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What the Gun-Grabbers are really after...
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"We'll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily ... given the
political realities ... very modest. We'll have to start working again to
strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and
again. Our ultimate goal, total control of handguns, is going to take time.
The first problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a
few exceptions) totally illegal."
| | — | | Peter Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.,
New Yorker Magazine, June 26, 1976 |
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"[T]o disarm the people (is) the best and most effective way to enslave them..."
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"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA. Ordinary
citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State"
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"If I could've gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an
outright ban, picking up every one of them...'Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em
all in,' I would have done it."
| | — | | Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) |
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"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary
Americans."
| | — | | Bill Clinton, former President of the United States,
USA Today, March 11, 1993 |
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"All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately...The SS, SA and
Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning
with them. Therefore any one who does not belong to one of the above named
organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon...must be
regarded as an enemy of the national government."
| | — | | SA Oberfuhrer Bad Tolz, March 1933 |
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"The Brady Bill's only effect will be to desensitize the public to regulation
of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation."
| | — | | Charles Krauthammer,
Washington Post, April 5, 1996 |
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"Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe."
| | — | | U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
Associated Press, November 18, 1993 |
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"[T]he rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine.
Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
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"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the
subjected people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have
allowed their subjected 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 for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native
militia or police."
| | — | | Adolph Hitler,
Edict of March 18, 1938 |
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"We must get rid of all the guns."
| | — | | Sarah Brady, Handgun Control, Inc.,
on The Phil Donahue Show, September 1994 |
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"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition
of private firearms is the goal."
| | — | | Janet Reno,
former U.S. Attorney General |
...And Why the Gun-Grabbers are WRONG.
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"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United
States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms..."
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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when
the government's purposes are beneficent. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk
in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without
understanding."
| | — | | Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis |
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"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 our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
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"The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they
did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America
did."
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"And, I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to
arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I'd walk to
the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon. I made
the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was
going to take them with me."
| | — | | U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
C-Span, April 27, 1995 |
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"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it
has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits
possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the
people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever,
prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of
destruction."
| | — | | Henry St. George Tucker,
in Blackstone's 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England." |
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"Both the oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them
of arms."
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"Why do judges not consider armed police as "threatening" to victims of
unlawful searches, but do consider armed civilians in their own courtrooms
to be threatening to them?"
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"Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion... in
private self-defense..."
| | — | | John Adams,
A Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the USA,
471 (1788) |
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"Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what
any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the
people to keep and bears arms is treason. What else do you call an act that
endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason,then it's
punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public
hangings."
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"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it
has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits
possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the
people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever,
prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of
destruction."
| | — | | Henry St. George Tucker |
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"No government can be trusted, that does not trust its own people with
military-style arms of greater weight and power than those possessed by the
central government itself."
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"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should
have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from
any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own
government."
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"The right to own weapons is the right to be free."
| | — | | A.E. Van Vogt,
The Weapon Shops of Isher |
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"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the
people who didn't do it."
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"No law ever written has stopped any robber, rapist or killer, like cold blue
steel in the hands of their last intended victim."
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"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be
properly armed."
| | — | | Alexander Hamilton,
The Federalist Papers |
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"The idea of registering and licensing guns is tantamount to controlling
wolves with leash laws. All it does is produce a community that every criminal
knows is unarmed."
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"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."
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"The sheer immorality of victim disarmament aside, one would hope every law
enforcement officer out there would stop to consider all the possible
ramifications of kicking in several million doors because the occupants are
well armed."
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"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."
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"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have
a gun."
| | — | | Patrick Henry,
3 Elliott, Debates at 386 |
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"An armed society is a polite society."
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"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in
the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
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"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise
the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness,
enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and
others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on
the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks."
| | — | | Thomas Jefferson (1785) |
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"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 their
government."
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"The constitution ought to secure a genuine [militia] and guard against a
select militia. ... To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body
of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young,
how to use them."
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"Americans need not fear the federal government because they enjoy the
advantage of being armed, which you possess over the people of almost every
other nation."
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"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of
preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to
accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic."
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