I have a human right. The beautiful thing about the Constitution and the bill of rights is, this was just codified human rights. It doesn't grant any government any type of power. The framers of this place just said, these are human natural rights that you are born with and we as a nation are going to recognize it. So me personally, I don't care if people want to say they want to repeal the second amendment. You know, it's always very interesting to me the people saying they want to appeal it, and they have the process of doing it. They could get two-thirds of congress to ratify it. It's out there. The issue to me is these are the same people that if you ask them, if you say "Ok. Cool. Your security detail and law enforcement which are American citizens, are you ok with those people being subject to those same rules and restrictions as well? Then you'll get a resounding well, well, well, it's gotta be different. It's gotta be different. The police have to have a firearm because there's bad guys out there. Well, that's the same reason why I carry a firearm. And again, these are codified human and natural rights, and I don't care what the unconstitutional statute would attempt to tell me. These things are a list of checks on government, not the other way around. So there will never be a time in American history when the American people will not own firearms. How are you going to get them from us?
The gun control debate was done when the second amendment was written. Its not a debate anymore. It never was a debate.
But the bottom line is, this is the state of Florida. If you want to break into someone's home, you should expect to be shot. And this was an occupied home at 9 O'clock at night.
A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society? ... The Scriptures tell us "righteousness exalteth a Nation.
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.
For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair."
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."
Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people” in a context other than “rights”—the famous preamble (“We the people”), §2 of Article I (providing that “the people” will choose members of the House), and the Tenth Amendment (providing that those powers not given the Federal Government remain with “the States” or “the people”). Those provisions arguably refer to “the people” acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right.
I don’t believe people should to be able to own guns.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Those who deny me the freedom to carry a firearm with which to protect my family and myself, are as complicit and guilty as the perpetrator should we be harmed or murdered by an act of violence.
The gun control extremist has at least two things in common with the Islamic extremist. He has a willingness to die for his fundamental beliefs. And he has the sanctimony to demand that others go with him.
What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.
Gun control advocates may continue to swing their fists in the air calling for more restrictions until they are blue in the face, but what they will never succeed in convincing the American people is that hampering the Second Amendment will do any good for the United States. It is always disturbing and gut-wrenching whenever an individual who legally acquires firearms uses them to commit insidious criminal acts. However, that is one of the many costs that the United States must incur if it seeks to maintain the social contract between the people and the federal government codified in the United States Constitution. As long as the Democrats and their allies continue to disturb that balance, the less likely they will be able to convince the American people that they should be entrusted not to become the very Leviathans that would suppress the very rights the Left purports to defend.
To disarm the people...[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.
Then she started analyzing data from the roughly 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and a light bulb went on. She writes that when she examined the evidence, “The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.”
Notably, Libresco dismisses the oft-stated myth that the tight gun laws in Britain and Australia had any relevance for America, as she writes, “Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans.”
Some more reality: “Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them.”
Segueing to the next-largest set of gun deaths, young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides, and the tertiary set, women killed (mostly as the result of domestic violence), Libresco decides, “Few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.”
Libresco writes, “I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. … I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions.” Suggestions? Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.
Libresco concludes: “We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.”
Jesus said, 'But now whoever has a purse or a bag, must take it and whoever does not have a sword must sell his cloak and buy one.
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.
Permit holders are not cops. The mistake many people make is that they think permit holders are supposed to be cops or junior danger rangers. Not at all. Their only responsibility is simple. If someone is threatening to cause them or a third person serious bodily harm, and that someone has the ability, opportunity, and is acting in a manner which suggest they are a legitimate threat, then that permit holder is allowed to use lethal force against them.
Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period.
Think about it. You are a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to most famous person in the world. The best way to accomplish your goals is to kill a whole bunch of people. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people? Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back.
In all honesty I have no respect for anybody who believes Gun Free Zones actually work. You are going to commit several hundred felonies, up to and including mass murder, and you are going to refrain because there is a sign? That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off vampires. It is wishful thinking, and really pathetic wishful thinking at that.
And here is the nail in the coffin for Gun Free Zones. Over the last fifty years, with only one single exception (Gabby Giffords), every single mass shooting event with more than four casualties has taken place in a place where guns were supposedly not allowed.
