JAMES MULLETT

Arming Bears

A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you. (Ramsey Clark)

For men of understanding do not say that the sword is to blame for murder, nor wine for drunkenness, nor strength for outrage, nor courage for foolhardiness, but they lay the blame on those who make an improper use of the gifts which have been bestowed upon them by God, and punish them accordingly. (St. John Chrysostom)

Our government is ‘out of shape’ because we don’t ‘exercise’ our rights. (Eric Schaub)

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 to Peter Carr, 1785)

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other. (Carl Schurz)

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. (William S. Burroughs)

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. (Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796)

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men. (Adam Smith)

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms…. 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 proven to be always possible. (Hubert H. Humphrey)

Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed. (Sara Brady)

[W]hereas, 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; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. (Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.)

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. (Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi)

[S]ubjecting the whole body of the people to be drawn out four or five times a year was a great and unnecessary tax on the community…As far as the whole body of the people are necessary to the general defence, they ought to be armed; but the law ought not to require more than is necessary; for that would be a just cause of complaint. (Representative Thomas Fitzsimons [Pennsylvania] ?The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States? [1790])

Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal. (Janet Reno)

Before a standing army can rule the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. (Noah Webster of Pennsylvania, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787)

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. (L. Neil Smith)

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? (Patrick Henry)

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. (P. J. O’Rourke)

The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. (Justice Potter Stewart)

This provision (the 3rd Amendment) speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common law, that a man’s house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion. (Justice Joseph Story)

I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights. (Clarence Thomas)

[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it’s also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government. (Judge Lawrence Tribe)

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind. (Grady Weaver)

Constitutional rights may not be infringed simply because the majority of the people choose that they be. (Westbrook v. Mihaly 2 C3d 756)

Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee. (F. Lee Bailey)

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 great struggle for independence. (Charles A. Beard)

The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority… It is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people. (Frank I. Cobb)

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of a safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like. (Alan Dershowitz)

Demagogues and agitators are very unpleasant, they are incidental to a free and constitutional country, and you must put up with these inconveniences or do without many important advantages. (Benjamin Disraeli)

19 terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society. (Rocco Galati)