"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.

"You cannot invade the mainland United
States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

“An armed society is a polite society.”

Robert Heinlein

“Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense.”

John Adams

“The right is absolute … government has no authority to forbid me from owning a firearm … the debate is not about guns. It is about freedom.” 

California State Sen. Tom McClintock, 6/9/2001

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who comes near that precious jewel. Unfortunately, nothing
will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined. 

Patrick Henry

“The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting, and I know I’m not going to make very many friends saying this, but it’s about our right, all of our right to be able to protect ourselves from all of you guys up there.”

Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, appearing before Representative Charles Schumer’s committee hearings on the assault weapons ban

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” 

Samuel Adams

“Though defensive violence will always be a ’sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.” 

St. Augustine  

“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed- unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” 

 James Madison

“The fundamental force behind the Second Amendment is to empower the people and give them the greatest measure of authority over the tyranny of runaway government.” 

U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer, 2002

Dangerous laws created by well intentioned people today can be used by dangerous people with evil intentions tomorrow.” 
Alan Eppers

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” 

Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
John F. Kennedy, April 1960

"The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants"

Thomas Jefferson

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” 

Plato

To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.

—Jeff Snyder, author American Handgunner, Second Amendment Foundation Officer

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

Thomas Paine

“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

Thomas Jefferson, 1787

"Power flows from the barrel of a gun"

Mao Zedong

"All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land."

William Kingdon Clifford

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go around repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence."

Charles A. Beard

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than his own personal safety is a miserable creature."

John Stuart Mill

"Gun control has cleared the way for seven major genocides since 1915, in which governments gone bad murdered 56,000,000 persons, including millions of children."
-Aaron Zelman of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

"I sympathize with people who want to ban guns, but I can't agree with them. We have to be careful in our zeal to abolish guns that we don't wind up with counter-productive legislation that will leave armed only the people most likely to do harm with them."
-Hugh Downs, veteran ABC newsman

"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. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But 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."
- Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, MN, campaigning
for the 1960 Democratic Presidential Nomination

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
--George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 425-426. 

"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms." 
-- Constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, 1840 

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." 
-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. 
James Madison, The Federalist Papers 

Arms are the only true badge of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave. 

- Andrew Fletcher 1698

"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
--Thomas Jefferson. 

Patrick Henry, "The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun." 

3 Elliot, Debates at 386.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. 
--Thomas Jefferson 

"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." 
--George Washington

"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." 
-- Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446 

"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." 

-Thomas Jefferson

"Assault is a type of behavior, not a type of hardware."

-Alan Korwin

"These Sarah Brady types must be educated to understand that because we have an armed citizenry, that a dictatorship has not happened in America. These anti-gun fools are more dangerous to Liberty than street criminals or foreign spies."
-Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor

"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose."
-James Earl Jones 

"Guns are not always the answer, but obtaining a firearm has saved the lives of many... While I favor keeping guns out of the hands of felons, youths and the mentally impaired, I oppose adding more bureaucratic obstacles that attempt to fight crime by disarming its victims."
-- Peter Kasler, NY Times, 13 Jul 91