Right to Bear Arms

Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved.

Aristotle

Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.

Aristotle

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

James Madison

There's a time for casting silver; a time for casting cannon. If that isn't in the red, it should be!

Paul Revere

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms.

Adolf Hitler

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

Mahatma Gandhi

Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself.
George Washington

Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
James Madison

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.
James Madison

A free people ought...to be armed

George Washington

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Thomas Jefferson

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

James Madison

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.

Thomas Paine

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?

Patrick Henry

A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.

Thomas Hobbes

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.

Alexander Hamilton

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

James Madison

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.

John Adams

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

John Adams

For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Thomas Jefferson

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty

Frederick Douglass