for the participation of the populace. If it does not, any great hopes one may have from it are mere delusions. ­ Karl von Clausewitz, On War, 1833.


The Brady Bill is the minimum step Congress should take... we need much stricter gun control, and eventually should bar the ownership of handguns, except in a few cases. - U.S. Representative William Clay, quoted in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 6, 1991.


And we should--then every community in the country could then start doing major weapon sweeps and then destroying the weapons, not selling them. - President Bill Clinton.

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to own firearms... - President Bill Clinton, USA TODAY, March 11, 1993.

I feel very strongly about it [the Brady Bill]. I think - I also associate myself with the other remarks of the Attorney General. I think it's the beginning. It's not the end of the process by any means. - President Bill Clinton, on the Brady Bill, August 11, 1993.

You don't need an Uzi to go deer hunting, and you don't need an AK-47 to shoot skeet. They are military weapons, not meant for a day in the country and certainly not meant for a night on the street. - President Bill Clinton, April 6, 1998.



If you know of any guns in your house or in the houses of your uncles, cousins, friends or neighbors, I want you to promise you will never, ever go near them. I want you to promise you will never, ever play with anybody who goes near them, and I want you to promise you will never, ever pick up a gun with any idea of using it against another person. - First Lady Hillary Clinton, at Valley Cottage Elementary School, March 3, 2000.


The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority... it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American People. - Frank I. Cobb, La Follett's Magazine, January 1920.


The bulwark of the defense of our country lies in the hearts and the spirit of the American people. It is to the citizen-soldier, and not the mercenary hirling, that the American people look for the defense of their rights in an emergency. - Howe Cobb, speech, House of Representatives. January 8, 1846.


The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the 'High Powers' delegated directly to the citizen by the United States Constitution, Amendment II, and 'is excepted out of the general powers of government'. A law cannot be passed to infringe upon it or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power. - Cockrum vs. State of Texas, Texas Supreme Court, 1859.


While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny. - Rev. Nicholas Collin, Fayetteville Gazette (N.C.), October 12, 1789


Mr. Speaker, I still believe that the best way to control handguns is to ban them outright. - U.S. Representitive Cardiss Collins, Democrat from Illinois.


Assault rifles have never been an issue in law enforcement. I have been on this job for 25 years and I haven't seen a drug dealer carry one. They are not used in crimes, they are not used against police officers. - Joseph Constance, Deputy Police Chief, Trenton, NJ.

Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to encounter an escaped tiger from the zoo than to confront an assault weapon in the hands of of a drug-crazed killer on the streets... - Joseph Constance, Deputy Police Chief, Trenton, NJ, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, August, 1993.

Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to confront an escaped tiger from the local zoo than to confront an assault rifle in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets. - Joseph Constance, ibid.



An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it. - Jeff Cooper, Founder, American Pistol Institute.

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles. - Jeff Cooper.

One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure - and in some cases I have - that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy. - Jeff Cooper, "Cooper vs. Terrorism", Guns & Ammo Annual, 1975.



Handguns should be outlawed. Our organization will probably take this stand in time but we are not anxious to rouse the opposition before we get the other legislation passed. - Elliot Corbett, Secretary, National Council For A Responsible Firearms Policy, interview in the Washington Evening Star, September 19, 1969.


If some of the community are exclusively inured to its defense, and the rest attend agriculture, the consequences will be that the arts of war and defense and of cultivating the soil will be understood. Agriculture will flourish, and military discipline will be perfect. If, on the contrary, our defense be solely intrusted to militia, ignorance of arms and negligence of farming will ensue; the farmers plan is, in every respect, more to the interest of the state. By it we shall have good farmers and good soldiers; by the latter we shall have neither. If the inhabitants be called out on sudden emergencies of war, their crops, the means of their subsistence, may be destroyed by it. If we are called in the time of sowing seed or harvest, the means of subsistence might be lost; and the loss of one year's crop might have been prevented at trivial expense, if appropriated to the purpose of supporting a part of the community, exclusively occupied in the defense of the whole. - Francis Corbin, speech, Virginia Constitutional Convention. June 7, 1788.

The honorable gentleman then urges an objection respecting the miitia, who, he tells us, will be made instruments of tyranny to deprive us of our iberty. Your militia, says he, will fight against you. Who are the militia? Are we not militia? Shall we fight against ourselves? No, Sir; the idea is absurd. We are also terrified by the dread of a standing army. It cannot be denied that we ought to have a means of defense, and be able to repel an attack. - Francis Corbin, ibid.



The New York Times recently ran an in-depth series on "rampage murder," defined as people who killed multiple victims--excepting shootings with a "motive," such as robbery....
     But when it comes to analysis, the Times has an unbounded capacity to ignore its own meticulous reporting. The Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control. Consequently, the paper's editorial comment on the rampage murder series was this non sequitur: "That is why the nation needs tighter gun control laws for everyone."
     The demand for gun control was damned peculiar, inasmuch as the Times own reporting established pretty clearly that there might be a cause apart from the easy availability of guns. For one thing, as the Times noted, "these killings remain extremely rare, much less than 1 percent of all homicides." So, first of all, it's difficult to explain why more than 99 percent of people with easy accessibility to guns don't engage in rampage killings, if the problem were the availability of guns. - Ann Coulter, "It's Sunny Today, So We Need Gun Control," April 25, 2000.

This might not be a big deal, except that I always get a little suspicious when I'm being lied to. My assumption is that only by claiming that rampage killings have suddenly increased--falsely as it turns out--can even the Times justify its demand for stupid counterintuitive emergency measures like raising taxes--whoops!--I mean tighter gun control. - Ann Coulter, ibid.



Every free man has a right to the use of the press, so he has to the use of his arms. - Tench Coxe.

The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them. - Tench Coxe, October 21, 1787.

The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistable. Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American...the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. - Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788.

The powers of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress have no right to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American.... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. - Tench Coxe, ibid.

As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms. - Tench Coxe, Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution, under the Pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.



The first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution. It is the right that government did not create and therefore it is a right that under our Constitution the government simply cannot take away. The framers of our Constitution understood this clearly. Therefore, they did not merely acknowledge that the right exists. They denied Congress the power to infringe upon that right. - Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) , speech, US Senate, June 6, 2000.


Guns have a place in the theater of war, they have no place out on the streets. - California Gov. Gray Davis, July 20, 1999.


I do think the Second Amendment does provide for the right to bear arms. I'm one of the few civil libertarians I know who believes that. I hate guns. If I could press a button and make every gun disappear, I would do it. I hate guns with a passion. I would never have a gun in my home. I just hate guns. - M. Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University.

I'm a moderate on gun control. From a political point of view I'm a radical. I'd like to abolish guns, but from a balancing of constitutional perspective, I would favor the Brady Bill. I'm in favor of registration. I'm in favor of broad controls on guns. - M. Alan Dershowitz.

[Those] who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right [are] courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like. - M. Alan Dershowitz.



It is asserted by most respectable writers upon our government,that a well-regulated militia, composed of the yeomanry of the country, have ever been considered as the bulwark of a free people. Tyrants have never placed any confidence on a militia composed of freemen. - John Dewitt, 1788.


If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who were perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms]. They are a shame and a disgrace to our country. - U.S. Congressman John D. Dingell (D-Mich), 1980.

The consequences of the behavior of the BATF in these kinds of cases is that they are not trusted. They are detested, and I have described them properly as jackbooted American fascists. They have shown no concern over the rights of ordinary citizens or their property. They intrude without the slightest regard or concern. - Congressman Dingell (D-Mich), The Congressional Record, February 8, 1995.

The consequences of the behavior of the BATF in these kinds of cases is that they are not trusted. They are detested, and I have described them properly as jackbooted American fascists. They have shown no concern over the rights of ordinary citizens or their property. They intrude without the slightest regard or concern. Now, if you want a more recent event, take a look at what they did in Waco, TX. Is that a defensible event? Scores of Americans were killed because of ineptitude by BATF acting under legal process, as they said, and that whole matter is going to be suppressed after scores of Americans have been killed because of the ineptitude and crass misbehavior of the BATF. - U.S. Congressman John D. Dingell, ibid.



After the tragic attacks at public schools over the last two years, there is an understandable desire to ``do something.'' Yet, none of the proposed legislation would have prevented the recent violence. The current debate focuses only on the potential benefits from new gun control laws and ignores the fact that these laws can have some very real adverse effects. Good intentions don't necessarily make good laws. What counts is whether the laws will ultimately save lives, prevent injury, and reduce crime. Passing laws based upon their supposed benefits while ignoring their costs poses a real threat to people's lives and safety. - "Disarming Good People," an open letter from 287 economists, law-school professors and other academics to Congress, Washington Times, June 16, 1999.

Gun control laws will primarily be obeyed by law-abiding citizens and risk making it less likely that good people have guns compared to criminals. Deterrence is important and disarming good people relative to criminals will increase the risk of violent crime. If we really care about saving lives we must focus not only on the newsworthy events where bad things happen, but also on the bad things that never happen because people are able to defend themselves. - ibid.

Few people would voluntarily put up a sign in front of their homes stating, ``This home is a gun free zone.'' The reason is very simple. Just as we can deter criminals with higher arrest or conviction rates, the fact that would-be victims might be able to defend themselves also deters attacks. Not only do guns allow individuals to defend themselves, they also provide some protection to citizens who choose not to own guns since criminals would not normally know who can defend themselves before they attack. - ibid.

Police are extremely important at deterring crime, but they simply cannot be everywhere. Individuals also benefit from being able to defend themselves with a gun when they are confronted by a criminal. - ibid.

The Clinton administration wants to raise the age at which citizens can posses a handgun to 21, and they point to the fact that 18- and 19-year-olds commit gun crimes at the highest rate. Yet, Department of Justice numbers indicate that 18- and 19-year-olds are also the most likely victims of violent crimes including murder, rape, robbery with serious injury, and aggravated assault. The vast majority of those committing crimes in this age group are members of gangs and are already breaking the law by having a gun. This law will primarily apply to law-abiding 18- to-21-year-olds and make it difficult for them to defend themselves. - ibid.

Gun locks may prevent some accidental gun deaths, but they will make it difficult for people to defend themselves from attackers. We believe that the risks of accidental gun deaths, particularly those involving young children, have been greatly exaggerated. In 1996, there were 44 accidental gun deaths for children under age 10. This exaggeration risks threatening people's safety if it incorrectly frightens some people from having a gun in their home even though that is actually the safest course of action. - ibid.

With the 20,000 gun laws already on the books, we advise Congress, before enacting yet more new laws, to investigate whether many of the existing laws may have contributed to the problems we currently face. The new legislation is ill-advised. - ibid.



The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it. - James A. Donald, Liberty Page Webmaster.


Are the gun makers to blame when some drug dealer steals a pistol and wastes his rival with it? Not unless they're handing out the weapons, or glamorizing this sort of behavior with advertising, etc. And if some kid gets his hands on his parents' gun and accidently blows his friend away, aren't the parents really at fault for not doing a better job securing the weapon?
     Where cigarette manufacturers can be accused of promoting irresponsible usage, gun makers almost never advertise--at least not handguns. And where the cigarette's primary function is to provide smokers with pleasure--with illness an unfortunate consequence--guns are inherently lethal.
     So let's stop this absurd money grab. - "Don't Sue Gun Makers," Editorial, The Schenectady Daily Gazette, Novembr 5, 1998.


If a gun bill will pass because of the politics of the situation, you must see to it that its burdens are imposed upon a man because of a criminal background and not because he is an ordinary citizen and perhaps poor. - General James H. Doolittle.


Notwithstanding the provision in the Constitution of the United States, that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, the black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms. - Frederick Douglas, speech to the American Anti-Slavery Society, May 10, 1865.


I sympathize with people who want to ban guns, but I can't agree with them. We have to be careful in our zeal to abolish guns that we don't wind up with counter-productive legislation that will leave armed only the people most likely to do harm with them. - Hugh Downs, veteran ABC newsman.


And raw in fields the rude militia swarms,
Mouths without hands; maintain'd at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
And ever but in times of need at hand.
- John Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia.

Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
Then hasten to be drunk, - the business of the day.
- ibid.



Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates. It's quicker to pull your Smith & Wesson than to dial 911 if you're being robbed. - Lieutenant Lowell Duckett, Special Assistant to DC Police Chief; President, Black Police Caucus, The Washington Post, March 22, 1996.


You know I don't believe in people owning guns, only the police and military. And I'm going to do everything I can to disarm this state. - Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, in conversation with Mike Yacino, MA Gun Owner's Action League, and Roy Innis, CORE, June 16, 1986.


Why are guns the only unregulated consumer products in America? We regulate toy guns and teddy bears, but we do not regulate a product that kills 4,600 children a year. - Marian Wright Edelman, Children's Defense Fund founder, Houston Chronicle, April 30, 1999.


The one weapon every man, soldier, sailor, or airman - should be able to use effectively is the rifle. It is always his weapon of personal safety in an emergency, and for many it is the primary weapon of offence and defense. Expertness in its use cannot be over emphasized. - General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1943.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the houses of its children.
     This is not a way of life.... Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging itself on a cross of iron. - Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech. April 16, 1953.



A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders. - Larry Elder.

Celebrity Million Mom March organizer Rosie O'Donnell appeared on ABC's "This Week With Sam and Cokie." Cokie Roberts asked, "In Washington, we have about the toughest gun laws that there are in the country. And yet we have shootings all the time. At the National Zoo just the other day, a child was shot. What good does it do?"
Incredibly, O'Donnell responded, "Well, there are 200 million guns in America and 20,000 gun laws. But the guns are winning. There are also 20,000 loopholes. There are loopholes for every single law. You know, basically, when you have a lethal weapon, and you have no registration and no license in order to use it, you're looking for chaos, and you're headed towards chaos and that's exactly where we are today." Does Ms. O'Donnell suggest that 200 million anti-gun laws, one for every firearm in the country, would just about do the trick? - Larry Elder, "Guns and Rosie", May 18, 2000.

What about licensing and registration? Supporters claim that this enables police to track down the owner of a gun used in a crime. Great, assuming the shooter was lawful enough to A) register his handgun, and B) leave it at the crime scene so that authorities might trace it back to him. Not very likely. Bad guys don't buy guns legally. They steal them or purchase them through the black market. - ibid.

A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders. Because of the difference in physical strength between men and women, guns provide women with a way to level the playing field. Former Manhattan assistant district attorney David Kopel says, "When a robbery victim does not defend himself, the robber succeeds 88 percent of the time, and the victim is injured 25 percent of the time. When a victim resists with a gun, the robbery success rate falls to 30 percent, and the victim injury rate falls to 17 percent. No other response to a robbery--from drawing a knife to shouting for help, to fleeing--produces such low rates of victim injury and robbery success.... In the 1960s, the Orlando (Florida) police responded to a rape epidemic by training 2,500 women to use guns. The next year, rape fell 88 percent and burglary by 25 percent." - ibid.

Dr. Phil said, "America kills more kids with guns than any other industrialized nation," later adding, "There are five children a day killed with guns through either accidents or suicides. Five children a day in America are killed with guns." The five children per day figure adds up to over 1,800 per year.
     Hold tape.
     Dr. Phil never defined what he meant by "children." Independence Institute researcher Dave Kopel notes that many of the reported gun deaths involving "children" include those aged 14 through 19, many of them gangbangers. If, by children, Dr. Phil meant 10 and under, approximately 50 children--or less than one child per state per year under 10--die from handgun violence. - Larry Elder, "Kids, Guns, And Dr. Phil," townhall.com, November 29, 2002.

As usual with programs stacked against guns, Dr. Phil failed to even address the number of children saved by handguns per year. In other words, how many kids remain with us because Mommy or Daddy--or in some cases a child--used a gun to defend the household. According to the Department of Justice, Americans use guns for defensive purposes 1.5 million times a year. And, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention--a division of the Justice Department--the government found that children taught appropriate use of guns by their parents turn out to be far less likely to use those guns for criminal purposes than those without such instruction....
     Some suggestions: Don't go to your gun store for psychological counseling; and don't go to a mental health therapist for advice on guns. - ibid.



Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom;... By causing several good subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law.... - English Bill of Rights, 1689.

That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.... - ibid.



I think you have to do it a step at a time and I think that is what the NRA is most concerned about. Is that it will happen one very small step at a time so that by the time, um, people have woken up, quote, to what's happened, it's gone farther than what they feel the consensus of American citizens would be. But it does have to go one step at a time and the banning of semi-assault military weapons that are military weapons, not household weapons, is the first step. - Mayor Barbara Fass, Stockton California.


The gun-control movement is driven by raw emotion. Facts are irrelevant. Logic is spurned. Utter nonsense is solemly intoned.
     It's little wonder that our most emotive president has made gun control his signature domestic issue. - Don Feder, "Clinton And Gore Bang Away At Guns," March 29, 2000.

