Here are some of my favorite quotes on the right to bear arms. If you like these, surf over to my fortunes collection where you can download them in a couple of cookie files.

When only cops have guns, it’s called a “police state”.

Love your country, but never trust its government.

– Robert A. Heinlein.

“The power to tax involves the power to destroy;…the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create….”

– Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819.

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government”

– Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good”

– George Washington

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

“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.

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficient… The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

– Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.”

– Barry Goldwater

“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings.

– Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Shogun, August 1588

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

– Abraham Lincoln, 4 April 1861

“One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms.”

– Constitutional scholar Joseph Story, 1840

“The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being…”

– J.G.A. Pocock, describing the beliefs of the founders of the U.S.

Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.

– From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.

“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only] 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 the constant companion to your walks.”

– Thomas Jefferson, writing to his teenaged nephew.

No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.

– 16 Am. Jur. Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec 256

“The state calls its own violence `law’, but that of the individual `crime’”

– Max Stirner

“Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell `Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

– Peter Venetoklis

…Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents.”

– Don B. Kates, writing on statistical patterns in gun crime

“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”

– John F. Kennedy

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 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.”

– Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

– George Washington, in a speech of January 7, 1790

“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves … and include all men capable of bearing arms.”

– Senator Richard Henry Lee, 1788, on “militia” in the 2nd Amendment

“…quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.” [...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.]

– (Lucius Annaeus) Seneca “the Younger” (ca. 4 BC-65 AD),

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.

– Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson’s Commonplace book

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.

– “Political Disquisitions”, a British republican tract of 1774-1775

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.

– Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787

& what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

– Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

– Patrick Henry, speech of June 5 1788

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? 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 defence 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, speech of June 9 1788

“To disarm the people… was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

– George Mason, speech of June 14, 1788

“The great object is, that every man be armed. [...] Every one who is able may have a gun.”

– Patrick Henry, speech of June 14 1788

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.

– “M.T. Cicero”, in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the “militia” referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

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, in “Phila. Independent Gazetteer”, August 20, 1789

The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and 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, “Advice to the Privileged Orders”, 1792-93

[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.

– Joel Barlow, “Advice to the Privileged Orders”, 1792-93

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

– John Stuart Mill, writing on the U.S. Civil War in 1862

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.

– Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)

Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’

– Mao Tse-tung, 1938, inadvertently endorsing the Second Amendment.

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ’shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. [...] The Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.

– Majority Supreme Court opinion in “U.S. vs. Miller” (1939)

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 most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

– Hitler, April 11 1942

The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

– A.E. Van Vogt, “The Weapon Shops Of Isher”, ASF December 1942

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

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

– Hubert H. Humphrey, 1960

No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before.

– Colin Greenwood, in the study “Firearms Control”, 1972

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, “Abbey’s Road”, 1979

If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms].

– U.S. Representative John Dingell, 1980

.. a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen…

– Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)

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), SuDoc# Y4.J 89/2: Ar 5/5

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. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.

– Stephen P. Halbrook, “That Every Man Be Armed”, 1984

To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you’re putting a money test on getting a gun. It’s racism in its worst form.

– Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1988

I don’t like the idea that the police department seems bent on kepping a pool of unarmed victims available for the predations of the criminal class.

– David Mohler, 1989, on being denied a carry permit in NYC

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, Japanese author, in the LA Times 15 Oct 1992

You know why there’s a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.

– Rush Limbaugh, in a moment of unaccustomed profundity 17 Aug 1993

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, Oct 7 1789

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

– John F. Kennedy

http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/quotes.html

A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Wisconsin man barred from owning firearms because of his criminal record, ruling the lifetime prohibition may violate Americans’ Second Amendment rights and calling into question the future of a 13-year old gun control law.  In a 3-0 decision on Wednesday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a trial judge to take a second look at the evidence that a 1996 federal law prohibiting anyone convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” is constitutional in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that emphasized “the individual right to possess and carry weapons.”