Yet when anyone from my side responds, then we are shouted at that we are blood thirsty and how dare we speak in this moment of tragedy, and we should just shut our stupid mouths out of respect for the dead, while they are free to promote policies which will simply lead to more dead… If the NRA says something they are bloodthirsty monsters, and if they don’t say something then their silence is damning guilt. It is hypocritical in the extreme, and when I speak out against this I am called every name in the book, I want dead children, I’m a cold hearted monster (the death threats are actually hilarious). If I become angry because they are promoting policies which are tactically flawed and which will do the exact opposite of the stated goals, then I am a horrible person for being angry. Perhaps I shouldn’t be allowed to own guns at all.
Strangely enough, this is one of the only topics I actually agree with Roger Ebert on. He didn’t think that the news should cover the shooters or mention their names on the front page of the paper. So whenever the press isn’t talking about guns, or violent movies, or violent video games, or any other thing that hundreds of millions of people participated in yesterday without murdering anybody, they’ll keep showing the killer’s picture in the background while telling the world all about him and his struggles. And then the cycle repeats, as the next disaffected angry loner takes notes. They should not be glamorized. They should be hated, despised, and forgotten. They are not victims. They are not powerful. They are murdering scum, and the only time their names should be remembered is when people like me are studying the tactics of how to neutralize them faster.
Now are machineguns still used in crimes? Why, yes they are. For every legally registered one, there are conservatively dozens of illegal ones in the hands of criminals. They either make their own (which is not hard to do) or they are smuggled in (usually by the same people that are able to smuggle in thousands of tons of drugs). Because really serious criminals simply don’t care, they are able to get ahold of military weapons, and they use them simply because criminals, by definition, don’t obey the law. So even an item which has been basically banned since my grandparents were kids, and which there has been no new ones allowed manufactured since I was in elementary school, still ends up in the hands of criminals who really want one. This will go to show how effective government bans are.
I do find one thing highly amusing. In my personal experience, some of the most vehement anti-gun people I’ve ever associated with will usually eventually admit after getting to know me, that if something bad happened, then they really hope I’m around, because I’m one of the good ones. Usually they never realize just how hypocritical and naïve that is.
When I said “stop an attacker quickly” somebody on Twitter thought that he’d gotten me and said “Stop. That’s just a euphemism for kill!” Nope. I am perfectly happy if the attacker surrenders or passes out from blood loss too. Tactically and legally, all I care about is making them stop doing whatever it is that they are doing which caused me to shoot them to begin with.
Immediately every single gun person in America went out and bought a couple guns which had been banned and a bucket of new magazines, because nothing makes an American want to do something more than telling them they can’t.
Gun and magazine sales skyrocket every time a democrat politician starts to vulture in on a tragedy. I don’t know if many of you realize this, but Barack Obama is personally responsible for more gun sales, and especially first time gun purchases, than anyone in history. When I owned my gun store, we had a picture of him on the wall and a caption beneath it which said SALESMAN OF THE YEAR.
Never forget that we wouldn't be celebrating Independence Day today without civilian ownership of military rifles.
Of course, being so relentlessly stupid and clueless, we still don't understand what's going on around us. We chalk it all up to a "mental health crisis," as if there's some mysterious mental illness spreading like syphilis throughout the land. Or we conclude that we just haven't settled on the right combination of laws and regulations. We seem to ignore the fact that a great many of these mass killers had been on psychotropic medicines, and they either acquired their weapons illegally or they acquired them because the existing laws weren't properly enforced (as was the case in Texas). We are already the most medicated and regulated civilization in human history, yet these things have only increased in frequency.
Laws won't heal the human spirit. Neither will prescription pills. We can't treat moral corruption like we treat headaches. It's not always a "chemical imbalancement" that propels a guy to murder women and children. Often, that desire is rooted much deeper, all the way down in the depths of his depraved and rotten soul.
There is a very troubling combination coming together. We dehumanize each other while medicalizing and politicizing evil. The result is indifference and detachment all the way around. Exactly the atmosphere where Satan thrives. It is the atmosphere of Hell itself, leaking like noxious fumes into our world. And there is only one antidote that really works. His name is Christ.