After the murder of 6-year-old Kayla Rolland by one of her first-grade classmates, Gore asked what it would take to wake up Congress to the urgent need for more regulation. "Shootings in kindergarten? Shootings in nursery school?"
     The child who killed Kayla has a father in jail and a mother on drugs, and lived in a crack house with his uncle. Clearly, we need a new law to make drug dealers behave responsibly with their illegal handguns. - ibid.

In 1993, McCarthy's husband was killed and her son critically wounded by the Long Island Railroad gunman. Colin Ferguson's rampage was triggered by the anti-white racism spewed by the likes Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad. (The latter even suggested that God guided Ferguson's hand.)
     McCarthy blames not the racists who incited her husband's killer but the weapon he used. It's so much easier to demonize an object than confront human evil. - ibid.

Each new gun law is the magic bullet, so to speak, guaranteed to counter criminals who, by definition, ignore legal enactments. After it passes, we hear no more about it, as it's on to the next proposal, which it is urged, will accomplish what the last law--and all those that preceded it- failed to achieve. - ibid.

Even with all the controls on the books--the manufacture and sale of firearms may be our most regulated industry--there are guns in half of American homes.
     For some, this is intolerable. They have a mystical faith in the notion that fewer guns equal less crime, despite the fact that in the '90s the number of guns in circulation went up while the crime rate declined.
     So, prohibitionists have decided to attack ownership at the source. Various suits seek to hold gun-makers liable for "defective and unreasonably dangerous" products and sales techniques that "create a public nuisance." - Don Feder, "Gun Suits Seek To End Private Ownership," townhall.com, August 15, 2001.

If Colt and Smith and Wesson are responsible for the ways their products are used, perhaps they should be paid a bonus every time one of their guns is used to accomplish good. - ibid.

Guns perform exactly as advertised. You put a bullet in the chamber, pull the trigger and a potentially lethal projectile issues from the barrel. However--and this should be axiomatic--a gun does not have a will of its own. The instruments fashioned by the firearms industry can be used offensively or defensively, for recreation or homicide, depending on the owner's will. - ibid.

The goal of gun liability suits is to put manufacturers out of business. When his city sued, then Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell gloated that gun-makers "don't have deep pockets'' and thus couldn't absorb high-dollar verdicts.
     Politicians and ideologues behind this litigation are opposed to gun ownership. Since they can't convince individuals not to buy guns, or persuade legislators to enact controls that amount to prohibition, they hope to end private ownership by eliminating the supply.
     This is undemocratic, coercive and utopian. In other words, worthy of the likes of Sarah Brady, Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein. - ibid



Because less than twenty years ago I was the target of a terrorist group. It was the New World Liberation Front. They blew up power stations and put a bomb at my home when my husband was dying of cancer. And the bomb didn't detonate.... I was very lucky. But, I thought of what might have happened. Later the same group shot out all the windows of my home.... 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 Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California.

Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of Americans to feel safe. - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, quoted by the Associated Press, November 18, 1993.

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 'em all in," I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't there. - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, speaking about her authorship of the 1994 "assault weapons" ban CBS-TV's "60 Minutes," February 5, 1995.

This is a munitions manufacturer owned by the State of Israel, and by advancing this export, the Israeli government is putting the official imprimatur of its people on the commercial sale of weapons designed not for hunting, but for combat; not to protect, but to kill. It is my hope that the Israeli government will lead the way and set an example that others will follow. - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California, letter to President Bill Clinton regarding Israeli Military Industries, September 17, 1997.



Do buybacks reduce crime? The Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based group of big-city police chiefs, evaluated buybacks in Boston, Seattle, St. Louis and other major cities and found they had no effect. In Seattle, researchers checked coroner's records and hospital admissions data for six months following a buyback and said it hadn't reduced gun violence at all. Small wonder that University of Pennsylvania professor Lawrence Sherman told Congress that buybacks are "a sellout to doing what works to make news, not public safety." - Edwin J. Feulner, "Gun Buybacks: A Misfire," www.heritage.org, July 31, 2000.

Before more taxpayer money is used to entice yet another rusty revolver out of the old shoebox under the bed, we need proof that buybacks reduce crime. Until then, its proponents are just shooting blanks. - ibid.



He who thinks he is his own master, and has anything he may call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself and what he possesses, or else he live precariously and at discretion. - Andrew Fletcher.

He that is armed is always master of the purse of him that is unarmed. - Andrew Fletcher, 1688.

And I cannot see, why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since they are the only true badges of liberty. - Andrew Fletcher, 1688.

Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave. - Andrew Fletcher, 1698.



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, 4 out of 5 U.S. murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy? - Andrew Ford.

If you've got a gun law that criminals will obey, why not just turn it into a murder law that criminals will obey-then we won't have to worry about the gun part. - Andrew Ford.

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 facts are in and the record is clear: Right to Carry gives law enforcement, their families and our communities real protection from violent criminals. - James J. Fotis, Executive Director, Law Enforcement Alliance of America.


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 fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity. - Sigmund Freud , General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.


The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. - R. Buckminster Fuller.


You will march with the utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize all the artillery and ammunition you can find... - Orders to LTC Francis Smith from British General Gage.


This week I attended a conference of the National Parenting Association.... to discuss the implications of a new NPA poll....
     In particular, more than eight in 10 American parents in this poll supported various gun control measures, from trigger locks to licensing and registration of all guns.
     Boy, did I feel like the odd mom out. Me? I wish I had a gun. As a mom, I feel guilty about the fact that my sons may grow up entirely gun-free. I don't know why I feel so strongly. I didn't have guns as a kid, and neither did my brother or my dad (except for the Navy stint). Maybe it is one too many Heinlein novels, or maybe it's the research that shows armed citizens play a key role in saving their fellow citizens from Columbinesque mass attacks, but I have this weirdly politically incorrect, deeply personal sense of civic responsibility: If there's a madman or a bad man threatening my kids or my neighborhood, I feel like I ought to be in a position to do something a little more effective than screaming, fainting, calling for smelling salts or summoning the police. - Maggie Gallagher, "Moms For Guns," May 31, 2000.

True, guns can cause terrible accidents if not properly cared for, but so can chain saws -- and I have one of those in the attic.
     Maybe maternal guilt is why I react so negatively to politicians like Sen. Charles Schumer, who according to USA Today actually threatened to revoke tax breaks for any landlord with the nerve to rent space to the NRA for a new sports cafe and video sports shooting arcade, a perfectly legal enterprise....
     Excuse me,... but have you been to some of the video arcades on Times Square lately? I have. After the blood-spurting body blasts and gunning-down-girl games now regnant, NRA video games inviting families to target imaginary clay pigeons would be positively wholesome. - ibid.



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. - Albert Gallatin, October 7, 1789.


In fact, only police, soldiers - and, maybe, licensed target ranges - should have handguns. No one else needs one. - Michael Gartner, president of NBC News, in The Wall Street Journal, January 10, 1991.

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, president of NBC News, January, 1992.



What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty... Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins. - Rep. Elbridge Gerry, debate over the Second Amendment, U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789.


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. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to the Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn. - Mahatma Ghandi, Mahatma K. Gandhi Gandhi, An Autobiography, 1948.


A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince. - Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776-88.


The right to buy weapons is the right to be free. - Van Gogt.


Any 18 year old can walk into a gun store, pawn shop or gun show and buy a handgun. - U.S Vice President Al Gore, almost 30 years after the Gun Control Act of 1968 set the age to buy a handgun at 21.

We don't need more concealed weapons in our malls, in our movie theaters, and our streets. We need fewer concealed weapons in our society. - Vice President Al Gore, on concealed weapons licences, Houston Chronicle, May 27, 1999.

[N]obody is talking about taking guns away from hunters or sportsmen or banning all guns. Nobody is talking about that. - Al Gore, Larry King Live, September 17, 1999.

I think that we should ban so-called junk guns. I think we should ban assault weapons like the weapons used here [in Fort Worth], yes. I think that the kinds of weapons that have no legitimate use for hunting or the kind of weapon that a homeowner would use, I think they should be banned, yes, those kind of weapons. - Al Gore, on the 1999 Fort Worth shooting (the "assault weapons" being referred to are semi-automatic handguns), Larry King Live, September 17, 1999.

These automatic, semiautomatic handguns and assault weapons, they really have no place in our society. - Al Gore, Larry King Live, September 17, 1999.



The Second Amendment isn't about protecting ourselves against criminals. It's about all of us protecting ourselves from all of you. - Dr. Suzanne Gratia, a survivor of the Killeen, Texas Luby's massacre, to Congressman Charles Schumer (D-NY), 1994.

Let me make a point here, in case this isn't becoming extremely clear. My state has gun control laws. It did not keep Hennard from coming in and killing everybody! What it did do, was keep me from protecting my family! That's the only thing that cotton pickin' law did! OK! Understand that! That's ...that's so important! - Dr. Suzanne Gratia, Killeen Texas Luby's massacre survivor, 1994.

Somewhere along the line I made one of my stupidest decisions... I was afraid that ... if ... somebody caught me with the gun in my purse, I could lose my license to practice, lose my ability to make a living. So I took the gun out of my purse and I left it in my car ... which the laws in my state are kinda wishy- washy on ...and I thought, 'Heck, if I needed it, it's probably going to be when I'm out on the road ... in the middle of nowhere and, you know, my car's broke down or something ... - Dr. Suzanne Gratia, Killeen Texas Luby's massacre survivor, 1994.



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 will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins. - Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Mafia turncoat, asked about gun control in an interview in Vanity Fair.


Last Monday a string of amendments were presented to the lower House; these altogether respected personal liberty. - William Grayson, Letter to Patrick Henry referring to the introduction of what became the Bill of Rights, June 12, 1789.


Call it peace of mind. Arming pilots gives them a better alternative than crashing the plane with all aboard. - Paul Greenberg, "Arm the pilots," townhall.com, May 29, 2002.

A Beretta in hand is worth any number of theories in the bumbling hands of the Department of Transportation and Obfuscation. - ibid.

How could the terrorists know which crews were packing heat? How could they hope to overcome it? Suddenly box cutters might no longer seem the ideal weapon. No wonder three-quarters of the country's airline pilots, according to one poll, want the right to bear arms. - ibid.

But can we trust pilots with weapons? Goodness, we trust them with the whole plane, why not sidearms?...
     What might comfort passengers is knowing that their cockpit crew is armed, unlike those on the planes that were hijacked and turned into guided missiles Sept. 11. - ibid.



The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights. - Erwin N. Griswold, address at Northwestern University Law School. June 11, 1960.


For all animals are provided by nature with means for the very purpose of self-defense. See Xenophon, Ovid, Horace, Lucretius. Galen observes that man is an animal born for peace and war, not born with weapons, but with hands by which weapons can be acquired. - Hugo Grotius.


Before Adolf Hitler came to power, there was a black market in firearms, but the German people had been so conditioned to be law abiding that they would never consider buying an unregistered gun. The German people really believed that only hoodlums own guns. What fools we were. It truly frightens me to see how the government, media and some police groups in America are pushing for the same mindset. - Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor.

There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the people were not "brainwashed" about gun ownership and had been well armed. ... Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half starved group of Jews took 10 handguns and made asses out of the Nazis. - Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor.

These Sarah Brady types must be educated to understand that because we have an armed citizenry, that a dictatorship has not happened in America. These anti-gun fools are more dangerous to Liberty than street criminals or foreign spies. - Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor.



To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character. - Alexander Hamilton.

When the perfect order and discipline which are essential to regular troops are contemplated, and with what ease and precision they execute the difficult manuevers indispensable to the success of offensive or defensive operations, the conviction cannot be resisted that such troops will always have a decided advantage over the more numerous forces composed of uninstructed militia or undiscipllined recruits. - Alexander Hamilton.

...for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion. - Alexander Hamilton.

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers.

The American Militia, in the course of the late war, have by their valor on numerous occasions, erected eternal monuments to their fame; but the bravest of them feel and know, that the liberty of their country could not have been established by their efforts alone, however great and valuable they were. - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #25. December 21, 1787.

We take into our view the aid to be derived from the militia, which ought always to be counted upon, as a valuable and powerful auxiliary. - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #26. December 22, 1787.

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government. - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #28, December 28, 1787.

Where in the name of common sense are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #29, January 9, 1788.

If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens. - ibid.

If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought as far as possible to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. - ibid.

It requires no skill in the science of war to discern that uniformity in the organization and discipline of the militia would be attended with the most beneficial effects, whenever they were called into service for the public defense.... And it would fit them much sooner to acquire the degree of proficiency in military functions, which would be essential to their usefulness. - ibid.

The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day or even a week that will suffice for the attainment of it.... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. - ibid.

On the militia bill, and in a variety of minor cases, he [Jefferson] has leaned as much as possible to the States; and he lost no opportunity of sounding the alarm, with great affected solemnity, at encraochments, mediated on the rights of the States, and of holding up the bugbear of faction in the government having designs unfriendly to liberty. - Alexander Hamilton, letter to Edward Carrington. May 26, 1792.



The thought that average citizens will somehow be better able to successfully defend themselves more effectively than our nation's trained professionals is absurd. - Handgun Control Incorporated (HCI), Official Statement.


Men accustomed unto their arms and their liberties will never endure the yoke. - James Harrington.

The militia of a nation is either an army in the field or ready for the field upon occasion. - James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656.



What the subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear - and long lost - proof that the Second Amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms. - Senator Orrin Hatch, Preface, The Right To Keep And Bear Arms.

If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples 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. - Senator Orrin Hatch, Senate Report, 1982.



An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. - Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon, 1942.

The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. - ibid.

...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. - Robert Heinlein, in a letter concerning "Red Planet", 1949.

There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men. - Robert A. Heinlein, Methuselah's Children, 1958.

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, 1959.

Anyone who clings to the hostorically untrue--and thoroughly immoral--doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. - ibid.



The debate over gun control offers a revealing case study of the misuse of the Constitution... The idea that the Bill of Rights guarantees each individual a right to own a gun... is a constitutional illusion. - Dennis Henigan, "The Right To Be Armed: A Constitutional Illusion", The San Francisco Barrister, December, 1989.

The gun-violence problem is more than the problem of guns in the hands of bad people. Its also a problem of guns in the hands of good people. - Dennis Henigan, Gun control attorney, quoted in a New York articale by Peter J. Boyer. Houston Chronicle, May 24, 1999.



First, the Constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided. - Patrick Henry.

Who are the militia? They consist of the whole people. - Patrick Henry, speech , 1782.

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense is the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety, as in our own hands? - Patrick Henry, in Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Jonathan Elliot, ed. 1836.

I have thus candidly submitted to you, Mr. Chairman, and this committee, what occurred to me as proper amendments to the Constitution, and the declaration of rights containing those fundamental, inalienable privileges, which I conceive to be essential to liberty and happiness. I believe that, on a review of these amendments, it will still be found that the arm of power will be sufficiently strong for national purpose, when these restrictions shall be a part of the government. - Patrick Henry, speech, 1788.

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. Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own self defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? - Patrick Henry, The Virginia Ratifying Convention, June, 1788.

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone... Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation...inflicted by those who had no power at all? - Patrick Henry, The Virginia Ratifying Convention, June, 1788.

I feel myself distressed, because the necessity of securing our personal rights seems not to have pervaded the minds of men; for many other valuable things are omitted [from the Constitution].... Another most fatal omission is with respect to standing armies. In your Bill of Rights of Virginia, they are said to be dangerous to iberty; and it tells you that the proper defense of a free State consists in militia; and so I might go on to ten or eleven things of immense consequence, secured in your Bill of Rights, concerning which that proposal is silent. - Patrick Henry, speech. 1788.



Choose containable violence when violence cannot be avoided. Better this than epidemic violence. - Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment, 1977.

When the means of great violence [guns/weapons] are wide spread, nothing is more dangerous to the powerful than that they create outrage, and injustice will certainly ignite retaliation in kind. - ibid.



I'm on the side of the--men who invented the country. They believed in the Second Amendment, and I believe in it, too. - Charlton Heston, Interview with Matt Lauer, September, 2002.


The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. Therefore, the heads of provinces, official agents, and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government. - Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Shogun of Japan, August 29, 1558.


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.


This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future. - Adolf Hitler, Berlin Day speech, April 15, 1935.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to posess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. - Adolf Hitler, quoted in, Trevor-Roper, Hitler's Table Talks 1941-1944, 1953.



A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. - Thomas Hobbes.

It is each individual that must ultimately be his own protector. - Thomas Hobbes.

The right men have by nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished. - Thomas Hobbes.

The sum of the right of nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves. - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.

A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life. Because a man cannot tell, when he seeth men proceed against him by violence whether they intend his death or not. - ibid.



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.


In Great Britain we do not have the right to cause an intruder any injury whatsoever, nor indeed any attacker. Yes, we must allow ourselves to be seriously hurt or killed lest we harm the attacker. - Alan J. Holmes.


I'm detecting that I'm eating a lot of crow on this issue [concealed carry laws]. It isn't something I necessarily like to do, but I am doing it on this. - John Holmes, District Attorney, Harris County, Texas.


