Posted on 11/06/2003 6:19:06 PM PST by PsyOp
"What is a left-wing socialist but a Marxist without a gun?" ~ Don Feder.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" ~ Benjamin Franklin.
"Suppose one little old lady in ten carries a gun. Suppose that one in ten of those, if attacked by a mugger, succeeds in killing the mugger instead of being killed by him -- or shooting herself in the foot. On average, the mugger is much more likely to win the encounter than the little old lady. But -- also on average -- every hundred muggings produces one dead mugger. At those odds, mugging is an unprofitable business -- not many little old ladies carry enough money to justify one chance in a hundred of being killed getting it. The number of muggers declines drastically, not because they have all been killed but because they have, rationally, sought safer professions." ~ David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, 1996. p.229
"Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun." ~ Jean Genet.
These practices, amply documented in hearings before this Subcommittee, leave little doubt that the Bureau [of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] 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. ~ Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate (1982)
The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not merely such as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in on, in the slightest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying of a well regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free state. ~ Georgia Supreme Court, Nunn v. State, (1846).
There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. ~ 7th Circut Court, Bowers v. DeVito (1982)
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 next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms. ~ Trench Coxe, "Remarks on the first part of the amendments to the Federal Constitution", Federal Gazette, 18 June 1789
. . . a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen . . . ~ D.C Appellate Court, Warren v. District of Columbia
All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans. We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training. We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment. ~ Fifth Circut Court of Appeals, U.S. vs. Emerson, (2001)
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 of the New York Historical Society, 7 October 1789
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." ~ Adolph Hitler, edict of 18 March, 1939, Hitler's Secret Conversations, #403 (Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens trans., 1961).
"We'll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily ... given the political realities ... very modest. We'll have to start working again to strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and again. Our ultimate goal, total control of handguns, is going to take time. The first problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a few exceptions) totally illegal." ~ Peter Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc., New Yorker Magazine, June 26, 1976
"We'll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily ... given the political realities ... very modest. We'll have to start working again to strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and again. Our ultimate goal, total control of handguns, is going to take time. The first problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a few exceptions) totally illegal." ~ Peter Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc., New Yorker Magazine, June 26, 1976
"All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately...The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore any one who does not belong to one of the above named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon...must be regarded as an enemy of the national government." ~ SA Oberfuhrer, Bad Tolz, March 1933.
"We must get rid of all the guns." ~ Sarah Brady, Handgun Control, Inc., on The Phil Donahue Show, September 1994.
"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal." ~ Janet Reno, former U.S. Attorney General.
"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. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, C-Span, April 27, 1995
"Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bears arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason,then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings." ~ L. Neil Smith
"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 when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." ~ Henry St. George Tucker
"No government can be trusted, that does not trust its own people with military-style arms of greater weight and power than those possessed by the central government itself." ~ Vin Suprinowicz
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." ~ George Washington.
"The right to own weapons is the right to be free." ~ A.E. Van Vogt, The Weapon Shops of Isher.
"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." ~ Ted Nugent.
"They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?" ~ Paul Harvey.
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark." ~ Robert A. Heinlein.
"As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated." ~ Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA.
"Here's my credo. There are no good guns, There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people." ~ Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA.
"The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties." ~ George Jonas, "The Issue Isn't Gun Control but State Control", National Post, July 23, 2003, p. A-15
"The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government." ~ Joyce Malcom, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. IX
"It was during the eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny." ~ Joyce Malcom, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 128
"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.
"What good does it do to ban some guns. All guns should be banned." ~ Howard Metzenbaum, US Senator OH-D.
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