Quotable Quotes!

Edward Abbey - (1927 - 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his criticism of public land policies and advocacy of environmental issues. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire.

If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government — and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.

John Adams - (1735 – 1826) was the first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second President of the United States. He was a major sponsor of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, and a key diplomat in the 1770s. He was a driving force for independence in 1776. As a statesman and author Adams helped define republicanism as the core American political value, meaning overthrow of monarchy and, especially, rule by the people, hatred of corruption, and devotion to civic duty. Regarded as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense." (A defense of the Constitution of the US) Hat Tip: linman writing at Texas CHL Forum

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.

If you love wealth more than Liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of Freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

John Quincy Adams - (1767 – 1848) was an American lawyer, diplomat, politician, and President of the United States (1825 – 1829). Adams was the son of U.S. President John Adams, and his mother was Abigail Adams.

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by one enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.

(1821)

Samuel Adams - (1722 – 1803) was an American Patriot and organizer of the Boston Tea Party. He played a major role in starting the American Revolution.

"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them." (3 Elliot, Debates at 380)
Hat Tip:  linman writing at

That the said 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...

Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850).

It doesn't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires to people's minds.

"Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that `if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration...that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event."

Speech in Boston, 1771

“There's no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them.”
Hat Tip:  linman writing at Texas CHL Forum

Reporters today are far removed from America's founding values and are alarmed and contemptuous of gun owners as dangerous lower classes.

An enemy of liberty is no friend of mine. I do not owe respect to anyone who would enslave me by government force, nor is it wise for such a person to expect it.

Poul Anderson - (1926 – 2001) was an American science fiction author of the genre's Golden Age; some of his short stories were first published using the pseudonyms "A. A. Craig", "Michael Karageorge", and "Winston P. Sanders". Poul Anderson also wrote fantasy such as the King of Ys series.

Sometimes a person has to exercise personal judgement and take the chance of being mistaken, or stop calling himself or herself free.

Susan Brownell Anthony

Women must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself."

Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote books on many subjects, including physics, poetry, zoology, logic, rhetoric, government, and biology. Aristotle, along with Plato and Socrates, is generally considered one of the most influential of ancient Greek philosophers. They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. The writings of Plato and Aristotle founded two of the most important schools of Ancient philosophy.

Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

As quoted by John Trenchard and Water Moyle, An Argument Shewing, That a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy [London, 1697].

Richard Keith "Dick" Armey - (b:  1940) is a former U.S. Representative from Texas' 26th Congressional District and House Majority Leader. He was one of the architects of the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s, in which Republicans were elected to majorities of both houses of Congress, and the chief author of the Republican Contract with America.

Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, and politicians. All three need supervision.

"Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers." - Attorney General John Ashcroft
Hat Tip:  linman writing at Texas CHL Forum

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (1561 – 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, and essayist, but is best known as a philosophical advocate and defender of the scientific revolution. Indeed, his dedication brought him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.

"Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law. "

"The Essays of Counsels, Civil and Moral"

Charles O. "Chuck" Baldwin - (born May 3, 1952) is an American political figure, activist within the Constitution Party, and pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. He stars in a weekly radio show out of Pensacola, Florida.

Liberty is an easy word to say, but it is a hard word to live up to. Freedom has little to do with financial gain or personal pleasure. Accompanying Freedom is her constant and unattractive companion, Responsibility. Neither is she an only child. Patriotism and Morality are her sisters. They are inseparable; destroy one and all will die.

Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850) was a French novelist. Along with Flaubert, he is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European literature. His large output of novels and stories, collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, is a broad panorama of French society in the period of the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830-1848).

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

Frederick Bastiat - Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) was a French classical liberal author and political economist.

When law and morality contradict each other the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his sense of morality or losing his respect for the law.

When law and morality contradict each other the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his sense of morality or losing his respect for the law.