Men always know that when force and injury was offered they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that howsoever men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others it was not to be suffered, but by all men of good means to be withstood. - Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1593.


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. Humprey (D-Minn).

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government,no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.... 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 proven to be always possible. - U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, (D-Minn), 1960.



Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power. - Yoshimi Ishikawa, Nonfiction Writer and Commentator.


Ban the damn things. Ban them all. You want protection? Get a dog. - Molly Ivins, columnist, July 19, 1994.


The bulwark of our defense is the national militia, which in the present state of our intelligence and population must render us invincible. As long as our Government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending a patriotic militia will cover it with an impenetrable aegis. Partial injuries and occasional mortifications we may be subjected to, but a million of armed freemen, possessed of the means of war, can never be conquered by a foreign foe. - Andrew Jackson, 1st inaugural address. March 4, 1829.


The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. - Thomas Jefferson.

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

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms. - Thomas Jefferson, Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

If we are made in some degree for others, yet, in a greater, we are made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling, and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the Bill of Rights has made inviolable, and for the protection of which our government has been charged. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, 1782.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. - Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785.

I will now tell you what I do not like [about the Constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1787.

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel William S. Smith, November 17, 1787.

I have a right to nothing, which another has a right to take away; and Congress will have a right to take away trials by jury in all civil cases. Let me add, that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787.

There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation, and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors, that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot, but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to David Humphreys, 1789.

The declaration of rights, is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences, and not accomplishing fully it's object. But the good in this instance, vastly overweighs the evil. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1789.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. - Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796.

I am relying, for internal defense, on our militia men solely, till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such degradations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace, which may ever awe the public sentiment. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799.

A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them. - Thomas Jefferson, 1st inaugural address. March 4, 1801.

A statement has been formed by the secretary of war, on mature consideration, of all the posts and stations where garrisons will be expedient, and of the number of men requisite for each garrison. The whole amount is considerably short of the present military establishment. For the surplus no particular use can be pointed out. For defence against invasion, their number is as nothing; nor is it conceived needful or safe that a standing army should be kept up in time of peace for that purpose. Uncertain as we must ever be of the particular point in our circumference where an enemy may choose to invade us, the only force which can be ready at every point and competent to oppose them, is the body of neighboring citizens as formed into a militia. On these, collected from the parts most convenient, in numbers proportioned to the invading foe, it is best to rely, not only to meet the first attack, but if it threatens to be permanent, to maintain the defence until regulars may be engaged to relieve them. These considerations render it important that we should at every session continue to amend the defects which from time to time show themselves in the laws for regulating the militia, until they are sufficiently perfect. Nor should we now or at any time separate, until we can say we have done everything for the militia which we could do were an enemy at our door. - Thomas Jefferson, First Annual Message, December 8, 1801.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important, but especially so at a moment when rights the most essential to our welfare have been violated. - Thomas Jefferson, letter. February 25, 1803.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed milita is their best security. - Thomas Jefferson, 1808.

[The] governor [is] constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms. - Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811.

Are we not men? Yes; but our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies for defense, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials. The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and obige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814.

We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. - Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.

And what is our resource for the preservation of the constitution? Reason and Argument? You might as well reason and argue with the marble columns encircling them. The representatives chosen by ourselves? They are joined in the combinations, some from incorrect views on government, some from corrupt ones, sufficient in voting together to outnumber the sound parts; and with majorities of only one, two, or three, bold enough to go forward in defiance.
     Are we then to stand to our arms....? No. That must be the last resource, not to be thought of until longer and greater sufferings. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to W.B. Giles. 1825.



[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually...I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor... - George Mason Zacharia Johnson, The Virginia ratifying convention, June, 1788.


After all, our country was built by pioneers who had a rifle in one hand to kill their enemies and an axe in the other to build their homes and provide for their families. - Lyndon B. Johnson.

What in the name of conscience will it take to pass a truly effective gun-control law? Now in this new hour of tragedy, let us spell out our grief in constructive action. ­ Lyndon B. Johnson, speech following the assassination of Robert Kennedy, June 6, 1968.



The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them. - Zachariah Johnson, Debates.


The difficulties [of invasion] are particularly great when the people are supported by a considerable nucleus of disciplined troops. The invader has only an army: his adversaries have an army and a people wholly or almost wholly in arms, and making means of resistance out of everything, each individual of whom conspires against a common enemy; even the non-combatants have an interest in his ruin and accelerate it by every means in their power. He holds scarcely any ground but that upon which he encamps; outside the limits of his camp everything is hostile and multiplies a thousandfold the difficulties he meets at every step. - Baron Henri De Jomini, The Art of War, 1838.


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.


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.

I am pleased to accept Life Membership in the National Rifle Association and extend to your organization every good wish for continued success. - John F. Kennedy, March 20, 1961.



Virginia has not turned into Dodge City. We have not seen a problem. - Virginia Public Safety Secretary Jerry Kilgore, The Fredricksburg Freelance Star, February 2, 1996.


Chanting of valor and fame, and the man who can fall with the foremost, Fighting for children and wife, and the field which his father bequeathed him. - Charles Kingsley.


Violence... drives many to support Communism in desperation, convinced that drastic remedies are required to end a state of siege. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June, 1977.


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. - Professor Gary Kleck, Florida State University School of Criminology, speech to the National Academy of Sciences, 1991.

The traditional conceptualization of victims as either passive targets or active collaborators overlooks another possible victim role, that of the active resister who does not initiate or accelerate any illegitimate activity, but uses various means of resistance for legitimate purposes, such as avoiding injury or property loss.
     Victim resistance can be passive or verbal, but much of it is active and forceful. Potentially, the most consequential form of forceful resistance is armed resistance, especially resistance with a gun. This form of resistance is worthy of special attention for many reasons, both policy-related and scientific. The policy-related reasons are obvious: if self-protection with a gun is commonplace, it means that any form of gun control that disarms large numbers of prospective victims, either altogether, or only in certain times and places where victimization might occur, will carry significant social costs in terms of lost opportunities for self-protection. - Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Northwestern University School of Law, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 1995.

Research has consistently indicated that victims who resist with a gun or other weapon are less likely than other victims to lose their property in robberies[3] and in burglaries.[4] Consistently, research also has indicated that victims who resist by using guns or other weapons are less likely to be injured compared to victims who do not resist or to those who resist without weapons. This is true whether the research relied on victim surveys or on police records.... - ibid.

Huge numbers of Americans not only have access to guns, but the overwhelming majority of gun owners, if one can believe their statements, are willing to use a gun defensively. In a December 1989 national survey, 78% of American gun owners stated that they would not only be willing to use a gun defensively in some way, but would be willing to shoot a burglar. The percentage willing to use a gun defensively in some way, though not necessarily by shooting someone, would presumably be even higher than this. - ibid.

In a ten state sample of incarcerated felons interviewed in 1982, 34% reported having been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim." From the criminals' standpoint, this experience was not rare.
     How could such a serious thing happen so often without becoming common knowledge? This phenomenon, regardless of how widespread it really is, is largely an invisible one as far as governmental statistics are concerned. Neither the defender/victim nor the criminal ordinarily has much incentive to report this sort of event to the police, and either or both often have strong reasons not to do so. Consequently many of these incidents never come to the attention of the police, while others may be reported but without victims mentioning their use of a gun. - ibid.

While only 14% of all violent crime victims face offenders armed with guns, 18% of the gun-using victims in our sample faced adversaries with guns. Although the gun defenders usually faced unarmed offenders or offenders with lesser weapons, they were more likely than other victims to face gun-armed criminals. This is consistent with the perception that more desperate circumstances call forth more desperate defensive measures. The findings undercut the view that victims are prone to use guns in "easy" circumstances which are likely to produce favorable outcomes for the victim regardless of their gun use. Instead, gun defenders appear to face more difficult circumstances than other crime victims, not easier ones. - ibid.

A gun allows either criminals or victims to handle a larger number of adversaries. Many victims facing multiple offenders probably would not resist at all if they were without a gun or some other weapon. - ibid.

There seems little legitimate scholarly reason to doubt that defensive gun use is very common in the U.S., and that it probably is substantially more common than criminal gun use. This should not come as a surprise, given that there are far more gun-owning crime victims than there are gun-owning criminals and that victimization is spread out over many different victims, while offending is more concentrated among a relatively small number of offenders. - ibid.

In sum, measures that effectively reduce gun availability among the noncriminal majority also would reduce DGUs [Defensive Gun Uses] that otherwise would have saved lives, prevented injuries, thwarted rape attempts, driven off burglars, and helped victims retain their property. - ibid.

Since as many as 400,000 people a year use guns in situations where the defenders claim that they "almost certainly" saved a life by doing so, this result cannot be dismissed as trivial. If even one-tenth of these people are accurate in their stated perceptions, the number of lives saved by victim use of guns would still exceed the total number of lives taken with guns. It is not possible to know how many lives are actually saved this way, for the simple reason that no one can be certain how crime incidents would have turned out had the participants acted differently than they actually did. But surely this is too serious a matter to simply assume that practically everyone who says he believes he saved a life by using a gun was wrong. - ibid.



Without freedom there will be no firearms among the people; without firearms among the people there will not long be freedom. Certainly there are examples of countries where the people remain relatively free after the people have been disarmed, but there are no examples of a totalitarian state being created or existing where the people have personal arms. - Neal Knox.


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 capital 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", quoted in the Wall Street Journal, February 28, 1994.

Why was Dick Cheney one of 21 representatives to vote against a ban on so-called "cop killer bullets"?
     Al Gore's surrogates would have you believe that Cheney supports the murder of police officers. In truth, the Cheney vote was a vote for truth over lies, and principle over expediency. There never has been such a thing as a "cop-killer bullet." That the issue ever arose in Congress shows that modern Washington is just as susceptible to believing impossible things as was the English Parliament that made it a felony to use "Witchcraft, Inchantment, Charm or Sorcery, to tell where Treasure is to be found, or where Things lost or Stolen may be found." - David Kopel, the Independence Institute, "Cheney's Cop-Killer Rap", July 31, 2000.

The way to get to a gun-free world, the gun-prohibition groups tell us, is to pass laws banning them. We can begin by imagining the enactment of laws which ban all non-government possession of firearms....
     Laws affect mainly those willing to obey them. And where there's an unfulfilled need - and money to be made - there's usually a way around the law. Enter the black market, which flourishes all the more vigorously with ever-increasing restrictions and prohibitions. - Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen, "A World Without Guns", National Review Online, December 5, 2001.

Jamaica's Gun Court Act of 1974 contained just such a [death] penalty, and even that wasn't sufficient. On August 18, 2001, Jamaican Melville Cooke observed that today, "the only people who do not have an illegal firearm [in this country], are those who do not want one." Violent crime in Jamaica is worse than ever, as gangsters and trigger-happy police commit homicides with impunity, and only the law-abiding are disarmed.
     Yet the Jamaican government wants to globalize its failed policy. In July 2001, Burchell Whiteman, Jamaica's Minister of Education, Youth and Culture spoke at the U.N. Disarmament Conference to demand the "implementation of measures that would limit the production of weapons to levels that meet the needs for defence and national security." - ibid.

A complete gun ban, or highly restrictive licensing amounting to near-ban, would create a real incentive for gun making to become a "cottage industry".
     It's already happening in Great Britain, a consequence of the complete ban on civilian possession of handguns imposed by the Firearms Act of 1997. Not only are the Brits swamped today with illegally imported firearms, but local, makeshift gun factories have sprung up to compete. - ibid.

At the United Nations Asia Pacific Regional Disarmament Conference held in Spring 2001, it was quietly admitted that the BRA [Bougainville Revolutionary Army], within ten years of its formation, had managed to manufacture a production copy of the M16 automatic rifle and other machine guns. (That makes one question the real intent behind the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, which followed several months later: the U.N. leadership can't be so daft as to fail to recognize the implications for world disarmament after learning of the success of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.) - ibid.

Auto repair shops, hobbyists, revolutionaries - everyone with decent machine shop skills - can make a gun from something. This takes us down the same road as drug prohibition: With primary anti-drug laws having proven themselves unenforceable, secondary laws have been added to prohibit possession of items which could be used to manufacture drugs. Even making suspicious purchases at a gardening store can earn one a "dynamic entry" visit from the local SWAT team.
     But laws proscribing the possession of gun-manufacturing items would have to be even broader than laws against possession of drug-manufacturing items, because there are so many tools which can be used to make guns, or be made into guns. - ibid.

To imagine a world with no guns is to imagine a world in which the strong rule the weak, in which women are dominated by men, and in which minorities are easily abused or mass-murdered by majorities. Practically speaking, a firearm is the only weapon that allows a weaker person to defend himself from a larger, stronger group of attackers, and to do so at a distance. As George Orwell observed, a weapon like a rifle "gives claws to the weak."
     The failure of imagination among people who yearn for a gun free world is their naive assumption that getting rid of claws will get rid of the desire to dominate and kill. They fail to acknowledge the undeniable fact that when the weak are deprived of claws (or firearms), the strong will have access to other weapons, including sheer muscle power. A gun free world would be much more dangerous for women, and much safer for brutes and tyrants. - ibid.

More gun control, more genocide. That's the lesson of the 20th century in many nations, including Uganda. Yet the United Nations is again trying to make it impossible for Ugandans to protect themselves. Once again, the U.N. is supporting repression rather than human rights. - Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant and Joanne Eisen, "Disarming Uganda", National Review Online, December 11, 2002.

Like the Saudi's funding to spread Wahabbi teachings of totalitarian assaults on people of diverse religious faiths all over the world, the U.N. disarmament campaign is a global attack on human rights. The result is widespread murder by governments and by terrorist groups, and the suppression of human rights. - ibid.

The Gray Lady of American newspapers is red with embarrassment caused by reporter Jayson Blair, who admitted that many of his stories involved invention or plagiarism. Some New York Times reporters have expressed concern that the exposure of so many bogus stories over such a long period of time from such a respected newspaper could cause readers of American newspapers to doubt the credibility of what they read. On gun-control issues, those doubts are well-merited; the Times's credibility when it comes to guns is about equal to that of the National Enquirer's reporting on celebrity romances: Some of it is true, a large part is false, and much of the rest is presented in a significantly misleading way. - Dave Kopel & Paul H. Blackman, "Gray Gun Stories", National Review Online, June 9, 2003.

The core problem is the bureaucrats really do not want pilots to be armed. "I don't think we want to equip our pilots with firearms," said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Asked why, Ridge replied "Where would it end?" In other words, if we arm pilots, then we have to let other potential terror victims arms themselves, and that would be crazy! Actually, since 1989 Ridge's home state of Pennsylvania has allowed any law-abiding adult who wants to carry a concealed handgun for protection obtain a permit to do so. There is a background check requirement, but, unlike in many other states, no training requirement.
     The law in Pennsylvania is working just fine. So fine, in fact, that when Ridge was governor, he signed legislation eliminating a loophole in the Pennsylvania carry law which had prevented Philadelphia residents from obtaining permits. So if concealed handguns work on the mean streets of Philadelphia, with no training requirement, what's wrong with trained pilots having guns? - Dave Kopel & David Petteys, "Air Neglect: What's wrong with trained pilots having guns?" July 2, 2003.



In fact, the assault weapons ban will have no significant effect either on the crime rate or on personal security. Nonetheless, it is a good idea... 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.


It's wrong for a few police chiefs to endorse the Brady Bill, or any legislation, and say they speak for everyone in law enforcement. - Trooper Bill Krulac, Pennsylvania State Police, U.S. Capitol Rally, September 7, 1988.


There is only one constitutional right in the United States which is absolute and that is your right to believe anything you want. Other than that, (the right to your own thoughts) government has the ability to say on behalf of all the people ­ I will put it in the colloquial way as my grandmother used to ­ your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. - Ca. State Senator (D) Sheila Kuehl, remarking in the senate about AB 52, a bill requiring the licensing of all firearms in Ca, June, 2003.


Firearms have been around for over 400 years, yet it is only in the last 20 years that people have begun shouting "gun control". Why then, only recently, has this become such an issue? Moreover, why are there more mass-murderers than at any other time in our known history? It is not because weapons are more powerful--200-year-old muzzleloaders have a much greater force per round than today's 'assault rifles'. It is not because weapons are semi- or fully-automatic- rapid-fire weapons have been available for most of the last century. It is not due to a lack of laws -we have more 'gun control' laws than ever. It IS, however, because we have chosen to focus on "gun control" instead of crime control or "thug control". It IS because only recently has the public become complacent enough to accept, by inaction, the violence present in our society. - Kevin Langston, October 29, 1991.


I was wrong. But I'm glad to say I was wrong. - Arlington County VA Police Detective Paul Larson, previously an opponent of Right to Carry, The Alexandria Journal, July 9, 1997.


The constitution ought to secure a genuine militia and guard against a select militia... all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments to the community ought to be avoided. - Richard Henry Lee.

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 soldier in those destined for the defense 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.

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... The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle. - Richard Henry Lee, "Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer," The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1788.

[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. - Richard Henry Lee, "Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer," The Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788.

