• "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."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, "Commonplace Book" (1774-1776), quoting from "On Crimes and Punishment," by criminologist Cesare Beccaria (1764)

  
  

• "The Constitution of the United States shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
  -- Samuel Adams

  
  

• "Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest."
  -- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress (July 1775)

  
  

• "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
  --Thomas Jefferson, Draft Virginia Constitution (1776)

  
  

• "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."
  -- Patrick Henry, during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)

  
  

• "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 No. 46

  
  

• "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 Gandhi, in Gandhi, An Autobiography

  
  

• "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."
  -- Richard Henry Lee, Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, (1787 - 1788)

  
  

• "The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people;"
  -- Saint George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries (1803), Volume 1, Appendix, Note D

  
  

• "In England, the bills of rights were not demanded merely of the Crown, as withdrawing a power from the royal prerogative; they were equally important, as withdrawing power from parliament. A large proportion of the most valuable of the provisions in Magna Charta, and the bill of rights in 1688, consists of a solemn recognition, of limitations upon the power of parliament; that is, a declaration, that parliament ought not to abolish, or restrict those rights. Such are the right of trial by jury; the right to personal liberty and private property according to the. law of the land; that the subjects ought to have a right to bear arms..."
  -- Joseph Story, Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), Book III at 718, § 1858

  
  

• "Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he 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."
  -- Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette (February 20, 1788)

  
  

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

  
  

• "The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny."
  -- Walter Williams