Facts: In mid-March of 1996 Thomas Hamilton, 43, warped, morally crippled, dead in his soul, certainly disgusting, the suicide-in-waiting who should have done us all a favour in the privacy of his own nightmare, went into the precincts of Dunblane (Scotland-Gene) primary, and into the gym class, with all his precious sex-toy handguns.

~~~

. . . it is easy to impose laws on the law-abiding. Criminals, by definition, don't take much interest in well-meaning legislation. If they chose to arm themselves while the rest of society was, in effect, disarming, outraged newspaper commentators and their quick fixes might merely make matters worse.

He killed 16 infants, then their teacher, then himself. He accomplished all this with four weapons, in three short minutes.

~~~

The most troubling questions came, instead, from those who answered my simplicities with one of their own. They didn't oppose a ban, as such. They merely wanted to know why I was so sure that legislation would work.

That seemed obvious. It even seemed faintly stupid to think otherwise. No guns, no gun-killings. Remove the threat: wasn't that one of the jobs of government?

~~~

I believed every word. America had, and has, too many of the instruments that Thomas Hamilton found so alluring. Yet almost 11 years on, what do I read, and what do I say?

[Today] I read of three London teenagers murdered in the space of 11 days. I read of firearms "incidents" spreading like an epidemic across our cities. I read of Tony Blair holding a Downing Street summit on a crisis that seems - call me naive - a greater threat to many communities than any terrorism.

What I say then becomes obvious: my idea didn't work. In fact, I begin to thread certain fears together, like links in a chain. Here's one: if even London teenagers can provide themselves with the means to kill 15-year-old Billy Cox in his bedroom, guns have become commonplace, so commonplace that every would-be terrorist worth his salt must be armed to the teeth. Bans have failed utterly.

~~~

Let's concede that all the bans have failed. That doesn't mean we should also fail to ask a practical question. Britain has become a security state in recent years. Nobody strolls unmolested through customs these days. There are terrorist suspects, so they say, at every turn. So why, precisely, are handguns still getting into this country?

Ian Bell, Sunday Herald, UK, http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.1217778.0.0.php

Emphasis added - Gene

Mr. Bell has experienced an epiphany at the expense of all the murders of dis-armed Brits since Dunblane ocurred.  Until Jesus returns, there is no answer to crime and mayhem other than overwhelming force.  That force, removed from the hands of those threatened, turns into disaster for society. - Gene

Pat Boone - (b:  1934) is a singer whose smooth style made him one of the most popular performers of the 1950s and 1960s. His cover versions of rhythm and blues hits had some impact on the development of the broad popularity of rock and roll. He is also an actor and television personality, and a conservative political figure.  He is a direct descendant of the legendary American pioneer Daniel Boone.

Do we really think the Marquis of Queensbury rules will prevail against a brawling, kneeing, sucker-punching , stool-swinging crazed animal? If you found yourself caught in the crossfire of a shootout in the street, would you rather have Perry Mason defending you – or Dirty Harry?

Don't bother; I know your answer. Mine, too.

Neal Boortz - (b: 1945), is a U.S. talk radio host. His radio show is based in Atlanta, Georgia and is nationally syndicated by Cox Radio and the Jones Radio Networks. Boortz is also a lawyer and best-selling author.

"I've come to the reluctant but inescapable conclusion that roughly 50 percent of the adults in this country are simply too ignorant and functionally incompetent to be living in a free society...every day around half the people in the U.S. go out of their way to prove me right."

"Somebody's Gotta Say It"

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach - (b: 1966) is an American Orthodox rabbi, radio show host, and author.

While the rest of the world will strive to be loved, you strive to be holy. Do what's right even it costs you friendship. Do what's virtuous even if it leaves you lonely. Seek to impress not your fellow man, but none but God alone.

"Never fear being hated".
Commentator for World Net Daily, www.worldnetdaily.com

James Bovard - A bestselling libertarian author and lecturer, whose political commentary targets examples of governmental waste, failures, and abuses of power.