No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state... such area 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, (Charleston) State Gazette , September 8, 1788.



Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms. - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie. - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

...one of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the [Communist] workers and the disarming of the bourgeoisie [middle class]. - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.



Believing that the amendment does not authorize an individual's right to keep and bear arms is wrong. The right to arms is an individual right. The military connotation of bearing arms does not necessarily determine the meaning of a right to bear arms. If all it meant was the right to be a soldier or serve in the military, whether in the militia or in the army, it would hardly be a cherished right and would never have reached constitutional status in the Bill of Rights. The "right" to be a soldier does not make much sense. Life in the military is dangerous and lonely, and a constitutionally protected claim or entitlement to serve in uniform does not have to exist in order for individuals to exist if they so choose. Moreover, the right to bear arms does not necessarily have a military connotation because Pennsylvania, whose constitution of 1776 first used the phrase "the right to bear arms," did not even have a state militia. In Pennsylvania, therefore, the right to arms was devoid of military significance. Moreover, such significance need not necessarily be inferred even with respect to states that had militias. Bearing arms could mean having arms. Indeed, Blackstone's commentaries spoke expressly of the "right to have arms". An individual could bear arms without being a soldier or militiaman. - Professor Eugene Levy, Origin Of The Bill Of Rights.


The Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program was designed by the National Rifle Association to teach young children to stay away from guns. Primarily through use of a video, it teaches children how to avoid gun-related accidents.... Despite the innocuousness of the program, gun-control zealots have stormed out of the woodwork to scream bloody murder (literally)....
     Let me strain to grasp the liberal mindset here. In short, guns are evil, not the criminals who misuse them. Since guns are evil and the NRA promotes innocent civilian gun ownership, the NRA is also evil. Because the NRA is evil it must be demonized and delegitimized and should not be permitted to be seen in a good light. It's image must not be softened. Since the Eddie Eagle program amounts to the NRA performing noble public service work--work, that is believed to save children's lives--it must be censored at all costs. - David Limbaugh, "Don't Shoot Eddie Eagle," May 6, 2000.

Sarah Brady, chairman of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, is upset with Attorney General John Ashcroft over a letter he wrote to the National Rifle Association in May.
     In response to an inquiry from James Baker, the NRA's main lobbyist, Ashcroft expressed his view that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear firearms.
     This was utter heresy to Brady et al., who maintain that the amendment only protects the rights of state militias (the collective rights view), not individuals....
     Those of you on the Pollyannaish side better wake up. The gun-control extremists see no redeeming value in individual gun ownership, but rather positive harm. They therefore refuse to recognize a constitutional right guaranteeing it.
     I think it's reasonable to infer that they will not be satisfied until the citizenry is disarmed. They say we should be afraid of weapons. Perhaps we should be afraid of them. - David Limbaugh, "Gun-Control Radicals Target Ashcroft," townhall.com, July 17, 2001.

Plaintiffs' lawyers tout products liability cases as a remedy that allows injured poor people to take on powerful corporations, but they can't credibly make that claim with respect to certain recent suits against gun manufacturers....
     What's noteworthy is that the basis for liability was not that the gun was a defective product, which is usually the case in products suits. In fact, the jury specifically found the gun was not defective, but that Valor was negligent for not supplying a lock with the weapon....
     In the absence of a claim that these guns were defective or illegally made or sold, it is outrageous to hold their manufacturers and sellers liable for the intentional (or negligent) acts of third parties not under their control. The tort system is designed to assess culpability of defendants, not to shift blame from the actual wrongdoers to individuals or companies against whom some special interest group has a vendetta. - David Limbaugh, "Gun-Control Bullies," townhall.com, February 5, 2003.



He that is master of himself, and his own life, has a right, too, to the means of preserving it. - John Locke, The True End of Civil Government, 1690.

Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me... because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. - ibid.

When all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred; and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion, because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power. - ibid.

How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an assault with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful posture, without a sword in his hand to abate the confidence and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a defense serves only to draw on himself the worse usage.... He, therefore, who may resist must be allowed to strike. - ibid.

The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction; and therefor declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but sedate, settled design upon another man's life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or anyone that joins with him in his defense, and espouses his quarrel, it being reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction. - ibid.

By the law of nature, every man upon the score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so many bring such evil on anyone, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter, by his example, others from doing the like mischief. And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature. - ibid.

And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man's hands, whereby everyone has a right to punish the transgressions of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation. - ibid.



You don't have to be a member of the National Rifle Association to be dubious of CDF's remedy for gun violence. The day after young Kayla Rolland's death, Edelman urged, "We must act now to get to the root causes of the problem: the easy availability of guns." Why doesn't CDF try to ban backyard swimming pools and cars? The thousands of activists and child-development experts attending the CDF convention were not told that there are already strict gun-control laws in the United States. They are just not enforced. - Kathryn Jean Lopez, "Edelman and the Village People," National Review Online, August 9, 2000.


Allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have right to carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly. - Professor John R. Lott, Jr., and David B. Mustard, University of Chicago.


Ron Dixon acted the way any of us would have--if, that is, we had the same courage. He pointed his 9 mm and fired. Dixon shot the intruder he had found rummaging through his 2-year-old son's room in his home in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, N.Y. For that, Dixon is facing jail time.
     His case hits at a central blind spot of gun controllers, who discount the role of guns in self defense and consider almost any discharge of a weapon a moral offense. For the Brooklyn district attorney, a gun is a gun is a gun, whether it's wielded by a punk or by Ron Dixon. - Rich Lowry, "The gun--a homeowner's best friend," townhall.com, January 28, 2003.

Anti-gun-control activists love the slogan "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns." But that doesn't quite capture the complexity of the situation. If you make enough cumbersome gun control rules, you can also make ordinary, gun-owning citizens outlaws. - ibid.

Only in Washington would it be considered imperative to extend legislation precisely because it's been so ineffectual. Such is the logic behind a Democratic push to prevent the assault-weapons ban from expiring next year, and even to broaden it....
     Thus gun-controllers demonstrate the fine political art of how to win by repeatedly doing things that don't work. In the rest of the world, that fits the loose definition of insanity -- "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"--but in Washington, it defines success. - Rich Lowry, "An assault on common sense," townhall.com, May 19, 2003.

The assault-weapons ban was a product of the manufactured label "assault weapons." It's a wonder that other advocates haven't duplicated the experience by forging similar labels for things they want to ban. SUVs? Assault cars. Soft money? Assault contributions. - ibid.

Congress also enumerated [Assault Weapon] characteristics, including bayonet mounts and pistol grips, that would be verboten on certain semiautomatics. None of these characteristics have anything to do with the lethality of the guns. And if you think there is danger of assault weapons armed criminals charging with their bayonets fixed, you have probably seen "Lethal Weapon 4" one too many times. - ibid.

If gun-controllers were to be consistent, they would drop the fuzzy "assault weapons" label and seek to ban all semiautomatic longarms....
     That would be politically fatal. So gun-control forces try to extend the assault-weapons ban instead, a salami-slice strategy toward an ultimate, much broader gun prohibition. A whiff of their dishonesty can be detected in the senselessness of their argumentation: If the ban hasn't worked, why end it now? - ibid.



The more warlike the spirit of the people, the less need for a standing army. - Douglas MacArthur, Infantry Journal, March 1927.


Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other state that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years. - Niccoló Machiavelli.

If a city be armed and disciplined as Rome was, and all its citizens, alike in their private and official capacity, have a chance to put alike their virtue and the power of fortune to the test of experience, it will be found that always and in all circumstances they will be of the same mind and will maintain their dignity in the same way. But when they are not familiar with arms and merely trust to the whim of fortune, not to their own virtue, they will change with the changes of fortune. - Niccoló Machiavelli.

The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom. - Niccoló Machiavelli, The Prince, 1537.

When you disarm your subjects you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you. - ibid.

There is no comparison whatever between an armed and disarmed man; it is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe.... - ibid.

A new prince has never been known to disarm his subjects, on the contrary, when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, for by arming them these arms become your own, those that you suspected become faithful and those that were faithful remain so, and from being merely subjects become your partisans... But when you disarm them, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred against you. - ibid.

We plainly see the folly and imprudence of demanding a thing, and saying beforehand that it is intended to be used for evil; and that one should never show one's intentions, but endeavor to obtain one's desires anyhow. For it is enough to ask a man to give up his arms without telling him that you intend killing him with them; after you have the arms in hand, then you can do your will with them. - Niccoló Machiavelli, The Discourses, c.1515.

These are some of the unhappy consequences of disarming the people; whence also results another and even greater evil, namely, that the more the enemy penetrates into your county, the more will he discover your weakness. - Niccoló Machiavelli, The Discourses, c.1515.



Our heroes as kids were characters like Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger. Those programs had recurring themes of justice, truth, fair play and treating people with dignity. Firearms were portrayed positively as an instrument of protecting the weak and defeating evil. - Karen MacNutt, Republican candidate for Attorney General in Massachusetts.


Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. - James Madison.

Congress shall never disarm any citizen unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion. - James Madison.

A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression. - James Madison.

The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.... - James Madison.

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. - James Madison, The Federalist #46. January 29, 1788.

A government resting on the 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. - ibid.

Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the Federal Government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State Government with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger. - ibid.

[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. - ibid.

It is not certain that with this aid alone [possession of arms], they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to posses the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the national force; and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which surround it. - ibid.

No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense 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. - James Madison, United States Congress, Bill of Rights Ratification, 1789.

The right of the people to keep and bear... arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country... - James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789.

Always remember that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics-that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe. ­ James Madison, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1809.



Who would have guessed that the shots heard 'round the world 225 years ago would fall on deaf ears in a nation now more sympathetic to the gun-grabbing Redcoat than the gun-bearing rebel? - Michelle Malkin.

With the anniversaries of Waco, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge and Columbine fast approaching, those of us who keep and bear arms will once again be scapegoated and demonized by press and politicians. We will be cast as the nation's greatest threat to our children's safety, and ostracized as anti-government extremists.
     But if it weren't for the courage and convictions of an armed citizenry willing to go to extremes, none of us would be here today. - Michelle Malkin, "In Defense Of An Armed Citizenry," April 12, 2000.

It's hard to believe that one of the most liberal, pro-tax, anti-gun states in the country today was the home of the musket-toting sons and daughters of liberty.
     Two centuries after the minutemen used their guns to oppose unreasonable tyranny, the state of Massachusetts clamped trigger locks on two of the historic muskets from Lexington and Concord that hang in the state Senate chamber. The Patriot's Day celebration this year was nearly derailed because of stringent gun-control laws embraced by the state. Last week, the Massachusetts attorney general greatly expanded his regulatory oversight of guns as "consumer products," and announced plans to conduct sting operations--a la Thomas Gage--on federally licensed dealers....
     Who would have guessed that the shots heard 'round the world 225 years ago would fall on deaf ears in a nation now more sympathetic to the gun-grabbing Redcoat than the gun-bearing rebel? - ibid.

It is simply not true, as the gun-control lobby claims, that gun shows foster more gun-related crime. A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report on federal firearms offenders released last year reported that a mere 1.7 percent of crime guns are acquired at gun shows. Frank Krasner, owner of Silverado Promotions, adds that his shows are heavily policed--and attended by many cops who are hobbyists and collectors themselves. "The only complaint I've ever gotten from police is that there aren't enough parking spaces for their cars," Krasner told me. - Michelle Malkin, "Gun Shows Under Fire," townhall.com, January 26, 2001.

Gun show bans aren't about promoting safety. They're about cracking down on the free speech and free assembly of law-abiding citizens who have a passion for exercising their Second Amendment rights. At gun shows across the country, hunters shop for equipment, buy books and swap tips. Families browse historical exhibits, antiques, collectibles and war memorabilia. And yes, people from all walks of life come to buy guns for recreation and self-defense. "There's a lot of education and political activity that goes on at our shows," Krasner notes. "The real problem these gun bigots have is not with crime, but with the lawful civilian ownership of firearms." - ibid.

This may be hard for gun-grabbers to swallow, but the First Amendment applies to Second Amendment advocates, too. Government officials who are pursuing gun show bans nationwide may be winning in the court of public opinion. But in the court of law, thanks to our Founders, the basic constitutional rights of gun show operators and attendees are bulletproof. - ibid.

Let us, for a moment, take the sex-education pushers at their word: If you teach a child how to use a condom, you're promoting safety--not usage.... Why, then, doesn't the same logic apply to guns?... Giving kids basic information about how guns work promotes safety -- not usage. Like the captains of kiddie condom classes always say, knowledge isn't deadly. Ignorance is. - Michelle Malkin, "Kids, Condoms, and Guns," townhall.com, June 1, 2001.

In Maryland, Democrat Gov. Parris Glendening has just vetoed bipartisan gun safety education legislation. It would have made Maryland the first in the nation to establish public-school guidelines for gun safety instruction from kindergarten through grade 12....
     Gov. Glendening's objections show just how willing some liberals are to sacrifice children's safety to absolutist anti-gun ideology. The bill, Glendening said, "would create a clear appearance of the state encouraging young people to handle weapons and potentially furthering their interest in a time when we are trying to fight the scourge of gun violence."...
     As if licensed [Eddie Eagle program] gun-safety instructors were on par with Uzi-waving gangsta rappers and thugs.... - ibid.

The liberal mindset never ceases to amaze. When it comes to teaching kids about sex, the more the better. The younger the better. Bring on the condoms and bananas, diaphragms and diagrams. Don't worry about the heightened interest and glorification of pre-marital sex that might result from young, impressionable children handling contraceptives. But when it comes to guns, Glendening and his ilk turn into tight-lipped prudes preaching absolute abstinence. - ibid.



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.


I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for few public officials. - George Mason, Debates.

...to disarm the people--that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. - George Mason, Debates.

That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe Defence of a free state. - George Mason, declaration of "the essential and unalienable Rights of the People," later adopted by the Virginia ratification convention, 1788.



The right is absolute. In a free nation, government has no authority to forbid me from speaking because I might shout "fire" in a crowded theater. Government has no authority to forbid me from using my fist to defend myself because I might also use it to strike your nose. And government has no authority to forbid me from owning a firearm because I might shoot an innocent victim.
     Government is there to assure that the full force of the law can be brought against me if I discharge that right in a manner that threatens the rights of others. It does not have the authority to deny me those very rights for fear I might misuse them. - Ca. State Senator (R) Tom McClintock, speech to the Western Conservative Conference, Los Angeles, June 9, 2001.

Ladies and gentlemen, the debate is not about guns. It is about freedom. And the wheel has come full circle. Our generation must study politics that we may restore the liberty that our parents and grandparents expect us to pass on to our children and grandchildren.
     If we fail, what history will demand of our children and grandchildren, in a society where their only right is to their own thoughts, is simply unthinkable. And be assured, history will find it unforgivable. A generation that is handed the most precious gift in all the universe ­ freedom ­ and throws it away -- deserves to be reviled by every generation that follows ­ and will be, even though the only right left to them is their own thoughts. - ibid.



Gun control does not decrease gun ownership by criminals but instead reduces their incentives to refrain from violence because it decreases the supply of armed law-abiding citizens who might resist them. - John O. McGinnis, Cardezo Law School at Yeshiva University in New York City.


You need the will to disarm the civilian population. If we can do it in Somalia, we can do it here. - Mary McGrory, Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 1993.


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, on the Norfolk, Virginia council's vote to cancel four gun shows, 1992.


My experience as a street cop suggests that most merchants should not have guns. But I feel even stronger about the average person having them... most homeowners... simply have no need to own guns. - Joseph McNamara, former San Jose, California Police Chief and Handgun Control Inc. spokesman.

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 McNamara, former San Jose, California Police Chief and Handgun Control Inc. spokesman, cited in Safe and Sane, 1984.



The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights. - H. L. Mencken, 1923.


To me, this is not just a Second Amendment issue. What California is doing, and what President Clinton and his co-conspirators are doing is waging war on the Bill of Rights and the very Constitution to which they swore an oath. When an elected hypocrite swears a sacred oath to 'preserve and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,' and then becomes the very domestic enemy they have promised to protect us from, then they are at best guilty of fraud, or perjury - at worst, they are deserving of our contempt and abandonment. - Geoff Metcalf, talk-show host for KSFO in San Francisco.


What good does it do to ban some guns? All guns should be banned. - U.S. Senator Howard Metzanbaum, Democrat from Ohio.

Until we can ban all of them [firearms], then we might as well ban none. - U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), Senate Hearings, 1993.

No, we're not looking at how to control criminals... we're talking about banning the AK-47 and semi-automatic guns. - U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), Constitution Subcommittee meeting, February 10, 1989.

I'm not interested in getting a bill that deals with airport security... all I want to do is get at plastic guns. - U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), 1993.

I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns. - U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), 1994.



The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.

The act of a private citizen in striking down a criminal, who, by raising himself above the law, has placed himsef beyond the reach of legal punishment or control, has been accounted by whole nations, and by some of the best and wisest of men, not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue; and that, right or wrong, it is not of the nature of assasination, but of civil war. - ibid.



Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them. - Walter Mondale, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, April 20, 1994.


... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny. - James Monroe.

The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals. - James Monroe, second annual message to Congress, November 16, 1818.



Who does not see that self-defense is a duty superior to every precept? - Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of The Laws, 1748.


From a law enforcement perspective, the licensing process has not resulted in problems in the community from people arming themselves with concealed weapons. - Commissioner James T. Moore, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Memo to the Governor, March 15, 1995.


I am one who believes that as a first step, the United States should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols, and revolvers.... No one should have the right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun. - Professor Dean Morris, Director of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, to the U.S. Congress.


Gun control, racism and mysogyny are three legs of a rotten stool. - Chris Morton.

When a Southern White man tells me that I don't need guns or the Fourth Amendment, I start to get the idea that he sees either chains and a bag of cotton in my future; or a rope and a tree. - Chris Morton.



To set the record straight... The process is working... The statistics show a majority of concealed firearms or firearm licensees are honest, law-abiding citizens exercising their right to be armed for the purpose of lawful self defense. - Sandra B. Mortham, Florida Secretary of State.


With a 10,000% tax we could tax them [guns] out of existence. - U.S. Senator (D), Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Washington Post, November 4, 1993.


It's been hard to argue against such great visuals. - Legislative Director Jeff Muchnick, National Coalition to Ban Handguns commenting on the LA riots.


A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution... The power to impose a license tax on the exercise of these freedoms is indeed as potent as the power of censorship which this Court has repeatedly struck down... a person cannot be compelled "to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution." - Murdock V. Pennsylvania, 319 US 105 (1942).


There is a time and a place for the use of weapons. - Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings. 1645.


There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral, and a violence that is immoral. - Benito Mussolini, speech, September 20, 1922.

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. - Benito Mussolini, speech delivered at the Italian Senate, June 8, 1923.



Law-abiding Americans have no unconditional right to firearms access. - New York Post, "Time For Gun Control", August 12, 1999.


It was clear to me by 1969 that there could never be absolute parity between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R Consequently, at the beginning of my administration I began to talk in terms of sufficiency rather than superiority to describe my goals for our nuclear arsenal. ­ Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

The notion that [our] government spends more for arms than for social programs is a myth. ­ Richard M. Nixon, The Real War, 1980.



The concerns I had--with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square off against one another with weapons--we haven't experienced that. - Charlotte-Mecklenburg. NC Police Chief Dennis Nowicki, The News and Observer, November 24, 1997.


Only a coward supports gun control. You know how to stop carjacking? Shoot the carjacker. If someone is going to kill me for my Buick, I'm gonna shoot until I'm out of ammo--and then I'll call 911. - Ted Nugent, People Magazine, quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 5, 1994.


I honestly think-and I am not an expert on the amendments-I think the only people in this nation who should be allowed to own guns are police officers. I don't care if you want to hunt, I don't care if you think it's your right. 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, April 21, 1999.

I know it's in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough! I would like to say, I think there should be a law-and I know this is extreme-that no one can have a gun in the U.S. If you have a gun, you go to jail. Only the police should have guns. It's ridiculous. - Rosie O'Donnell during interview with Carolyn McCarthy as quoted in the Ottawa Sun, April 29, 1999.



I didn't see any NRA officials killing babies in Waco... - P.J. O'Rourke.

The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule. - P.J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell, 1988.

And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen? - P. J. O'Rourke, "The Liberty Manifesto", The American Spectator, July, 1993.

It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last. - P.J. O'Rourke, All The Trouble in The World, 1994.



That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell.

Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to it- gives claws to the weak. - George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", 1945.



The laws allow arms to be taken against an armed foe. - Ovid.


My bill ... establishes a 6-month grace period for the turning in of all handguns. - U.S. Representative (D) Major Owens, Congressional Record, November 10, 1993.

We have to start with a ban on the manufacturing and import of handguns. From there we register the guns which are currently owned, and follow that with additional bans and acquisitions of handguns and rifles with no sporting purpose. - U.S. Representative (D), Major Owens.



I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly argue with all the world to lay aside the use of arms and settle matters by negotiation, but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power. - Thomas Paine.

I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation; but unless the whole will, the matter never ends, and I take my musket and thank heaven he has put it in my power. - Thomas Paine, "Thoughts on Defensive War," Pennsylvania Magazine, July, 1775.

The supposed quietude of a good mans allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them... - ibid.

I always considered militia as the best troops in the world for a single exertion, but they will not do for a long campaign. - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis. #1. December 23, 1776.

Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man? - ibid.

In this country every man is a militia-man. - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis #9. June 9, 1780.

Arms they had none, nor scarcely any who knew the use of them; but desperate resolution, when every hope is at stake, supplies for a while, the want of arms. - Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, Pt. I. 1791.

If representatives, who cannot act as administrators or judges, are often renewed, if their functions are determined by law, if the people can summon at any moment their national conventions and primary asemblies, the tyranny of a legislature would have only a very short existence, especially among a people capable of self-defense, who can read, and have newspapers, guns and pikes. - Thomas Paine, "A Essay For New Republicans," Le Patriote Francois, October 20, 1792.



We have a generation of children who don't know how to handle simple obstacles (bullies) or inevitable failures (rejection), and who, owing to their culture of violence, delusions of self grandeur and habit of instant gratification, are comfortable resorting to the quickest remedy [violence].
     So, no, guns aren't the problem. A March 1994 Department of Justice study ("Urban Delinquency And Substance Abuse") shows, in fact, that boys raised with legally owned guns are less likely to be delinquent and to resort to violence. But anger, and our failure to teach self control, is a huge problem. Which alone is sufficient cause for fear. - Kathleen Parker, "Children's anger lies at root gun problem," townhall.com, April 4, 2001.

Guns in the wrong hands are a problem; guns in the right hands aren't.... Including handguns. Years ago, I interviewed various murderers, rapists and their victims for a series on gun violence. One would-be victim of rape (ital) did (end ital) carry a small pistol in her purse. When her attacker pinned her against the wall, the woman reached inside her purse, pulled out her pearl handled derringer and stuck it in the man's side. He died that night, and she never needed a Condit video to fall asleep. - Kathleen Parker, "Guns in wrong hands are a problem; guns in right hands aren't," townhall.com, September 2, 2001.



Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defense, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defense. - Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 1995.

[L]egitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State. Unfortunately, it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose actions brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason. - ibid.



While the lawmakers demand even more restrictions on the sale, ownership, and the use of firearms, we currently have the highest level of gun control in our Nation's history. Yet only 50 years ago, there were no violent incidents in schools like the recent tragedy. Instead of rushing to disarm the law-abiding, let us first examine the current 20,000 gun laws already on the books for their effectiveness. - Congressman Ron Paul, (R-TX), House of Representatives, June 16, 1999.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to restore the right the founding fathers saw as ``the guarantee of every other right'' by introducing the Second Amendment Protection Act. This legislation reverses the steady erosion of the right to keep and bear arms by repealing unconstitutional laws which allow power hungry federal bureaucrats to restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners....
     Thomas Jefferson said ``The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; ..... that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.'' Jefferson, and all of the Founders, would be horrified by the proliferation of unconstitutional legislation which prevent law-abiding Americans from exercising their ``right and duty,'' to keep and bear arms. I hope my colleagues will join me in upholding the Founders' vision a free society by cosponsoring the Second Amendment Restoration Act. - Congressman Ron Paul, (R-TX), to The House of Representatives, January 8, 2003.



The victims are no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defense.... But at this stage some have not armed themselves-and the duly armed win the day. Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men, not for those that pray. - Plotinus, "The Third Ennead," Great Books Of The Western World.


Forget what our forefathers said. - Dominick Potifrone, ATF Special Agent (Retired) "On the Inside: The BATF", Discovery Channel, 2000.


Shooting at a fixed target is only a step towards shooting at a moving one, like a man. - Lord Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, 1908.


Let therefore every man, that, appealing to his own heart, feels the least spark of virtue or freedom there, think that it is an honor which he owes himself, and a duty which he owes his country, to bear arms. - Thomas Pownall.


I sometimes wonder whether the socialists will issue an edict requiring all firearms to have a pink ribbon tied to the barrel, just to get a belly laugh as the panicked descendants of once-proud American patriots scurry to comply. - Brian Puckett.


No man - or group or society or government - has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defence. A hold-up man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a hold-up man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force. - Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics," symposium, Madison, WI, February 9, 1961.


The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by rule of construction be conceived to give the Congress the power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both. - William Rawle, 1825; considered academically to be an expert commentator on the Constitution. He was offered the position of the first Attorney General of the United States, by President Washington.


We remember the great sacrifices Americans have made for 200 years, from the Revolutionary War, in which our ancestors pledged ``their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,'' to the wars of this century, in which hundreds of thousands of young Americans and millions of others gave their lives on the battlefields of Europe, Asia, and Africa in the struggle for freedom. And, yet, even today, as we celebrate Bill of Rights Day and Human Rights Day, we all are only too well aware that the individual rights declared in these documents are not yet respected in many nations. - President Ronald Reagan, Proclamation 4885 -- Bill of Rights Day, December 4, 1981.

Mankind's best defense against tyranny and want is limited government -- a government which empowers its people, not itself, and which respects the wit and bravery, the initiative, and the generosity of the people. For, above all, human rights are rights of individuals: rights of conscience, rights of choice, rights of association, rights of emigration, rights of self-directed action, and the right to own property. The concept of a nation of free men and women linked together voluntarily is the genius of the system our Founding Fathers established. - ibid.



I also believe that we should apply to guns the same consumer product regulations which we apply to virtually every other product in this country.... Whichever agency ultimately has oversight, the important thing is that guns should no longer be the only consumer product exempt from even the most basic safety regulations. - Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), to the Senate, June 09, 1999.


A government that intended to protect the liberty of the people would not disarm them. A government planning the opposite most certainly and logically would disarm them. And so it has been in this century. Check out the history of Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and Cambodia. - Charlie Reese, syndicated columnist.

...The founding father boasted that all Americans were armed; of course, they governed free men, not a herd of sheep. - Charlie Reese, syndicated columnist.



Nobody should be owning a gun which does not have a sporting purpose. - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal. - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, December 1993.

Gun registration is not enough. - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno on "Good morning America," December 10, 1993.



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, February, 1982.


If it were up to me we'd ban them all. - U.S. Representative Mel Reynolds, on CNN's Crossfire, December 9, 1993.


Sentient beings who give up the intrinsic (not government given) right to carry weapons for self defense don't last very long. They quickly get overrun by the predators who, while short on morality, are longer on common sense. - Helen Rhine, 1995.


Gun control has reached absurd limits in America. In Michigan, an 8-year-old boy is being prosecuted for pointing a toy gun at three other youngsters and threatening to shoot them. If this had happened in my day, every boy would have spent his youth in prison. - Paul Craig Roberts, "Criminalizing Toy Guns," townhall.com, March 6, 2002.

When Pennsylvania gun-shop owner Jack Weigand ordered a Dell laptop computer, the company refused to sell it to him. Handguns, the company explained, imply, well, terrorism, and Dell is prohibited under U.S. law from exporting computers to terrorists. - ibid.

Great Britain and Australia are thoroughly gun-controlled countries. The British are allowed only shotguns and birdshot. The two countries have the highest violent crime rates in the developed world.
     Do you remember when England had very little crime and unarmed Bobbies (police)? Since those halcyon days, the British have had their guns confiscated, and are now being shot, raped, burgled, robbed and assaulted at record rates. Violent crime rates in Britain far outstrip those in the United States.
     All licensed handgun owners were confiscated in 1997-98 in order to prevent "legally held handguns from falling into the wrong hands." London murders with handguns promptly shot up 83 percent, and armed muggings rose 53 percent. The BBC reports that residents of other cities also are experiencing high rates of attack from armed criminals. - ibid.

I have always wondered what the real agenda of the gun-control lobby is. Now I know. Gun controllers represent the criminal lobby. The purpose of gun control is to make criminals safe when they rob, burgle, rape and murder. - ibid.

Did you know that water is 19 times more dangerous to a child than a firearm? In 1996, 805 children died from accidental drownings and 42 died from firearm accidents. (Gun-control zealots inflate "child" firearm deaths by including teen-age drug-gang members killed in turf battles.) - Paul Craig Roberts, "Guns And Violence," townhall.com, July 29, 2002.

Bathtubs are twice as dangerous to children as guns. Fire is 18 times more dangerous to children than guns. Cars are 57 times more dangerous. Household cleaners and poisons are twice as dangerous. - ibid.

When the English were armed to the teeth, violent crime was rare. Now that the English are disarmed, violent crime has exploded. Indeed, crime in England is out of control....
     The English Bill of Rights guarantees English citizens "arms for their defense." Politicians and bureaucrats stole this right from the people by subterfuge. In England today, only outlaws have guns. Sens. Lieberman, McCain and Schumer are working to duplicate the English calamity by stealing gun rights from the American people. Do these three senators represent the criminal lobby? Are they trying to create a black market in guns? - ibid.

Did you know that defensive gun use prevents far more crimes than the police?... In 98 percent of the cases, the armed citizen merely has to brandish his weapon. As many as 400,000 people each year believe they saved a life by being armed. Contrary to Handgun Control's propaganda, in less than 1 percent of confrontations do criminals succeed in taking the gun from the intended victim.
     Did you know that the testimony of incarcerated felons supports the large number of defensive gun uses? Thirty-four percent of felons said they were scared off, wounded or captured by victims who turned out to be armed. - ibid.

Convicted felons say that they are more deterred by armed victims than by the police. In the United States, where roughly 50 percent of households are armed, only 13 percent of burglaries occur with residents at home. In contrast, in Britain, where homeowners are disarmed, 50 percent of home burglaries take place with the residents present. - ibid.

Gun-control zealots claim that the availability of guns is the primary cause of homicides. Between 1973 and 1994, the number of guns in private ownership in the United States rose by 87 million. During this period, both the homicide rate and the percent of homicides committed with firearms dropped. - ibid.

Did you know that a person's chances of being mugged in London are six times higher than in New York City?
     Did you know that assault, robbery and burglary rates are far higher in England than in the United States?
     Did you know that in England self-defense of person or property is regarded as an anti-social act, and that a victim who injures or kills an assailant is likely to be treated with more severity than the assailant? - Paul Craig Roberts, "How The British Maximize Crime," townhall.com, August 1, 2002.

In England, the penalty for possessing a handgun is 10 years in prison. The result is the one predicted by the National Rifle Association: "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns." During the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent. During seven months of 2001, armed robberies in London rose by 53 percent.... A disarmed public now faces outlaws armed with machine-guns. People in London residential neighborhoods have been machine-gunned to death. Gunmen have even burst into court and freed defendants. - ibid.

In 1999, Tony Martin, a farmer [in England], turned his shotgun on two professional thieves when they broke into his home at night to rob him a seventh time. Martin received a life sentence for killing one criminal, 10 years for wounding the second and 12 months for having an illegal shotgun. The wounded burglar has already been released from prison.
     American prosecutors now follow British ones in restricting self-defense to reasonable force as defined by prosecutors. Be forewarned that Americans can no longer use deadly force against home intruders unless the intruder is also armed and the homeowner can establish that he could not hide from the intruder and had reason to believe his life was in danger. - ibid.

The assault on England's version of the Second Amendment was conducted by unsavory characters in the British Home Office. Long before guns were banned, the Home Office secretly instructed the police not to issue licenses for weapons intended to protect home and property.
     In the British welfare state, crimes against property are not taken seriously. Malcolm reports that criminals face minimal chances of arrest and punishment, but a person who uses force to defend himself or his property is in serious trouble with the law. A recent British law textbook says that the right to self-defense is so mitigated "as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law."
     An Englishman's home is no longer his castle. Thanks to gun control zealots, England has become the land of choice for criminals. - ibid.

[C]ities... routinely sell thousands of used police weapons on the gun market, fronting for lawsuits against gun manufacturers for selling their wares to federally licensed dealers. Olson exposes the dishonesty of representing anti-gun billionaires, such as George Soros, and billionaire class action lawyers, whose trophy investments include sports teams, as "underdogs" in their onslaught against small, thinly financed family-owned gun manufacturers.
     Gullible Americans are not rare. All that is required for a small wealthy elite to destroy the Second Amendment is a gullible jury and a judge who permits a class action suit to expropriate the powers of legislators. - Paul Craig Roberts, "Gun Control: The Criminal Lobby," townhall.com, April 23, 2003.

New York's Sullivan Act, the original gun control law, was passed in response to the criminal lobby in New York's Red Hook district. Robbers objected to the right of their intended victims to carry concealed weapons and succeeded in getting the right outlawed.... It is equally clear today that criminals are the only beneficiary of gun control laws.... A disarmed public is at the mercy of well-armed thugs. - ibid.



Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom. - Will Rogers.


I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. - George L. Roman.


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, last message to Congress.


The self-preservation of each single man derives primarily from his own strength and from his own freedom. - Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762.