If you're wondering where all of these killers are coming from — check Twitter. It's filled with future candidates: People who truly do not recognize the humanity in their fellow man. And they're not just on Twitter. They're out there in the "real world," laughing at a guy while he drowns, or torturing a disabled man for fun, or taking selfies with a woman who's just been beaten unconscious, or back on the internet watching a teenager livestream his own suicide. What really separates these people from Devin Kelley? Whatever it is, the wall between them is very thin. The key thing they share — the key thing that so many of us share — is utter and complete indifference.
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country 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.
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.... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.
Know guns, no crime. No guns, know crime.
There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government.
Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power.
When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon the ruled.
The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
We think that the focus has to remain on removing weapons from dangerous individuals, not on blocking all Americans from their constitutional rights.
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.
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... 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 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.
As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.
In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs.
What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They 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.
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.
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.
On every occasion [of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like law, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance ofpower is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one-half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
States that focus on freedom realize that if self-defense truly is a natural-born right, and the Second Amendment truly affirms that natural-born right, you shouldn’t have to ask the government for permission to exercise it.
No law ever prevented a crime.
No matter who you are or what your position is on guns, there’s no denying the fact that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun or a knife is an armed and well-prepared citizen or law enforcement officer.
Terrorists and active shooters know that our citizens have been coached to run and hide and then patiently await help. In fact, they count on it so they can strategically target as many citizens as possible. What they don't count on is being attacked themselves. Having to become defensive to save their own lives.
It's very important to remember that while the terrorist or violent attacker may have a weapon, or even the element of surprise, a team of citizens working together to attack the suspect has a much greater chance of survival than allowing the suspect to operate unimpeded.
I ask you to remember this if you ever find yourself in the middle of a violent attack. Since the terrorist attacks that occurred on 9/11, we all remember the videos of the twin towers and pentagon where thousands were killed. Out of all the attacks that day, only one failed. The plane that was hijacked by terrorists and then was taken back by brave Americans who worked together as a team to keep the terrorists from reaching their targeted destination. While we will never know how many lives they saved that day, one thing is perfectly clear. Their heroic actions saved countless lives and showed terrorists what happens when Americans fight back.
Our banks, our airports, our NBA games, our NFL games, our office buildings, our movie stars, our politicians — they’re all more protected than our children at school. Does that make any sense to anybody?
Demand what works. Put armed security in every school. Fix the broken mental health system. Enforce the federal gun laws against every criminal thug on the street. Prosecute dangerous people when they show up to buy a gun. And, for God’s sake, put every prohibited person into the system. That’s what common-sense gun laws look like.
In 2010, roughly 80,000 prohibited people committed a felony by trying to buy a gun. Just 44 were prosecuted for it. Does that sound like a good number to anybody? So, when you hear politicians who won’t fix the broken system talk about expanding it, don’t buy it.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
1. Over 98% of mass shootings happen in "gun free zones." 2. Gun ownership does not correlate with a higher homicide rate. 3. Gun bans are ineffective — yes, even the much-touted "gun buyback" program in Australia. 4. There's a correlation between higher gun ownership and fewer mass public shootings. 5. Defensive gun use is higher than criminal firearm use. 6. The government has failed to protect us time and again.
The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction; and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but sedate, settled design upon another man's life puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction; for by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred, and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him ... And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to my preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.
I have a human right. The beautiful thing about the Constitution and the bill of rights is, this was just codified human rights. It doesn't grant any government any type of power. The framers of this place just said, these are human natural rights that you are born with and we as a nation are going to recognize it. So me personally, I don't care if people want to say they want to repeal the second amendment. You know, it's always very interesting to me the people saying they want to appeal it, and they have the process of doing it. They could get two-thirds of congress to ratify it. It's out there. The issue to me is these are the same people that if you ask them, if you say "Ok. Cool. Your security detail and law enforcement which are American citizens, are you ok with those people being subject to those same rules and restrictions as well? Then you'll get a resounding well, well, well, it's gotta be different. It's gotta be different. The police have to have a firearm because there's bad guys out there. Well, that's the same reason why I carry a firearm. And again, these are codified human and natural rights, and I don't care what the unconstitutional statute would attempt to tell me. These things are a list of checks on government, not the other way around. So there will never be a time in American history when the American people will not own firearms. How are you going to get them from us?
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