Famous Gun Quotes - Dotson

8/8/2019 Famous Gun Quotes - Dotson

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Famous Gun Quotes

http://ron.dotson.net/guns/gunquotes.htm

We should not forget that the spark which ignited the AmericanRevolution was caused by the British attempt to confiscate the firearms

of the colonists. For more information, please see: Guns, Revolutions,History. Here is a quote from the Lexicon Universal Encyclopedia:

War clouds were gathering rapidly. The sending of more than 3,000 British armyregulars under Maj. Gen. Thomas Gage to Boston further exacerbated the imperialrift. When a column of these troops under Lt. Col. Francis Smith moved into the

countryside to collect arms and munitions gathered by the patriot militia, hostilitieserupted at Lexington and Concord on Apr. 19, 1775.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that

jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you giveup that force, you are inevitably ruined

Patrick Henry

The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. Patrick Henry
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nordetermined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted andbetter for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, foran unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and

Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (within his own lands or tenements). Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution (with his note added), 1776.Papers 1:353

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms,and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...

Richard Henry Lee, 1787

And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe thejust liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of theUnited States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raisestanding armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some oneor more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderlymanner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to

unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. Samuel Adams, Debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788

[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possessover the people of almost every other nation (where) the governments are afraid to

trust the people with arms. James Madison, Federalist, No. 46.

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannotbe trusted with arms for our defense? ... If our defense be the real object of havingthose arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety tous, as in our own hands?

Patrick Henry

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

George Mason


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No slave shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from hismaster or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. Arms inpossession of a slave contrary to this prohibition shall be forfeited to him who will seizethem.

A Bill Concerning Slaves, Virginia Assembly, 1779

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abidingcitizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.

James Earl Jones, Actor

The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has beenthe study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest possible limits. ... and[when] the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretextwhatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink ofdestruction.

St. George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court 1803

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almostevery kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust lawsby the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a forcesuperior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the

United States Noah Webster, 1888

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 Ghandi, "Gandhi, An Autobiography", page 446

In a polity, each citizen is to possess his own arms, which are not supplied or ownedby the state.

Aristotle

Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizensdon't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.

Heinrich Himmler

We cannot be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans. B.J.Clinton, USA Today, 3/11/93 page 2A


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The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjectedpeople to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed theirsubjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed,I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non ["something essential"

lit. "without which not"] for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any

native militia or police.-- Adolph Hitler, Edict of March 18, 1938

We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts not tooverthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with aradical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ......

And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personalfreedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in theannouncement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we'regoing to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer intheir communities.

Bill Clinton, 3-22-94

They, the makers of the Constitution: conferred, as against the government, the rightto be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilizedmen.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when thegovernments purposes are beneficial ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious

encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

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

Alexander Hamilton

A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could notbe safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, anenslaved press and a disarmed populace.

James Madison, The Federalist Papers (No. 46).

It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it isthe function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

Justice Robert H. Jackson


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The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerouspower that can be entrusted to man.

attributed to Horatio Bunce in Sockdolager

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 ourfounding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

Charles A. Beard

Four out of five politicians surveyed prefer unarmed, ignorant peasants. Unknown

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Famous Gun Quotes - Dotson