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what have for dinner.

Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994)

John Bradshaw - (1602-1659) was one of the judges to preside over the trial and subsequent death sentence of Charles I of England. In 1649 he was made president of the parliamentary commission to try the king.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856 – 1941) was an American litigator, Supreme Court Justice, advocate of privacy, and developer of the Brandeis Brief. In addition, he helped lead the American Zionist movement.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

(1928)

Pat Buchanan - Twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you," said Leon Trotsky. And that is surely true of the culture war.

World Net Daily (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54711)

James Burgh (1714-1775) was an English Whig politician whose book Political Disquisitions set out an early case for free speech and universal suffrage:

"All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people"

Burgh also wrote on subjects including educational reform.

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.

Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses [London, 1774-1775].

Edmund Burke - The Right Honourable Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator and political philosopher.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

(1784)

William Seward Burroughs II - (1914 - 1997), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs, was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.

R.K. Campbell - An established and well-respected outdoors writer, Bob writes for Shotgun News, Handguns, SWAT Magazine, American Gunsmith, Knifeworld, Police,  Women and Guns, and GunWeek, among others. He is Contributing Editor of Women and Guns and Executive Editor of Boar Hunter. Bob has also published occasionally in Tactical Knives, American Handgunner and Guns, and he is a regular at Krause Publications' Gun Digest and Handguns. He also wrote a significant portion of the 4th and 5th Editions of Assault Weapons.

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it?

Gilbert Keith Chesterton - (1874–1936) was an influential English writer of the early 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, poetry, biography and Christian apologetics, but today he is probably best remembered for his Father Brown short stories.

You can never have a revolution to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

The Chicago Tribune - A major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois and owned by the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", it remains the principal daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan region and the Midwestern United States and one of the ten largest daily newspapers in the nation.

Allowing riflery training while decrying gun violence doesn't send a mixed message any more than does supporting a wrestling team while opposing schoolyard brawls.

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce - (1840–1904) was the chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce Indians during General Oliver O. Howard's attempt to forcibly remove his band and the other "non-treaty" Indians to a reservation in Idaho. For his principled resistance to the removal, he became renowned as a humanitarian and peacemaker.

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself…

Winston Churchill - (1874 – 1965) was an English politician and author, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. At various times a soldier, author and politician, Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most important leaders in modern British and world history.

"This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. ..."

We shall fight them on the beaches,
We shall fight them on the shore,
We shall fight them in the fields and streams,
We shall fight them in the city;
We shall never surrender, never, never, never ...!

Never give in...never, never, never, never in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy!

Speech, 1941, Harrow School

”All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

If you have 10,000 regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

Marcus Tullius Cicero -  (106 BC – 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and philosopher. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Tom Clancy - Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (b:  1947), better known as Tom Clancy, is an author of bestselling political thrillers, best known for his technically-detailed espionage and military science story-lines during the Cold War. His name is also a brand for similar books written by other authors.

"Peasants with guns always make the aristocracy nervous," Granger agreed.

The Teeth of the Tiger

Wesley Kanne Clark - (b:  1944) is a retired four-star general of the United States Army. Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in PPE, and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

You like to fire assault weapons? I have a place for you. It's not in the homes and streets of America. It's called the Army, and you can join any time!

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III in 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. He is the husband of the junior United States Senator from the state of New York and a Democratic candidate in the 2008 US presidential election, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Bill Clinton: (US President, has sworn an oath to defend the US Constitution, (not to violate it, criticize it, and belittle it)) "When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it." (April 19 1994, on MTV)
Hat Tip:  linman writing at Texas CHL Forum

David Codrea - Co-founder, GunTruths and Citizens of America. Commentary has been featured in GUNS AND AMMO, HANDGUNS and GUNS (where I am a Field Editor/"Rights Watch" columnist), as well as numerous freedom-oriented internet sites.

