Sayings
Issue #60

"Congress shall have no power to disarm the milita. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right 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, writing as "the Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 1788

"What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this." -- Roman Philosopher Epictetus

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein

"I am not afraid to go unarmed...I simply detest being unarmed. It is a contemptible and undignified condition in which to find oneself." -- anon. Gunsite graduate

"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!" -- Jeff Cooper

"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- Thomas Jefferson

"...[A]rms 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, Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775

"Danger is nature's way of eliminating stupid people." -- Don Heaton

Know Guns, Know Peace, Know Safety. No Guns, No Peace, No Safety

"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty." — Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Aug. 17, 1789, Annals of Congress, I:750

"The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice." -- Jose' Ortega y Gasset

"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." Cicero 55 BC

"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." — Andrew Fletcher (1655-1716), quoted by James Burgh (1714-1775), Political Disquisitions: Or, an Inquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses, 1774-1775

"Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny." - Unknown

"I teach my guys in CQB that the only real issue about breathing is that YOU are breathing at the end of the encounter and your opponent is not." -- Jim Higginbotham

"Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself." - Tom Wilson

"The right of citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurption and arbitraty power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." — Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries On The Constitution, 1883

"Laws are for the guidance of wise men, and the blind obedience of fools." -- Solon, the Law-maker of Athens, d. 559 BC

"The right of the people to bear arms in their own defence, and to form and drill military organizations in defence of the State, may not be very important in this country, but it is significant as having been reserved by the people as a possible and necessary resort for the protection of self-government against usurpation, and against any attempt on the the part of those who may for the time be in possession of State authority or resources to set aside the constitution and substitute their own rule for that of the people." — 19th Century Judge Thomas M. Cooley, The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America

"The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step -- in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come -- is to teach men to shoot!" — President Theodore Roosevelt's last message to Congress

"In the event of central tyranny, state governments could do what colonial governments had done in 1776: organize and mobilize their Citizens into an effective fighting force capable of beating even a large standing army." — Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights as a Constitution, Yale Law Journal, 1991 (Amar then goes on to quote Madison's Federalist No. 46 writings as one example).

"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." — Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, Feb 1982

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." — Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota)

"Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the weak." — George Orwell, You and the Atom Bomb, 1945

"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

"By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia', the 'security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms', our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important." — Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." — Lyndon Johnson

"Sure we'll have fascism in America, but it'll come disguised as Americanism." — Huey Long

"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type legislation should have no difficulties drawing upon long lists of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying--that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 - establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime." — Sen Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution

"Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered—one does not usually lead to the other— it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed." — Daniel D. Polsby, Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 73, Number 3, Fall 1997

"When the history of the 20th century is finally written, one of its key features will be the wanton slaughter of more than 170 million people, not in war, but by their own government. The governments that led in this slaughter are the former USSR (65 million) and the Peoples Republic of China (35-40 million). The point to remember is that these governments were the idols of America's leftists. Part of the reason for these and other tyrannical successes was because the people were first disarmed." — Walter E. Willaims, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, in a commentary for the April 2001 issue of America's First Freedom.

"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. Wear a gun to someone else's house, you're saying, 'I'll defend this home as if it were my own.' When your guests see you carry a weapon, you're telling them, 'I'll defend you as if you were my own family.' And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible: 'I don't trust you unless you're rendered harmless'!" -- L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach

"No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before." — Colin Greenwood in the study Firearms Control, 1972

"...The authors take Dodge City in 1871, as the archetype of lawlessness in American history. Yet its murder rate was only half that of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in 1990, a rate of 80 per 100,000 annually, meaning that your chances of being murdered over a lifetime in the city are about 1 in 16. Indeed, among children under 12, murder is now the leading cause of death in Washington." — National Review Nov, 4 1991, Paul Johnson's review of the book by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, The Great Reckoning: How the World Will Change in the Depression of the 1990's

."..and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." — Jesus Christ, Luke 22:36 NKJV

"One of the ordinary modes by which tyrants accomplish their purpose without resistance is by disarming the people and making it an offense to keep arms." — Aristotle, The Politics 218, Thomas A. Sinclair translation, Penguin Books, 1962

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." — Voltaire

"Those that beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those that don't." — Unknown

"(The 2nd Amendment) does not say 'shall not be infringed, unless the weapon in question is really scary.' They're SUPPOSED to be scary. The occupants of Washington City are supposed to go to bed every night, wondering if anything they've done today will get them what it got Charles the First in 1649, or Louis XVI in 1793." — Vin Suprynowicz, JFPO web site

"The society of late twentieth century America is perhaps the first in human history where most grown men do not routinely bear arms on their persons and boys are not regularly raised from childhood to learn skill in the use of some kind of weapon, either for community or personal defense - club or spear, broadsword or long bow, rifle or Bowie knife. It also happens to be one of the rudest and crudest societies in history, having jubilantly swept most of the etiquette of speech, table, dress, hospitality, fairness, deference to authority and the relations of male and female and child and elder under the fraying and filthy carpet of politically convenient illusions. With little fear of physical reprisal Americans can be as loud, gross, disrespectful, pushy, and negligent as they please. If more people carried rapiers at their belts, or revolvers on their hips, it is a fair bet you would be able to go to a movie and enjoy the dialogue from the screen without having to endure the small talk, family gossip and assorted bodily noises that many theater audiences these days regularly emit. Today, discourtesy is commonplace precisely because there is no price to pay for it." — Samuel Francis, Chronicles

"In its unanimous decision Friday, the Ohio First District Court of Appeals likened the city suit against gun makers to the 'absurdity' of suing the makers of matches because of losses from arson." — Newspaper account of the dismissal of a frivolous lawsuit against a gun manufacturer.

"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." — Peter Venetoklis

"Gun Control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins." — Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Vanity Fair, 9/99 page 165

"A textual analysis of the Second Amendment supports an individual right to bear arms." — Ruling of federal district judge Sam R. Cummings, in U.S. v. Emerson, 2000

"The Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense." — Majority Supreme Court opinion in U.S. vs. Miller, 1939

(Other decisions by U.S. Courts of Appeals recognizing that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right include the First (Cases v. U.S., 1942), Fifth (U.S. v. Bowdach, 1977), Eighth (U.S. v. Hutzell, 2000), Tenth (U.S. vs. Swinton, 1975), and 11th Circuits (Gilbert Equipment Co., Inc. v. Higgins, 1990). Also, the U.S. Supreme Court recently recognized the Second Amendment as an important individual right in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 2805, 120 L.Ed.2d 674, 696 (1992) and U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1991).)

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