Right to Bear Arms
Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved.
Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms.
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.
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
Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?
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.
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.
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.
For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.