" . . . anyone who can't be trusted with a gun can't be trusted without a custodian." - David Codrea, The War on Guns, 5/28/2008

The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.

Joseph Conrad - (born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857 – 1924) was a Polish-born novelist. Some of his works have been labelled romantic: Conrad's supposed "romanticism" is heavily imbued with fierce irony and a fine sense of man's capacity for self-deception. Many critics regard Conrad as a forerunner of Modernist literature.

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

Jeff Cooper - (1920-2006) is recognized as the father of what is commonly known as "The Modern Technique" of handgun shooting, and considered by many to be the world's foremost expert on the use and history of small arms. Born John Dean Cooper, but known to his friends as "Jeff", Cooper is a former Marine Lt. Colonel who served in World War II and in Southeast Asia during the Korean War. In addition to his expertise in firearms, he has been a history professor, philosopher, adventurer, and author. He is also known as "the Guru."

An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.

"We hold these Truths to be self evident, that all Men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it …"

Very rough talk, wouldn't you say? The founders of this republic insisted that the rights of man are not granted, nor may they be abridged, by the state. Neither the US Constitution, nor any other, can grant you a right which comes from God - nor can it abrogate such right. If either the people or its representatives were to abolish the right of the people to keep and bear arms, such action would be both invalid and immoral. Let us bear in mind when we celebrate our national holiday that we acknowledge and invoke the presence of God in our social structure. Americans who do not believe that are welcome to stick around, but not to have their arguments taken seriously. We face desperate times ahead, and we need all the help we can get, both below and above.

Emphasis is the author's - Gene

Some of our pundits choose to make a political virtue of diversity. The point is not necessarily well taken. The goal of good government is the optimum balance of liberty and order. Social diversity does not pull in that direction. Liberty is what we seek over the centuries, but if we grant it to too diverse a population, order disappears. It is said that in Switzerland nobody knows the name of the sitting president, and Switzerland seems to offer a nice balance. Social discipline is not best enforced by regulation, but rather by custom. The Swiss are diverse linguistically, but not socially, and they seem to make out pretty well without recourse to the police state. Regarding the United States, which is an entirely different political organism, it would seem that we ought to choose assimilation over diversity. We have un-segregated schools in which the children segregate themselves by choice. Our military establishment does surprisingly well in this regard, but of course, the military is and must be a tightly disciplined organization. It seems to me that diversity, rather than being a goal to be sought, should be an obstacle to be circumvented.

Having a gun and thinking you are armed is like having a piano and thinking you are a musician."

Dr. Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, maintained that if a lie is repeated long enough it will eventually become accepted as the truth. This would pertain to the repeated reference to the "Constitutional separation of church and state." Nothing in the US Constitution establishes any such separation. The Constitution states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. That is certainly clear enough. The US Constitution is widely available in booklet form and should be carried around readily available for every occasion. It is an admirably simple and direct preparation. It is not obscure. It would be nice if more politicians would read it.

Fight back! Whenever you are offered violence, fight back! The aggressor does not fear the law, so he must be taught to fear you. Whatever the risk, and at whatever the cost, fight back!

It is clear at the moment from this political hoopla that we who believe in the Bill of Rights are in for another full-house battle in the forthcoming presidential election. It is sad to see how we who treasure liberty must struggle to preserve our domestic position while fighting off the international left with our other hand. Certainly it is a fight worth fighting, and may God defend the right!

It is very difficult for a normal man to realize that he is suddenly in danger of death. The time it takes him to realize this and act upon it may be too long to save his life. Thus the prime quality of the gunfighter -- more important than either marksmanship or manual speed -- is the instant readiness to react to a threat.

"Herodotus tells us that the Ancient Persians did not allow a young man of good birth to attend court or be noticed until he had learned to ride, shoot straight, AND SPEAK THE TRUTH. Of course the Ancient Persians knew nothing about modern democracy."