This case involves a man named Steven Skoien, who previously had been convicted of misdemeanor domestic battery. A year later, a Winchester 12-gauge hunting shotgun was discovered in a truck parked outside his home, along with evidence (including an orange hunting jacket, a deer carcass, and a state-issued tag for a deer kill) that he had used it earlier in the day. He was charged with illegal possession of a firearm.
irst, it shows that U.S. Justice Department has become a bit lazy in prosecuting gun cases: the court noted that “the government has made little effort to discharge its burden of demonstrating” the constitutionality of the law, and “relied almost entirely on conclusory reasoning by analogy.”

Second, and more importantly, this is one of the first appeals court cases to take an in-depth look at the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in D.C. v. Heller on existing federal firearms laws. It’s true that Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion said: “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill…” But misdemeanors are different from felonies, which the Seventh Circuit noted: “We therefore assume that Skoien’s Second Amendment rights are intact notwithstanding his misdemeanor domestic-violence conviction.” The judges said that the ownership ban is life-long and sweeping, providing no way for a now-peaceable citizen to seek an exception: More from source

The Turner Diaries – William Pierce Audio Book 8CD 1978

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (UPI) — U.S. firearms owners have bought an estimated 12 billion rounds of ammunition during the past year, gun industry analysts said.

The figure far outstrips the 7 billion to 10 billion rounds sold in a typical year, The Washington Post reported Monday. The spike in sales began when people started to take seriously warnings from the gun lobby that with Democrats controlling the White House and Congress there would be new restrictions on gun ownership, the newspaper said.

As consumers stepped up purchases, supplies tightened, prices went up and a shortage developed. The shortage has begun to ebb and gun-control advocates are expressing concern about the record amount of stockpiled ammunition, the Post said.

“We’ve had people buy ammunition for calibers they don’t even have the gun for: ‘Oh, I want to get this gun eventually. And when I get it, ammunition may be hard to get,’” Michael Tenny, who runs an Internet sporting gods store based in Fort Worth, Texas.

U.S. taxes on guns and ammunition — which are used to fund wildlife conservation — increased after Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 and after Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. At the current rate those tax receipts will set a record in 2009.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/11/02/Ammo-sales-prices-skyrocket/UPI-27441257213803/

Healthcare reform is a brilliant way to regulate/ban firearms without violating the Second Amendment. For a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forbidden by Congress from doing research on gun-control issues. Such piddling hurdles as federal law don’t matter to the Obama administration. CDC: First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws With a wave of a hand, the CDC has simply redefined gun-control research so the ban no longer applies. They’re not researching guns; they’re researching alcohol sales and their impact on gun violence, or researching how teens carrying guns affect the rates of non-gun injuries. “These particular grants do not address gun control; rather they deal with the surrounding web of circumstances,” wrote National Institutes of Health (NIH) spokesman Don Ralbovsky.More As an attorney, part of my job is risk management – sit around and think big thoughts on how things could go wrong, and then plan accordingly. (Some of my less charitable friends describe it as “being paid to think of ways to screw things up.”) Healthcare reform, which seems completely innocuous to gun rights at first blush, is a Trojan Horse. Of that, there can be no doubt. The only real question is whether our enemies will choose to use it as such. Given the string of court and legislative defeats the anti-gun groups have suffered, is there any doubt whether the Brady Bunch will pass up an opportunity to regulate firearms in this oblique manner?More

Bowing to pressure from Mexico and the anti-gun lobby, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last night signed Assembly Bill 962 restricting ammunition sales. Beginning February 1, 2011 retailers will be required to place all ammo behind counters and create a registry of handgun ammunition buyers by obtaining their fingerprint and recording their drivers license numbers.

In a letter to the State Assembly the Governor stated: “Utilized properly, this type of information is invaluable for keeping communities safe and preventing dangerous felons from committing crimes with firearms. Assembly Bill 962 reasonably regulates access to ammunition and improves public safety without placing undue burdens on consumers. For these reasons, I am pleased to sign this bill.”

