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+Guns: All about firearms and gun rights, Part 2This gun mini-site is for people who are opposed to crime.
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Quotes: Everyone on Liberty |
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| CAPTAIN
JOHN PARKER (Commander, Lexington Militia Company): "Every
man of you who is equipped, follow me…..Stand Your ground. Don’t fire unless
fired upon. But if they want to have a war, let it begin here." Lexington, MA, 19
April 1775, as British troops approached (Mine Eyes have Seen, Goldstein 1997;
and Quotes for the Military Writer,
U.S. Army Command Information Unit, Library of HQ TRADOC)
"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..." 1788 (Federal Farmer) "No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizens and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen." |
| JOHN ADAMS (Signed
Declaration of Independence, Continental Congress delegate, 1st Vice President, 2nd
President): "Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense..." 1788(A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the USA, p.471)
JAMES MADISON (Drafted Virginia Constitution, Member of Continental Congress, Virginia delegate to Constitutional Convention, named "Father of the Constitution", author of Federalist Papers, author of the Bill of Rights, Congressman from Virginia, Secretary of State, 4th President): "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.. (where) ..the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms…." (Federalist Papers #46) "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." "They [proposed Bill of Rights] relate 1st. to private rights....the great object in view is to limit and qualify the powers of government..." 8 June 1789 (The Papers of James Madison, Hobson amp Rutland, 12:193, 204) "To these (federal troops attempting to impose tyranny) would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands." (Federalist Papers #46) GEORGE MASON (Virginia House of Burgesses, Virginia delegate to Constitutional Convention, wrote Virginia Declaration of Rights, wrote "Objections to the Constitution", urged creation of a Bill of Rights): "I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates of the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, [NY: Burt Franklin,1888] p.425-6) "Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised ...to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia..." (In Virginia’s Ratifying Convention, Elliot p.3:379-380) "The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practiced in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless - by disarming them." (Elliot, p. 3:379-80) "I consider and fear the natural propensity of rulers to
oppress the people. I wish only to prevent them from doing evil." (In Virginia’s
Ratifying Convention, Elliot p.3:381) |