Emphasis in the original - Gene

Diligentia, vis, celeritus - DVC - Accuracy, power, speed

"Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys."

The Art of the Rifle

"Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them."  To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth
Hat Tip:  linman writing at Texas CHL Forum

As we honor the forthcoming birthday of the father of our country we may well do to ponder upon his magisterial dictum: "Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." One of my degrees is in "political science," the other is in history. Certainly they bear this out.

"But if they break into your house while you're there and take you captive, it's something you never recover from. It's a tremendous hit on the relationship of couples," McGoey says. "I've talked to many, many women who blame their husbands for not protecting them. It's a really hard-hitting crime."

"Police in some areas see increase in home invasions"
USA TODAY
www.usatoday.com

Emphasis added - Gene

Ann Coulter - (b:  1961) is a conservative American syndicated columnist, bestselling author, attorney, and television pundit who frequently appears on national television and radio programs.

Baseball has a system to protect batters from being hit: If your pitcher hits one of our guys, our pitcher will hit one of your guys. This is also the only argument that ever works with Democrats.

"Conservatives need 12-step program to manhood",www.WorldnetDaily.com

Tench Coxe (1755– 1824) was an American political economist and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1788. At one time, he was the assistant to Alexander Hamilton when Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury.

Tench Coxe was one of the 56 who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to sign the U. S. Constitution. - Gene

"Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."

Writing under the pen name "A Pennsylvanian", commenting upon James Madison's Second Amendment.

For those that will fight for it, FREEDOM has a flavor the protected shall never know.

February 1968, Khe Sahn Combat Base

The Dalai Lama - In Tibetan Buddhism, the successive Dalai Lamas form a lineage of leaders which trace back to 1391. Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lama to be one of innumerable incarnations of Avalokitesvara (in Sanskrit the word literally means the "Lord who looks down")  who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas), the bodhisattva (a being who is dedicated to assisting all sentient beings in achieving complete Buddhahood) of compassion.  Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama was the head of the Tibetan government, controlling a large portion of the country from the capital Lhasa. The Dalai Lama is considered to be the highest lama of the Tibetan traditions.

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)

Clarence Seward Darrow - (1857 - 1938) was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenaged thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks (1924) and defending John T. Scopes in the so-called "Monkey" Trial (1925), in which he opposed the famous statesman William Jennings Bryan. He remains notable for his wit, compassion, and agnosticism that marked him as one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians.

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am.

Charles Robert Darwin - (1809 - 1882) was an English naturalist who proposed and provided evidence for the scientific theory that all species have evolved over time from one or a few common ancestors through the process of natural selection. This theory became widely accepted by the scientific community in the 1930s, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin's theory remains a cornerstone of biology, as it provides a unifying explanation for the diversity of life.

We must, however, acknowledge as it seems to me, that a man with all his noble qualities...still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. - -Charles Darwin

Alexis de Tocqueville - (1805–1859) was a French political thinker and historian. His most famous works are Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both of these works, he explored the myriad and profound effects of the rising equality of social conditions on both the individual and the state in western societies.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

. . . "there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality in freedom."

Writing in Democracy in America in the 1830s

. . . gun control originally was sold to Americans as a way to lower crime, but he disagreed. "People who sell this idea that bad guys are going to stop because of one more law are just full of it," he said.

Ted Deeds

The Law Enforcement Alliance of America
http://www.leaa.org/

World Net Daily 2/28/08

Who'da thunk? Guns best crime deterrent after all
'People who say bad guys will stop because of 1 more law are full of it'
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57641

Thomas Jefferson - (1743 – 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and an influential Founding Father of the United States.

We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. - Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Continental Congress, July 6, 1775
Declaration of Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms

"I carry a gun because it is my responsibility alone - not that of the police, nor the government, nor the community - to defend the precious lives that God has entrusted to me."