The legislation also requires face to face transfers of ammunition which will eliminate any mail order or Internet purchases of ammunition by State residents. Retailers like Cabella’s reportedly aren’t waiting for the bill to take effect and will stop shipping to CA soon.

This bill will exacerbate an already tight market in CA for ammunition and unfairly burden law abiding citizens with more hurdles to jump over to exercise their Second Amendment Rights. Schwarzenegger has been no friend to gun owners in the Golden State. Though he did veto legislation banning gun shows from public property he has in the past signed bills restricting the purchase of certain types of guns and requiring microstamping for handguns.See More

(Administrative note: To the left are pictures of the graves of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome.  Had either of them been wearing a firearm the night they were abducted and murdered by four Black men and one Black woman, they would most likely be alive today.   Consider joining Gun Owners of America, “The Only No-Compromise Gun Lobby in America”, as stated by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.)

From Gun Owners of America:

Charles Babington of the Associated Press reported yesterday about the Senate Democratic leadership’s latest sleazy maneuver to pass the anti-gun health care bill.  And this is contemptible even by their admittedly low standards:

White House and Democratic officials are quietly talking with key senators, hoping to craft a thread-the-needle strategy on health care with little or no help from Republicans.  The officials are asking a handful of moderate Democrats to do something that might be hard to explain to voters:  Cast a Senate vote that could be interpreted as favoring a bill that the lawmakers ultimately plan to oppose on final passage.

In other words, they are trying to convince the swing votes — Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, perhaps Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — to “throw” their vote on a pivotal filibuster vote.  Bottom line:  they are being asked to side with the ObamaCare supporters when it comes to the all important “cloture” vote — which is the real hurdle that ObamaCare supporters must overcome if they are to pass the bill in the Senate.

The cloture vote determines whether a filibuster will continue or not, and it requires the support of 60 Senators.  Siding with the ObamaCare supporters on the cloture vote would allow the “swing voters” to oppose the bill on final passage, where only 50 votes (plus the Vice-President) are needed.

Under this scenario, the moderate Democrats would then go back to their constituents and claim to have opposed the anti-gun health care bill because they voted against it on “final passage.” But the critical vote which will have determined the real outcome of ObamaCare will have been the cloture vote.  They will claim that the cloture vote was only a “procedural vote.”

It is hard to imagine that anyone with an IQ over 50 would think anyone would swallow this scumbag trick.

But, just to make sure, we are asking our members to let senators know what the response will be for any senator who casts a deciding vote to pass the anti-gun health care bill on cloture, and then tries to trick them.

ACTION: Please write your Senators.  Let them know that the 60-vote-margin votes on “cloture” are the important health care votes.  No one will be fooled by a senator who votes wrong on these and then casts a meaningless vote against final passage.

You can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center to send your legislators the pre-written e-mail message below.

—– Pre-written letter —–

Dear Senator:

Charles Babington of the Associated Press reported on September 16 about the Senate Democratic leadership’s latest sleazy maneuver to pass the anti-gun health care bill.

They are reportedly trying to convince the “swing” senators to “throw” the pivotal 60-vote cloture vote on shutting down debate on the anti-gun bill. The “swings” would then be allowed to vote against the bill on final passage, where only 50 votes (plus the Vice-President) are needed.

Under this scenario, the senators would then go back to their constituents and claim to have opposed the anti-gun health care bill because they voted against it on “final passage.” The critical outcome-determinative votes on “cloture” and on “waiving the budget act” — which will determine whether the bill passes or fails — would only have been “procedural votes,” they would argue.

It is hard to imagine that anyone with an IQ over 50 would think anyone would swallow this dirty trick.

But, just to make sure, we want to let you know that no one will be fooled if a senator casts a deciding vote to pass the anti-gun health care bill on cloture or waiving the budget act, and then tries to trick us with a meaningless vote against final passage.

To reiterate: The important votes are the 60-vote-margin votes on “cloture” and on “waiving the budget act.” No one will be fooled by a senator who votes wrong on these and then casts a meaningless vote against final passage.

Gun Owners of America will continue to inform me as to what is happening on this important issue.