Gun
Quotes from "Americans have the right and advantage of being
armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the
people with arms." "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." -Richard Henry Lee, R. Lee Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer 170 (1788) "The great object is that every man be
armed." "The 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." "A free people ought not only to be armed, but
disciplined." "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." "The people are not to be disarmed of their
weapons." "Are we at last brought to such a humiliating
and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense?" "The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of
changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people." "Under every government the dernier [final,
ultimate] resort of the people, is an appeal to the sword; whether to defend themselves
against the open attacks of a foreign enemy, or to check the insidious encroachments of
domestic foes." "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." "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." "It is against sound policy for a free people to
keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the
enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile [easy to be done] means,
which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or
trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has
justly been considered, as the palladium [the most effectual defense] of the liberties of
the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power
of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance,
enable the people to resist and triumph over them." A popular saying during the Revolutionary War Era. Thomas Jefferson was quoted as stating it, and Benjamin Franklin proffered that these words make up the national seal with a picture of Moses parting the Red Sea. |