Writing in www.gomemphis.com 08/17/03

William Orville Douglas - (1898 – 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. With a term lasting thirty-six years and seven months, he remains the longest-serving justice in the history of the Court, as of 2007.

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

US Supreme Court (1939-75)

Moreover, even if the wrongs against which these safeguards afford protection are of a sort now extinct in this country, there is more than an antiquarian interest in the prohibitions thus established. A state in which such tyrannous practices are banned is, and continues to be, a different kind of state from one in which they are permitted to exist. The characteristics of America today are therefore what they are because of what the Bill of Rights abolished forever. A dike or seal-wall constructed generations ago is still important to the dry land which has not been inundated for centuries. The land would not be dry land if the protecting wall had not been there, or it it were to be removed.

"The Bill of Rights and What It Means Today" University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK, 1957

To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed...to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless...If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defence of themselves and their country.

Clint Eastwood - Clinton Eastwood, Jr. - (b: 1930) is an iconic American actor, composer, and Academy Award-winning film director and film producer. While his recent work as a director, on films like Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, is consistently praised by critics, Eastwood is perhaps most famous for his tough guy, anti-hero acting roles, including Inspector 'Dirty' Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series and the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns.

"Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we're not vigilant. Those in power get jaded, deluded, and seduced by power itself."

Larry Elder - Laurence Allen "Larry" Elder (b:  1952) aka "the Sage from South Central" is an American libertarian-minded Republican radio and former TV talk show host and author.

A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American author, poet, and philosopher.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Emphasis added by Gene

If one courageously confronts a formidable opponent and is ultimately overpowered it is unfortunate....It is far less understandable and certainly less forgivable when one losses a fight he should have won, simply because he carelessly allowed himself to be taken by surprise.

These are desperate times, my friends - times when marginal-tax-rate conservatives, compassionate conservatives, lukewarm conservatives and conservatives who want to be loved just won't cut it.

These are times that call for an unwavering adherence to principle, an acceptance of the axiom that right is right (even if no one else is right) and wrong is wrong (even if everyone else is wrong), a faith in our nation, our families and our God, and a willingness to fight to the end for lost causes -- for, as Jimmy Stewart says in "Mister Smith Goes to Washington": "Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for."

Dianne Feinstein - Democrat Senator from California.  "In 1984 she proposed banning handguns in San Francisco*, and became subject to a recall attempt organized by the White Panther Party. She won the recall election and finished her second term as mayor on January 8, 1988."

"In 1993, Feinstein, along with then-Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY), led the fight to ban many semi-automatic firearms and restrict the sale of firearm magazines deemed "assault weapons." The ban was passed as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. In 2004, when the ban was set to expire, Feinstein sponsored a 10-year extension of the ban as an amendment to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act; while the amendment was successfully added, the act itself failed. The act was then revived in 2005, and, despite Feinstein's best efforts, was passed without an extension of the assault weapons ban."

In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth wealthiest Senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million.

She is also opposed by gun rights organizations, who say that her proposals on gun control are unconstitutional and that Feinstein herself is hypocritical for making such proposals despite having had a concealed carry permit—difficult to obtain in California*—during her tenure as a San Francisco politician.

"US Senator, If I could have banned them all - 'Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns' - I would have!" (Statement on TV program 60 Minutes, Feb 5 1995)
Hat Tip:  linman writing at Texas CHL Forum

Jill Fieldstein - CBS producer

"As a card-carrying member of the liberal media, producing this piece was an eye opening experience. I have to admit that I saw guns as inherently evil, violence begets violence, and so on. I have learned, however, that in trained hands, just the presence of a gun can be a real "man stopper." I am sorry that women have had to resort to this, but wishing it wasn't so won't make it any safer out there.  Producer, Street Stories: Women and Guns 29 April 1993.
Hat Tip:  linman writing at Texas CHL Forum 

Murphy James "Mike" Foster, Jr. - (b:  1930), is a former Republican governor of Louisiana, having served from January 1996 until January