If I am waylaid by a footpad at the corner of a wood, I am constrained by force to give him my purse. But if I can manage to keep it from him, is it my duty to hand it over? His pistol is also a symbol of power. It must then, be admitted that Might does not create Right, and that no man is under an obligation to obey any the legitimate powers of the State. - ibid.



To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm... is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonest men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and the gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege. - Ruling by the Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878.


No man knows what he can call his own... disarmed and imprisoned without cause. - Sacheverel.


What opponents of the Second Amendment have never understood is that the prime benefit of the right to bear arms is now and always has been reaped without a shot being fired. The main benefit does not lie in the occasional person who shoots an attacker in self-defense. It doesn't't lie in the many attacks that are stopped by warning shots or the brandishing of a weapon. The main value of the Second Amendment is that anybody who considers attacking a home, a business, or a community, has to fear one thing above all--the people there may be armed. - Glenn Sacks.


The anti-gun Democrats are ready to go after law-abiding gun owners, but a law-breaking thug such as Saddam Hussein evokes from them only calls for patience. They won't address danger and evil looming on a global scale, nor do they care much about the civil liberties of those who are gauche enough to own guns. - Debra Saunders, "Armed and dangerous," townhall.com, February 5, 2003.


It would... be strange to find in the midst of a catalog of the rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated "Militia"--and to find that purely institutional guarantee accorded a position of great prominence immediately following freedom of religion and freedom of speech. - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on the Second Amendment, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, Princeton University Press, 1997.


On July 9 to 20, New York City will host the United Nations Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. The purpose of this conference is to demonize the private ownership of guns and get governments to confiscate all privately owned guns.
     Don't be misled by the term "small arms." UN documents define small arms as weapons "designed for personal use" (such as your Browning pistol, your Ruger rifle, or your Winchester shotgun), while light weapons are for use by several persons as a crew.
     Don't be misled by the term "illicit" trade. UN documents make it clear that, since most illegal guns start out as legal purchases, illicit trade must be stopped by clamping down on legal gun owners. - Phyllis Schlafly, "United Nations Attack on Gun Ownership," townhall.com, May 26, 2001.

It's obvious that the United States is the target because we are the only country with a Second Amendment, and other democracies such as England, Canada and Australia have either banned or severely restricted private gun ownership.
     The Draft Program wraps its gun-confiscation message in typical UN semantics, but makes little attempt to conceal the mailed fist in the velvet glove. It states: "In order to promote peace, security, stability and sustainable development in the world, we commit ourselves to addressing this problem in a comprehensive, integrated, sustainable, efficient and urgent manner."
     Indeed, the plan is comprehensive and integrated. According to the Draft Program, "Preventing and reducing the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons consists of two sets of measures: the national control of manufacture and the proper marking of small arms and light weapons, coupled with accurate, sustained record-keeping and exchanges of information." - Phyllis Schlafly, "United Nations Attack on Gun Ownership," townhall.com, May 26, 2001.

When the United Nations bounced us from the Human Rights Commission, while giving seats to Sudan, Libya, China and Cuba, that was just an insult. But it's deadly serious business when the UN tries to take away our guns. - Phyllis Schlafly, "United Nations Attack on Gun Ownership," townhall.com, May 26, 2001.



There may be other things that will happen later... It may not be the end... the bottom line is what we are seeking now is the Brady Bill. - U.S. Representative (D-NY) Charles Schumer, interviewed on CNN Crossfire.

We're here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true... - U.S. Representative Charles Schumer, (D NY), quoted on NBC, November 30, 1993.

We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission! - U.S. Representative Charles Schumer, (D-NY), quoted on NBC, December 8, 1993.

Gun traffickers have found a new avenue for dealing guns to criminals, to the mentally ill, and the under-aged - the Internet. The firepower available on the Internet is chilling. Machine guns, assault weapons and cheaply made pistols are available in cyberspace for the taking. And they are available to those who could never buy a gun under the Brady law. - U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, March 16, 1999. [Class III applications are easier to get approved than Brady paperwork? Sorry Chuck, you need a new fact checker].



And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs - politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that continue to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts. Political posturing and restrictive legislation are not the answers. - Darrell Scott, Father of two victims of the Columbine High School shootings, statement before the Subcommittee on Crime, House Judiciary Committee, May 27, 1999.

In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent of defend the NRA-because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel's murder I would be their strongest opponent. - ibid.



Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est, (A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands). - Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD).


To take arms against a sea of troubles. - William Shakespeare.


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. Of course, it's true that politicians will then go home and say, 'This is a great law. The problem is solved.' And it's also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time. So then we'll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal - total control of handguns in the United States - is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition - except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors - totally illegal. - Pete Shields, Chairman and founder, Handgun Control Inc., "A Reporter At Large: Handguns," The New Yorker, July 26, 1976.

We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily, given 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 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 illegal. - Nelson T. Shields of Hangun Control, Inc., quoted in the New Yorker, July 26, 1976.



No numbers of men, though naturally valiant, are able to defend themselves, unless they be well armed, disciplined, and conducted. - Algernon Sidney.

The law was plain, but it has been industriously rendered perplex: they who were to have upheld it are overthrown, that which might have been easily performed when the people were armed... is made difficult, now they are disarmed. - Algernon Sidney.

Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by public authority cannot be taken. - Algernon Sidney.



I don't believe anybody has a right to own any kind of a firearm. I believe in order to obtain a permit to own a firearm, that person should undergo an exhaustive criminal background check. In addition, an applicant should give up his right to privacy and submit his medical records for review to see if the person has ever had a problem with alcohol, drugs or mental illness... The Constitution doesn't count! - John Silber, former chancellor of Boston University and Democrat candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. Speech before the Quequechan Club of Fall River, MA. August 16, 1990.


Congress may give us a select militia which will, in fact, be a standing army.... When a select militia is formed, the people in general may be disarmed. - John Smiley, delegate to the Constitutional convention.


In the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, during the whole period of their existence, and under the feudal governments for a considerable time after their first establishment, the trade of a soldier was not a separate, distinct trade, which constituted the sole or principal occupation of a particular class of citizens. Every subject of the state, whatever might be the ordinary trade or occupation by which he gained his livelihood, considered himself, upon all ordinary occasions, as fit likewise to exercise the trade of a soldier, and upon many extraordinary occasions as bound to exercise it. ­ Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776.

When a civilized nation depends for its defense upon a militia, it is at all times exposed to be conquered by any barbarous nation which happens to be in its neighborhood. ­ ibid.

The victories which have been gained by militias have generally been, not over standing armies, but over other militias in exercise and discipline inferior to themselves. ­ ibid.

A militia of any kind, it must be observed which has served for several successive campaigns in the field, becomes in every respect a standing army. The soldiers are every day exercised in the use of their arms, and, being constantly under the command of their officers, are habituated to the same prompt obedience which takes place in standing armies. What they were before they took to the field is of little importance. They necessarily become in every respect a standing army after they have passed a few campaigns in it. Should the war in America drag out through another campaign, the American militia may become in every respect a match for that standing army of which the valour appeared, in the last war, at least not inferior to that of the hardiest veterans of France or Spain. ­ ibid.

Whereas to maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect and disuse. ­ ibid.

The practice of military exercises is the sole or principal occupation of the soldiers of a standing army, and the maintenance or pay which the state affords them is the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence. The practice of military exercises is only the occasional occupation of the soldiers of a militia, and they derive the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence from some other occupation. In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier; in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character: and in this distinction seems to consist the essential difference between those two different species of military force. ­ ibid.

A militia in whatever manner it may be either disciplined or exercised, must always be much inferior to a well-disciplined and well-exercised standing army.
     The soldiers who are exercised only once a week, or once a month, can never be so expert in the use of their arms as those who are exercised every day, or every other day.
     The soldiers who are bound to obey their officer only once a week or once a month, and who are at all other times at liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, without being in any respect accountable to him, can never be under the same awe in his presense, can never have the same disposition to ready obedience, with those whose whole life and conduct are everyday directed by him, and who are every day even to rise and go to bed, or at least retire to their quarters, according to his orders. ­ ibid.

That the progress of improvement of military exercises, unless the government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to decay, and, altogether with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the martial spirit of the great body of the people. In the present times, indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined standing army, would not perhaps be sufficient for the defense and security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit, besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty, whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against a foreign invader, so it would obstruct them as much if, unfortunately, they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state. ­ ibid.



If you carry a gun, people will call you paranoid. That's ridiculous. If I have a gun, what in the hell do I have to be paranoid about? - Clint Smith.

If you're not shootin', you should be loadin'. If you're not loadin', you should be movin'. If you're not movin', someone's gonna cut your head off and put it on a stick. - Clint Smith.

I may get killed with my own gun, but he's gonna have to beat me to death with it, 'cause it's going to be empty. - Clint Smith.



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.


Ten years ago this month, a controversial "concealed-carry" law went into effect in the state of Florida. In a sharp break from the conventional wisdom of the time, that law allowed adult citizens to carry concealed firearms in public. Many people feared the law would quickly lead to disaster. Blood would literally be running in the streets as citizens shot at one another over everything from fender benders to impolite behavior. Now, 10 years later, it is safe to say that those dire predictions were completely unfounded. Indeed, the debate over concealed-carry laws now centers on the extent to which those laws can actually reduce the crime rate. - Jeffrey R. Snyder, "FIGHTING BACK: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun."


How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, 1973.


Self-defense may be a more important part of the overall crime control effort than is popularly recognized. In the mass media, it is usually assumed that crime fighting is the exclusive province of the criminal justice system; that is, the police, courts, and corrections organizations. The citizen is relegated to providing information to the police and in court as well as occasionally acting as a juror. It is often recommended by some authorities that the citizen should not resist the criminal attacker. It is argued that resistance will provoke the attacker into committing greater injury. It is also argued that the use of a weapon for self-defense, particularly a firearm, is likely to result in greater harm to the victim than would otherwise be the case. It is also argued that the weapon is likely to result in direct harm to the owner when there is no outside attack.... On the other hand, there are surveys which indicate that civilians use firearms for predominately self-defense purposes. - Lawrence Southwick, Jr., "Guns And Justifiable Homicide: Deterrence and Defence," St. Louis University Public Law Review, vol 18, no. 1, 1999.


Cloninger (1991) found that lethal responses by police were associated with a reduced crime rate. It would seem likely that lethal civilian responses would have the same effect....
     As mentioned above, it is often recommended to civilians that they leave their defense to the police and not attempt to engage in self-defense against criminals. However, the fact that civilians kill an average of 299 felons per year, 88 percent with guns, while police kill 398 felons per year with guns, implies that civilians are having a substantial portion of the [crime deterence] effect police have. - Lawrence Southwick, Jr., "Guns And Justifiable Homicide: Deterrence and Defence," St. Louis University Public Law Review, vol 18, no. 1, 1999.

74 percent of criminals agreed with the statement, "One reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime." The result is that most burglaries do not result in personal encounters between the burglar and the victim.... It is noteworthy that England has essentially outlawed most private possession of guns and has a philosophy that self defense is not a valid reason for shooting an assailant. Possibly because of those factors, there is a much higher rate of burglary of occupied homes in England than there is in the United States. - ibid.

The total self-defense results are approximately.... 570,000 fewer violent crimes as the result of gun carrying civilians. - ibid.

A Los Angeles Times poll found that 8 percent of the civilian population had ever used or displayed a gun for self-defense purposes. In 1994, there were about 195 million adults. With 5 percent saying "once" and 3 percent saying "more than once", at least 20.4 million usages are implied. Prorating over 20 years, it implies at least 1 million defensive gun uses per year. Accidental deaths have fallen steadily, from some 13 per million population to under 5 per million population in the period 1960 to 1995. During this same period, gun ownership has dramatically increased, from 330,000 per million population to almost 900,000 per million population. This would seem either to imply that people are aware of the greater safety and are responding by buying more guns or they believe (correctly) that they can reduce the risks by proper training and appropriate behavior.
     It would appear that people are buying guns in response to crime in order to deter it or ward off attackers.... guns are useful in doing exactly that. - ibid.

Somewhere around 0.8 to 2.0 million violent crimes are deterred each year because of gun ownership and use by civilians. In addition, another 1.5 to 2.5 million crimes are stopped by armed civilians.... Without... civilian guns being used to deter and stop crimes, the numbers of completed crimes could well double. It would undoubtedly be the case that increased gun ownership would further reduce crime. - ibid.

It would defy economic logic if people bought guns in order to improve their safety from crime if that improved safety were more than offset by greater risk from accident and theft. In order to assert such an hypothesis, it is necessary to believe either that people are irrational or that they are unaware of the risks of owning firearms. - ibid.



Rosie O'Donnell is only the latest liberal to be vociferously in favor of gun control for other people--and yet ready to use firearms for their own protection. Others have included columnist Carl Rowan and Adolph Ochs Sulzberger of the N. Y. Times, whose newspaper has been 200 percent behind gun control laws for years. Rosie O'Donnell has hired a security guard to protect her young son and the guard has applied for a gun permit....
     Why is it more important for Rosie O'Donnell's son to have armed protection than for a black youth, or other people living in high-crime neighborhoods, to have armed protection? Here is the same "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy found among liberals who want to prevent other people from exercising the same school choice that they exercise for their own children. - Thomas Sowell, "Gun Control Hypocrisy", June 02, 2000.

The empirical data are very clear. Where ordinary, law-abiding citizens have been allowed to carry firearms, violent crimes--including shootings--have gone down, not up. Where local governments have begun restricting the availability of firearms, including requiring all sorts of "safety" provisions, violent crimes have gone up, even at a time when such crimes are going down nationally. - ibid.

Obviously, whenever guns are widely available in a country of a quarter of a billion people, somebody somewhere is going to get killed accidentally or by someone whose anger or viciousness gets out of hand. That has to be weighed against the lives that are saved when an armed citizenry reduces violent crime. Taking both these things into account, there has still been a net reduction in violent crime and deaths from allowing law-abiding people ready access to firearms.
     This is not a theory. It is what has happened, again and again, in communities all across this country. The facts simply do not fit the gun control advocates' theories. - ibid.

But both criminals and law-abiding citizens have common sense. An intruder in your home who hears you loading a shotgun in the next room is going to be out of there before you can get to where he is -- and he is very unlikely ever to come back. Muggers or rapists who are ready to attack you on the street are likely to have a sudden change of plans if you pull out a gun. - ibid.

In 1954, there were only a dozen armed robberies in London but, by the 1990s, there were more than a hundred times as many. In England, as in the United States, drastic crackdowns on gun ownership by law-abiding citizens were accompanied by ever greater leniency to criminals. In both countries, this turned out to be a formula for disaster.
     While England has not yet reached the American level of murders, it has already surpassed the United States in rates of robbery and burglary. Moreover, in recent years the murder rate in England has been going up under still more severe gun control laws, while the murder rate in the United States has been going down as more and more states have allowed private citizens to carry concealed weapons--and have begun locking up more criminals. - Thomas Sowell, "Gun Control Myths: Part I," townhall.com, November 26, 2002.

Facts have no effect whatever on the dogmas of gun control zealots. The fact that most guns used to murder people in England were not legally purchased has no effect on their faith in gun control laws there, any more than faith in such laws here is affected by the fact that the gun used by the recent Beltway snipers was not purchased legally either. - ibid.

In England as in America, sensational gun crimes have been seized upon and used politically to promote crackdowns on gun ownership by law-abiding citizens, while doing nothing about criminals. American zealots for the Brady bill say nothing about the fact that the man who shot James Brady and tried to assassinate President Reagan has been out walking the streets on furlough. - ibid.

The grand dogma of the gun controllers is that places with severe restrictions on the ownership of firearms have lower rates of murder and other gun crimes. How do they prove this? Simple. They make comparisons of places where this is true and ignore all comparisons of places where the opposite is true.
     Gun control zealots compare the United States and England to show that murder rates are lower where restrictions on ownership of firearms are more severe. But you could just as easily compare Switzerland and Germany, the Swiss having lower murder rates than the Germans, even though gun ownership is three times higher in Switzerland. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand and Finland. - Thomas Sowell, "Gun Control Myths: Part II," townhall.com, November 27, 2002.

Within the United States, rural areas have higher rates of gun ownership and lower rates of murder, whites have higher rates of gun ownership than blacks and much lower murder rates. For the country as a whole, handgun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down. But such facts are not mentioned by gun control zealots or by the liberal media. - ibid.

Another dogma among gun control supporters is that having a gun in the home for self-defense is futile and is only likely to increase the chances of your getting hurt or killed. Your best bet is to offer no resistance to an intruder, according to this dogma.
     Actual research tells just the opposite story. People who have not resisted have gotten hurt twice as often as people who resisted with a firearm. Those who resisted without a firearm of course got hurt the most often. - ibid.

Most uses of guns in self-defense--whether in the home or elsewhere--do not involve actually pulling the trigger. When the intended victim turns out to have a gun in his hand, the attacker usually has enough brains to back off. But the lives saved this way do not get counted. - ibid.

