Category: Quote O’ The Day

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.
— James Burgh, Political Disquisitions- 1775

You don’t get to pick the day you need your gun. Someone else will pick that day, and they will only tell you at the last minute.
-Tom Givens

“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American . . . . The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
— Tench Coxe in The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788

The Second Amendment wasn’t written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.
– Senator Tom Coburn

The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed.
– Jeffrey R. Snyder

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, and `is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.
[Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, at 401-402 (1859)]

Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.
— JOHN ADAMS

“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”
– William Blum, former U.S. State Department employee

The American Colonies were all democratic governments, where the power is in the hands of the people and where there is not the least difficulty or jealousy about putting arms into the hands of every man in the country.

European countries should not be ignorant of the strength and the force of such a form of government and how strenuously and almost wonderfully people living under one have sometimes exerted themselves in defence of their rights and liberties and how fatally it has ended with many a man and many a state who have entered into quarrels, wars and contests with them. — George Mason

Government should be good for the liberty of the governed, and that is when it governs to the least possible degree. It should be good for the wealth of the nation, and that is when it acts as little as possible upon the labor that produces it and when it consumes as little as possible. It should be good for the public security, and that is when it protects as much as possible, provided that the protection does not cost more than it brings in…. It is in losing their powers of action that governments improve. Each time that the governed gain space there is progress.
-Augustin Theirry

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
– Winston Churchill

Guns have only two enemies: Rust and Politicians.

If you have a problem with law abiding citizens being armed, then you are the reason why law abiding citizens are armed.

“Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy … censorship.
When any government, or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to it’s subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.
Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything.
You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
–Robert A. Heinlein,

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
– Patrick Henry

Never give up your guns. Any American who demands his countrymen give up theirs is either a criminally negligent incompetent at citizenship, or an evil domestic enemy who knows exactly the kind of tyranny he is salivating to unleash. -David Codrea

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 1789.

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
— Edward Gibbon [On ancient Athens]