Neither are most "children" who are killed by guns just toddlers who happened to find a loaded weapon lying around. More of those "children" are members of teenage criminal gangs who kill each other deliberately. - ibid.

Most people who are in favor of gun control laws support such laws because they believe that these laws will reduce the number of firearms deaths. Such people are not the problem. Their minds can be changed when they learn that the facts are very different from what they have imagined or have been led to believe.
     The problem is with very different kinds of people, often in leadership positions, whose support for gun control laws is strong enough to override any facts. When John Lott's empirical study of the effects of gun control laws found that gun ownership tended on net balance to reduce crime in general and murder in particular, he offered to give a copy of that study to a member of a gun control advocacy group, but she refused to look at it....
     Facts are not the real issue to gun control zealots, who typically share the left's general vision of the world, in which their own superior wisdom and virtue need to be imposed on others, whether on guns, the environment, or other things.
     When John Lott asked the gun control crusader to look at the facts he had amassed, he may have thought that the issue was simply whether one policy was better than another. But what was really at stake was a whole vision of society and the crusader's own sense of self. No wonder she could not risk looking at the facts. - Thomas Sowell, "Gun Control Myths: Part III," townhall.com, November 28, 2002.



Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We wouldn't let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas? - Josef Stalin.

If the [politcal] opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves. - Josef Stalin.

The United States should get rid of its militias. - Josef Stalin, 1933.



The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions. - State vs. Kerner, 181 N.C. (1921).


Madam Speaker, it reflects well on the human condition that tragedy often brings out the best in people: compassion, resolve, understanding. Sometimes, unfortunately, a tragedy can also release the darker human impulses: cynicism, dishonesty, and opportunism. It is a regret that many times individuals will take advantage of a tragedy to promote an ill-conceived agenda.... sadly, it was not long before the heartbreaking death of this girl was transformed into a means of a lot of political points. That very day, the President [Clinton] announced that this tragedy should be an election issue.... The answer to this killing is not to be found in too few gun laws, but rather in how this boy was raised. - Congressman Cliff Stearns (R-FL), House of Representatives, March 21, 2000.

Gun violence is a scourge on our Nation, and we have a responsibility to tackle this plague, not with empty gestures, but with solid action. Instead of passing new gun laws, we should enforce those already on the books....
     The President and his supporters want to create a false sense of security by enacting more laws with little or no real impact on the problem. A stronger commitment to enforcing the laws already on the books will do far more to protect our communities and our school rooms from gun violence. - Congressman Cliff Stearns (R-FL), House of Representatives, March 21, 2000.



My own view on gun control is simple: I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned. - Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Office of Government and Community Programs and the Community Violence Prevention Project, Harvard School of Public Health.


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... - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.

The 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. - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1890-91, 1930.



The right of self-defense is a natural and necessary one. - Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), Jesuit Priest.

Gun control is a band-aid, feeling good approach to the nation's crime problem. It is easier for politicians to ban something than it is to condemn a murderer to death or a robber to life in prison. In essence, "gun control" is the coward's way out. - Gabriel Suarez, police officer, California.



Based upon these hearings it is apparent that enforcement tactics made possible by current federal firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible.... These practices, amply documented in hearings before this Subcommittee, leave little doubt that the Bureau has disregarded rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States. ...It has trampled upon the Second Amendment by chilling exercise of the right to keep and bear arms by law abiding citizens.... It has offended the Fourth Amendment by unreasonably searching and seizing private property. It has ignored the Fifth Amendment by taking private property without just compensation and by entrapping honest citizens without regard for their right to due process of law.... The rebuttal presented to the Subcommittee by the Bureau was utterly unconvincing.... Evidence was submitted establishing that approximately 75 percent of BATF gun prosecutions were aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge... - Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee, October 1980.


The NRA is right... handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. - Josh Sugarman, former communications director for the Coalition Against Gun Violence.

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.



According to a recent story in The New York Observer, Barondess is the main instigator of a 13 group coalition called Doctors Against Handgun Injury. "To promote public safety," says the coalition, "health professionals and health systems should ask about firearm ownership when taking a medical history or engaging in preventive counseling. ... Patients should be provided with information about the risks of having a firearm in the home, as well as methods to reduce the risk, should they continue to choose to keep them."....
     The absurd idea that physicians are authorities on anything that can cause death or injury reflects the arrogance of a cartelized profession whose members flaunt their power as official gatekeepers, restrict competition with the government's help, and routinely substitute their judgment for that of their customers. Given the seething resentment created by medical high handedness, doctors would be well-advised to avoid broaching the subject of gun violence with their patients. - Jacob Sullum, "Disarming Questions," townhall.com, March 27, 2001.

That fact [unreliabillity] did not stop the New Jersey legislature from passing the country's first "smart gun" mandate the other day. The bill, which Gov. James McGreevey has promised to sign, requires that all handguns sold in the state incorporate some form of personalization within three years after the first such model is introduced....
     Revealingly, the mandate exempts police weapons, even though research on personalized firearms was initially aimed at stopping criminals from firing guns grabbed during struggles with cops. The exemption is also odd because one of the bill's avowed goals is to prevent adolescent suicides. "What children have more access to guns than the children of police officers?" asked a lobbyist who fought the mandate....
     Legislators must have recognized that police officers would not want their lives to depend on batteries, electronic chips or recognition devices that could fail in an emergency. - Jacob Sullum, "Lock Step: The Hazards of 'Smart Guns'," townhall.com, December 20, 2002.

Supporters of the lawsuits make no bones about what they're trying to accomplish.... "Litigation is a powerful tool to promote the public's health--especially when other avenues are stymied...." Notice that it doesn't matter whether the cases have any merit.... Cigarette billboards are a thing of the past not because of a statutory ban (which would have violated the First Amendment) but because eliminating outdoor advertising was part of the price for settling state lawsuits against the tobacco companies. Gun makers, whose financial resources are puny compared to the tobacco industry's, are especially vulnerable to that sort of pressure. - Jacob Sullum, "Is Gun Lawsuit Pre-Emption Unconstitutional?" townhall.com, April 18, 2003.



I have yet to hear anyone afflicted with the "gun control" disability dial 9-1-1 and specify, "Now please be sure to send the kind of cops who are disarmed. If you can't do that, we'd rather you not send anyone at all to stop the men who are holding my daughter at knifepoint, because in this household we don't believe that guns ever solve anything." - Vin Suprynowicz.


Guns are used defensively by good people up to 2.4 million times every year-lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs saved, and property protected. - Dr. Edgar Suter.

Citizens have the natural right and the common sense duty to protect themselves, their families, their communities, and their property... guns are the equalizing tools of self-protection, utopian lamentations notwithstanding. - Dr. Edgar A. Suter.

The data from the 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study suggest that 150,000 Americans die every year from doctors' negligence--compared with 38,000 gun deaths annually. Why are doctors not declared a public health menace? Because they save more lives than they take. And so it is with guns. Every year, good Americans use guns about 2.5 million times to protect themselves and their families, which means 65 lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. - Dr. Edgar A. Suter, "Opinion" , San Francisco Chronicle, July 12, 1994.

(San Francisco, CA) - Like a child who fears monsters under the bed at night, California Assemblyman Louis Caldera has an irrational and unjustifiable fear of good citizens with guns. He and his allies in the anti-self-defense lobby have ignored or defamed the mountain of research that shows guns in the hands of good citizens have an enormous public safety benefit--as many as 2.5 million lives protected annually. They have ignored or defamed the research showing the public safety benefits of reforming concealed weapon licensing as California's AB 638 would do. - "Doctors Treat Assemblyman's Unfounded Fears with Facts," Press Release, Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, Inc., Edgar A. Suter MD, National Chair, February 25, 1996.

Guns are used to save lives, prevent injuries, avert medical costs (because lives are saved and injuries are prevented), and protect property.... [However], Assemblyman Caldera and his allies in the anti-self-defense lobby routinely portray good citizens with guns as inept and dangerous, but good citizens use guns about seven to ten times as frequently as the police to repel crime and apprehend criminals and they do it with a better safety record than the police. - ibid.

In California, as in Florida and other states where they have opposed reform, the anti-self defense lobby predict that blood would run in the streets, that inconsequential family arguments and traffic disputes "could" lead to murder and mayhem and that many innocent people "might" be killed--but we do not have to rely on irrational propaganda or political histrionics about what "might" or "could" happen. We can examine the data that show what has actually happened.
     As of April 30, 1994, Florida had issued 233,870 licenses and not one innocent person had been killed or injured by a concealed weapon licensee in the 7 years post-reform. Of the nearly quarter-million licenses, 22 (1/100th of 1%) were revoked for misuse of the firearm. Not one of those revocations were associated with any injury whatsoever. - ibid.

Guns save lives, prevent injuries, avert medical costs, and protect property as many as 2.5 million times annually. Americans use guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods. These are savings with which we can live . Those who advocate restricting gun rights often justify their proposals "if it saves only one life...." There have been matched state pair analyses, crime trend studies, and county-by-county research demonstrating that licensing good, mentally competent adults to carry concealed weapons for protection outside their homes saves many lives, so gun prohibitionists should support such reforms, if saving lives is truly their motivation. - ibid.



Gun control advocates are upset over Attorney General John Ashcroft's declaration last week, outlined in a legal brief before the Supreme Court, that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms irrespective of any ties to a state militia.
     Editorials in The New York Times and The Washington Post denounced Ashcroft as flying in the face of history and legal precedent. In fact, Ashcroft has the law and history on his side. Both have recognized not only an individual's right to keep and bear arms as a last defense against government tyranny, but in many cases, states have required citizens to own guns to protect their freedoms and deter criminals. - Cal Thomas, "Ashcroft is right on guns", townhall.com, May 16, 2002.

Many believe the National Guard is the same as a state militia--a reserve force trained at federal expense for immediate service in the event of an emergency. But the militia of which the Founders spoke was something entirely different. They viewed an armed citizenry that could be mustered into a fighting force or used to defend the rights and property of the individual as a last defense against those who would deny such rights. - ibid.



The best organization you've got there, the biggest organization you've got there is the NRA. We don't have an organization that size. We didn't have an organization that size, and as a consequence, we suffered. And we hope that you don't suffer... - Keith Tidswell, Sporting Shooter's Association, on Australia's gun ban.


The invention of firearms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. 1835.

The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow-creature, he rises in some measure above the person who gives the command. - ibid.

Violence may seem to be excusable, in defense of the cause of oppressed right. Thus it is, in the vast complication of human laws, that extreme liberty sometimes corrects abuses of liberty, and that extreme democracy obviates the dangers of democracy. - ibid.



Fourteen children are dying every day from gunfire. Teenage boys are more likely to die from gunshots than all natural causes combined. It is not simply a problem. It is not enough to call it a crisis. There is an epidemic of gun violence that is consuming our citizens generally and our children in particular. - Senator Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), to the Senate, June 09, 1999.

No one measure in either gun control legislation or in addressing this problem generally is going to solve the problem. - ibid.

In the last 2 months the shootings in Littleton, CO, and Conyers, GA, have represented a potential historic turning point on this issue. Almost certainly, when the history of our generation is written, the events in Conyers and Littleton will be seen in the same light as the publishing of Rachel Carlson's ``Silent Spring'' is seen as the beginning of the environmental movement or the 1960s march on Washington is for civil rights. - ibid.

The simple truth is, in a society in which the Federal Government regulates the content of our air, the quality of our water, virtually every measure of consumer product for its safety, its design and its content, the single exception is guns manufactured in the United States. By statute, the ATF is prohibited from engaging in the regulation of the design and distribution of firearms. - ibid.

A toy gun is regulated for its design: The size of its parts, to protect an infant child, the contents of the materials. A toy gun is completely regulated by the Federal Government. But the actual gun, including the TEC-9 used in Columbine High School, is not. No one could rationally explain that contradiction, but it is the truth. Indeed, as I have demonstrated on this chart, a child's teddy bear is regulated for its edges, its points, small parts, hazardous materials, its flammability, but a gun--which 14 times a day takes a life--that may be in the same home, in proximity to that child is not. - ibid.



Madam Speaker, the White House wants more gun control. Janet Reno wants more gun control. But something just does not add up, Madam Speaker. In the last 5 years, prosecution of gun violators dropped 50 percent. Gun violators serve 25 percent less time in jail, and many pardons were granted for gun violators.
     Now think about it. Fewer prosecutions, early releases, pardons, but the White House wants more gun control. Beam me up, Madam Speaker.
     America does not need more gun control. America needs the White House to enforce the gun laws we already have. I yield back all the coddling of these gun violators by this administration. - Congressman James Traficant (D-OH), House of Representatives, November 02, 1999.


It's the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what's their own. If those in government are headless of reason, the people must patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defence; which if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it. - John Trenchard and Walter Moyle, quoting Aristotle in "An Argument Shewing, That a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy", London, 1697.

Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people. - ibid.

To avoid domestic tyranny, the people must be armed to stand upon [their] own Defence; which if [they] are enabled to do, [they] shall never be put upon it, but [their] Swords may grow rusty in [their] hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it. - ibid.



It was the yeomanry of the country marching to the defense of the city of New Orleans leaving their wives and children and fireside at a moments warning... the farmers of the country triumphantly victorious over the conquerors of Europe. I came , I saw, I conquered, says the American Husbandman, fresh from his plow. The proud veteran who triumphed in Spain and carried the terror into the warlike population of France was humbled beneath the power of his arm. The God of Battles and Righteousness took part with the defenders of their country and the foe was scattered as chaff beneath the wind. It is, indeed, a fit subject for the genius of Homer, Ossian, or Milton... that regular troops, the best disciplined and most veteran of Europe, should be beaten by undisciplined militia with the disproportionate loss of 100 to 1. - Congressman Troup.


The Bill of Rights, contained in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, is every American's guarantee of freedom. - Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope.


The right of self-defense is the first law of nature. In most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. - St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries, 1803.


Every good Communist should know that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The Communist party must control the guns. - Mao Tse Tung.

After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, it will be time to wipe out our other enemies who do not have guns. - Mao Tse Tung.



When a nation relies upon a system of regulars and volunteers, or regulars and militia, the men, in the absence of compulsion, or very strong inducments, will invariably enlist in the organization most lax in discipline. - Colonel Emory Upton, The Military Policy of The United States, 1904.


It is interesting to note that the top officials of Handgun Control Institute are gun owners themselves. They also intend on keeping them. It's other people's guns that bother them. - Mark Urbin.


The right of bearing arms for a lawful purpose is not a right granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. - United States vs Cruikshank, United States Supreme Court.


The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. "A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline." And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. - United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. (1939).


The Second Amendment... protects only the right to "bear arms" for the purpose of service in the "militia," and... not... firearm ownership unrelated to militia service. - United States v. Timothy Joe Emerson (5th Cir.1999).


... "the people" seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained, and established by "the people of the U.S." The Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms." - United States v. Uerdugo-Uriquidez, United States Supreme Court, 1990.


Arms and the man I sing. - Virgil.


[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them. - The Virginia ratifying convention, June, 1788.


A mere handful of citizens, so long as they are willing to use violence, can force their will upon public officials who are not inclined to meet violence with equal violence. - Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, 1908.


The sale, manufacture, and possession of handguns ought to be banned... We do not believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual the right to keep them. - The Washington Post, "Legal Guns Kill Too", November 5, 1999.


Attorney General John Ashcroft shocked gun-control advocates by taking the "extreme" position that the Second Amendment to the Constitution enshrines an individual rather than a corporate right to firearms ownership. To anyone who has actually read the Second Amendment and has any grasp of the fundamental reason why American colonists rebelled against Great Britain in the first place, Mr. Ashcroft's interpretation is neither controversial nor surprising. America was founded on the idea of individual not "corporate" rights. In fact, only individuals can have rights, at least in any meaningful sense. "Society," the "people," etc. are all abstractions. They have no reality beyond the basic building blocks that comprise them--that is, each individual. To take the opposite position, as demanded by gun-control advocates, is to turn one of the most fundamental founding principles on its head. The gun-controllers, of course, do not base their arguments on the founding principles, but on the 60-year history of federal encroachment on gun control, including the 1968 Gun Control Act that was itself patterned on the very law used by Hitler and his Nazis to disarm the German people in the 1930s. - Washington Times, editorial, May 28, 2001.


When firearms go, all goes - we need them every hour. - George Washington.

Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life; unaccustomed to the din of arms; totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge, and superior in arms, makes them timid, and ready to fly from their own shadows. - George Washington, letter to Congress. September 24, 1776.

Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of modern war, as well as for defence as offence, and whenever a substitute is attempted it must prove illusory and ruinous. - George Washington, letter to Congress, September 15, 1780.

No militia will ever acquire the habits necessary to resist a regular force.... The firmness requisite for the real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of discipline and service. I have never yet been witness to a single instance that can justify a different opinion, and it is most earnestly to be wished that the liberties of America may no onger be trusted, in any material degree, to so precarious a dependence. - ibid.

Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence.... From the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable.... The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference; they deserve a place of honor with all that's good... A free people ought to be armed. - George Washington, Speech, printed in the "Boston Independent Chronicle", January 7, 1790.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined. - George Washington, First Annual Address, January 8, 1790.

[Arms] are incapable of abuse in the hands of the militia, who ought to possess a pride in being the depository of the force of the Republic, and may be trained to a degree of energy equal to every military exigency of the United States. - George Washington, Fifth Annual Message, Philadelphia, December 3, 1793.



If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have weapons at all. - U.S. Rep. (D) Henry Waxman.


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. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. - Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787.

Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. 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 pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. - ibid.



I lobbied against the [concealed carry] law in 1993 and 1995 because I thought it would lead to wholesale armed conflict. That hasn't happened. All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn't happen. No bogeyman. I think it's worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I'm a convert. - Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association.


As we have seen in other states and had predicted would occur in Texas, all the fears of the naysayers have not come to fruition. A lot of critics argued that the law-abiding citizens couldn't be trusted... But the facts do speak for themselves. None of these horror stories have materialized. - Sheriff David Williams, Tarrant County, Texas, Fort Worth Telegram, July 17, 1996.


Today's liberals wish to disarm us so they can run their evil and oppressive agenda on us. The fight against crime is just a convenient excuse to further their agenda. I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams' guns have been taken, you'll know Williams is dead. - Professor Walter E. Williams, Professor of Economics, George Mason University.

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. Williams, Professor of Economics George Mason University, 2001.

During last week's Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., laid into President Bush's attorney general nominee John Ashcroft about his strong support for the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. Kennedy demanded that Ashcroft apologize to the American people.
     For what did Kennedy think Ashcroft should apologize? In a speech, Ashcroft said that the reason the Framers demanded a constitutional protection for "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" was to provide a measure of protection against tyranny in government.
     Kennedy demonstrated gross ignorance about the founding of our nation. To throw such an intemperate, public hissy-fit, he must have counted on--and correctly so--the ignorance of his senatorial colleagues, the news media and most Americans.
     Ashcroft didn't bother to defend himself. He might have figured that Kennedy and his colleagues were uneducable, and possibly feared that producing facts would have brought on even greater ire. - Walter Williams, "Constitutional Ignorance," townhall.com, January 24, 2001.

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 reason for these and other tyrannical successes was because the people were first disarmed. - ibid.

Every time there's a school shooting, there are demands for greater gun control measures that range from longer waiting periods and mandated gun locks to stricter licensing and restricted sales. With all the political posturing and demagoguery that follows, a hysterical public buys into the seeming plausibility that reduced availability of guns, especially to children, will reduce gun violence.
     The facts of the matter are just the opposite.... The fact of the matter is that gun accessibility in our country has never been as restricted as it is now. - Walter Williams, "Kids And Guns," townhall.com, April 25, 2001.

For most of our history, a person could walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in the United States, and buy a rifle. Few states even had age restrictions for buying handguns. Buying a rifle or pistol through a mail catalog, such as Sears and Roebuck, was easy. Private transfers of guns to juveniles were unrestricted. Often a 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22 caliber rifle, given to a son by his father.
     These facts of our history should confront us with the question: with greater youth accessibility to guns in the past, why wasn't there the kind of violence we see with today's much more restricted access to guns? Might it be global warming? Or, might it be children playing cops 'n' robbers and cowboys 'n' Indians too much? And how do we solve today's gun violence: more gun locks, longer waiting periods, more gun laws, more psycho- babbling by school psychologists? - ibid.

Moral standards of conduct have been under siege in our country for nearly half a century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We've been taught not to be judgmental -- that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another.
     More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and liberals. School shootings just might represent chickens coming home to roost where they were born.
     If we refuse to seriously ask why young people weren't shooting one another at a time when guns were far more accessible than they are today, we do so at our peril. - ibid.



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.


It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law. - Malcolm X, March 12, 1964.


Gun control has cleared the way for seven major genocides since 1915, in which governments gone bad murdered 56,000,000 persons, including millions of children. - Aaron Zelman, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.


We encourage all looters to provide us with a next of kin before venturing out. There's no power and no phone service, but the hardware store sold out of ammunition. - Dauphin Island Police Chief, following Hurricanes George.


You may not like guns, and choose not to own one. That is your right. You might not believe in God. That is your choice. However, if someone breaks into your home the first two things youre going to do are: 1) Call someone with a gun. 2) Pray they get there in time.


Blaming guns for murder is the same as blaming cars for hit-and-runs.


Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.


Question: How many gun control advocates does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: They don't. They pass laws against burned-out bulbs, and then they wonder why it's still so dark. Meanwhile, a lot of people get hurt because they can't see.

Links of Interest:

A Well Regulated Militia

American Self-Defense Institute

AWARE - Arming Women Against Rape & Endangerment

Bill of Rights

Citizens' Committee For The Right To Keep And Bare Arms

Constitution of the United States

Enemies Foreign & Domestic

The Federalist Papers

Gun Owners of America

Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership

Keep And Bear Arms

Liberty Belles

National Rifle Association

The Paul Revere Network

Second Amendment Foundation

Second Amendment Sisters, Inc.

Self-Defense: a Basic Human Right

United States Practical Shooting Association

Women & Guns

Women Against Gun Control

Women to Arms




TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: arms; bang; banglist; billofrights; constitution; crime; guns; law; quotes; rights; secondamendment; selfdefense
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To: All
“Police officers -- police officers -- begging the president all across our country: Keep this ban in place so we don't have to walk into a drug bust staring the down the barrel of a military machine gun, of an Uzi or an AK-47.” - John Kerry, fully automatic liar.

“And so tomorrow, for the first time in 10 years, when a killer walks into a gun shop, when a terrorist goes to a gun show somewhere in America, when they want to purchase an AK-47 or some other military assault weapon, they're going to hear one word: Sure.” - John Kerry, lying about weapons of mass destruction.

Full Automatic Propaganda

101 posted on 09/15/2004 9:09:16 AM PDT by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: All
"The people have a right to hunt, fish, and harvest game," subject to regulation by the state legislature, according to the Virginia Constitution. Numerous states have such a guarantee, but few courts have decided the meaning of that right.

A lawsuit pending in Nelson County, located in rural Central Virginia, promises to be perhaps the first in the nation to do so. Orion Sporting Group LLC applied for a conditional use permit to re-open an on-going shotgun sports business on a new 450-acre rural tract of property where Orion has a licensed hunting preserve. It would have been a place for sportsmen and women safely to shoot shotguns at clay pigeons and ZZ-Birds that simulate the flight paths of upland game birds and other fowl as well as small game animals. Even though the facility would have complied with the existing noise ordinance, the County turned it down.

SHOTGUN SPORTS AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO HUNT: VIRGINIA COURT TO DECIDE ZONING DISPUTE

102 posted on 10/29/2004 10:10:09 PM PDT by PsyOp (Any man can make a mistake; only a Democrat keeps making the same one.)
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To: All
HOOPER BAY -- This Eskimo village sits on the edge of the continent, part shantytown, part suburb, part Wild West. One can't go farther west without stepping into the Bering Sea, and, just beyond, onto the frosty eastern tip of Siberia...

One of the more curious aspects of life here has to do with firearms. Every household has an assortment of rifles and shotguns. When people are hungry, they go out and shoot something, like a walrus in the surf.

Every adult has legal access to guns -- except the police.

No-gun cops

103 posted on 11/09/2004 11:03:36 AM PST by PsyOp (U.S. to Osama... CAN YOU HEAR US NOW!!!)
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To: All
District Judge Joseph Meyer agreed, writing in his opinion, "Uniformity in itself is no virtue." His ruling came in a suit filed by the city of Denver challenging parts of two 2003 state laws, one of which threw out all local gun laws, including those that ban assault weapons. The other involved uniform standards for obtaining concealed-weapons permits.

Gun lawsuit ruling a win for local control

104 posted on 11/09/2004 12:40:22 PM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: All
Specter's real views on gun ownership were made crystal clear in the days following September 11, 2001. Even antigunners such as California Senator Barbara Boxer saw the need to allow airline pilots to once again carry handguns if they chose to do so, if only to provide a last line of defense against terrorist hijackers. On September 6, 2002, Arlen Specter was one of just six senators to vote against arming airline pilots.

Specter’s Second Amendment Surprise Chairman Specter could be as antigun as he wanted to be.

105 posted on 11/16/2004 9:10:08 AM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: PsyOp
With their typical spin, the Brady bunch has generated a panic among many unfamiliar with firearms and ballistics. The misinformation campaign involves a recently released product of Fabrique Nationale Herstal (FN), a Belgian firearms manufacturer—the “Five seveN® ” semi-automatic pistol—and the ammunition the gun fires....
     In a statement issued Friday, the NRA quotes Mike Barnes, President of the Brady Campaign organization, at a press conference on March 3 as “challenging NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre to ‘put on a bullet proof vest, and we`ll fire the weapon at him, and see what happens.’"

Publisher Calls Out Brady Bunch-Tells Sarah Brady, "Shoot me"

106 posted on 03/07/2005 11:47:06 AM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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Sarah Brady skirted gun laws in buying son's rifle

New York Daily News, March 22, 2002

WASHINGTON - Gun-control advocate Sarah Brady bought her son a powerful rifle for Christmas in 2000 - and may have skirted Delaware state background-check requirements, the New York Daily News has learned.

Brady reveals in a new memoir that she bought James Brady Jr. a Remington .30-06, complete with scope and safety lock, at a Lewes, Del., gun shop.

"I can't describe how I felt when I picked up that rifle, loaded it into my little car and drove home," she writes. "It seemed so incredibly strange: Sarah Brady, of all people, packing heat."

Brady became a household name as a crusader for stricter gun-control laws after her husband, James, then the White House press secretary, was seriously wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan.

Brady writes in "A Good Fight" that the unnamed gun shop ran federal Brady Law and Delaware state background checks with great fanfare.

The book suggests that she did not have her son checked, as required by Delaware state law.

"(W)hen the owner called in the checks, it seemed to me he spoke unnecessarily loudly, repeating and spelling my name over and over on the phone," Brady writes.

Amy Stillwell, a spokeswoman for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the federal Brady Law does not require background checks for intrafamily gun gifts.

Stillwell said she did not know whether her son was checked under the state law. The Delaware Department of Justice says the state does not have an exemption for family gifts.

"Scott is not a convicted felon, and he is not prohibited from owning a gun," Stillwell said. "Scott Brady could walk into a store and buy a - he is not a prohibited purchaser."

Delaware Justice Department spokeswoman Lori Sitler said the purchase could be illegal under state law if Brady did not also say who she was buying the gun for and submit his "name, rank and serial number" for a full check.

"You can't purchase a gun for someone else," Sitler said yesterday. "That would be a 'straw purchase.' You've got a problem right there."

Anti-gun control advocates were surprised to hear of Brady's foray into their world.

"We hope that it's innocuous and there's been no laws violated," said James Jay Baker, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. "It's obviously interesting that Sarah would be purchasing firearms of any kind for anybody, given her championing of restrictive guns laws for everyone."

(c) 2002, New York Daily News. Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Sarah Brady skirted gun laws in buying son's rifle

107 posted on 03/07/2005 11:56:29 AM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: PsyOp

bookmark


108 posted on 03/08/2005 2:15:08 AM PST by Abundy
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"In a speech given to the National Rifle Association's national convention in Houston, Nugent brandished a pair of assault rifles while urging NRA members to recruit other gun-packing nuts into the gang. He went so far as to urge NRA members not to associate with non-members, and to become "hardcore, radical extrimists."

Ted Nugent Gets More Insane About Guns

109 posted on 04/19/2005 12:12:01 PM PDT by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: PsyOp
Excellent collection!

Bump and book-marked!

110 posted on 04/19/2005 12:31:13 PM PDT by MamaTexan (I am not a *legal entity*, nor am I a 'person' as defined and/or created by law.)
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"Talking to the two on the front porch of Rick's Gun Shop and Mount Hunger Archery in Mount Hunger, a gun and archery shop founded by Gorham in 1992, it's apparent they have a core belief in their constitutional rights as Americans to own firearms and to own private property. Both men believe constant vigilance is required to safeguard those freedoms."
The Right To Bear Arms Is As Old As Vermont
111 posted on 09/15/2005 2:10:27 PM PDT by PsyOp (After things go from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat.)
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To: PsyOp

Your best defense is a hangun, say four local officers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1522660/posts

"Now for what the officers had to say. Perhaps most important is that slogans such as "Protect and Serve" are just that — slogans. Meaningless slogans. Be real. There is no way police can protect everybody from harm. They just cannot be at all places at all times."

"The men also addressed the myth that rank-and-file officers oppose gun rights and the National Rifle Association. Coercing officers into photo-ops, politicians such as Bill Clinton and Mayor Richard Daley would have you believe that police reject the Second Amendment. But 80 percent of street-level cops will tell you that if you want to protect yourself, get a gun."

"Police gun supporters used to number 95 percent to 98 percent, they said, but the figure is starting to erode because police departments in big liberal cities are looking for recruits with the view of Big Brother."


112 posted on 11/15/2005 1:51:14 PM PST by PsyOp (Men easily believe what they want to. – Caesar, De Bello Gallico, III, 18.)
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To: All
For a long time, Margaret Hurst lived in fear.

Gangs control turf just a few blocks from her Mission District apartment in San Francisco, and she's sure a neighbor across the street deals drugs. Her building was broken into four times in one year. She saw teenagers on her street display a gun. And while she was stopped at a red light one day, a man tried to punch in her car window in a case of road rage.

So she bought a handgun. Now Hurst is no longer scared.

"I'll tell you one thing. If I'm going down, I'm taking them with me," said 49-year-old Hurst, who is about as un-Charlton Heston as any woman with a British accent, braided bun and long flowing skirt could be.

THE LINE OF FIRE:Some citizens fear for safety if courts uphold S.F.'s voter-approved ban on handgun

113 posted on 12/05/2005 12:06:35 PM PST by PsyOp (Men easily believe what they want to. – Caesar, De Bello Gallico, III, 18.)
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To: All
Issues involving guns have taken center stage in the cultural divide that separates Red and Blue America. Gun-control advocates point to the militia clause of the Second Amendment, arguing that it warrants a collective, rather than an individual, right to keep and bear arms. However, history--buttressed by the Founders' clear understanding--dictates that the amendment guarantees this right to individual Americans.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not dealt directly with the Second Amendment since 1939. Then, United States v. Miller held that a sawed-off shotgun was subject to registration because there was no evidence before the court that it had a military use. This opinion suggests that any demonstrably military weapon should enjoy the protection of the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has conjured rights from the Constitution that do not exist in the text--while disparaging those rights contained in the document itself--leaving both sides of the gun debate cause for concern in any future rulings.

Amendment II: Right to bear arms

114 posted on 12/06/2005 3:28:30 PM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: PsyOp
I felt bad when the original 2nd Amendment Law Library shut down. However, I found a site that put up a lot of the legal scholarship found in the old library:

2nd Amendment Law Library

Too valuable a reference to have disappear.

115 posted on 12/06/2005 3:36:04 PM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: archy

The right of the people to keep and bear... arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country... - James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789.

Oh, had our second amendment only been phrased as this!


116 posted on 12/06/2005 3:42:29 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Tench_Coxe

"Too valuable a reference..."

Looks like I have some downloading to do!


117 posted on 12/06/2005 4:01:00 PM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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To: PsyOp

Bookmark ping


118 posted on 12/06/2005 4:03:17 PM PST by 2nd amendment mama ( www.2asisters.org • Self defense is a basic human right!)
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To: All
MONTREAL - Paul Martin will today propose a ban on most handguns in Canada, CanWest News Service has learned. Sources say the Prime Minister will make the election campaign announcement this morning in Toronto, where deaths due to gun violence have jumped significantly this year.

There will be some exemptions, including maintaining the right for police to carry handguns. The Prime Minister is also expected to announce a significant increase in resources for police to deal with the ban.

Liberals to ban handguns (Canada)

"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. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed--but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government--and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." - Edward Abbey, The Right to Bear Arms, 1979.

119 posted on 12/09/2005 1:03:27 PM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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The University of Chicago conducted a comprehensive study that showed that major crime had seen substantial drops in states with concealed carry laws. According to the study, this drastic fall in crime stemmed not from increased gun use, but from potential criminals' choices to avoid confrontation with people who could be carrying pistols. In this way, concealed carry laws have proved beneficial, not only for personal protection, but also for discouraging crime in general.

It is a common inference that concealed carry laws will lead to a drastic increase in the number of new guns and inexperienced gun owners in the area. This is simply not true because the vast majority of people who are inclined to apply for a concealed carry permit are already gun enthusiasts with extensive knowledge of firearms and firearm safety. In some states, training courses are mandatory for anyone seeking a permit, regardless of experience.

Experience Shows Concealed Carry Can Help

120 posted on 01/04/2006 11:45:29 AM PST by PsyOp (The commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms.... - Aristotle.)
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