Founders Gun Quotes

The Second Amendment is timeless for our Founders grasped that self-defense is three-fold: every free individual must protect themselves against the evil will of the man, the mob and the state.

Anyone who claims that weapons like semi-automatics are so modern and unique that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to them would also have to believe that the First Amendment protects only writing done with quill pens on parchment paper, since those were the norm back then. How could we expect the Founders to have ever imagined the world we live in today?

Not a gun was fired—not even by the Fascist militia—to save him. Not a voice was raised in his defense. No one seemed to mind the humiliating nature of his departure—being hauled away from the King’s presence to jail in an ambulance. On the contrary, there was general rejoicing at his fall. Fascism itself collapsed as easily as its founder.

Paul Buchheit: I'm suddenly reminded that, for a while, I asked people if they were playing Russian Roulette with a gun with a billion barrels (or some huge number, so in other words, some low probability that they would actually be killed), how much would they have to be paid to play one round? A lot of people were almost offended by the question and they'd say, "I wouldn't do it at any price." But, of course, we do that everyday. They drive to work in cars to earn money and they are taking risks all the time, but they don't like to acknowledge that they are taking risks. They want to pretend that everything is risk-free.

Samuel Gompers was the founder and first president of the American Federation of Labor. He established in America the tradition of practical bargaining between labor and management which led to an era of growth and prosperity for labor unions. Now, seventy years after Gomper's death, the unions have dwindled, while his dreams-more books and fewer guns, more leisure and less greed, more schoolhouses and fewer jails-have been tacitly abandoned. In a society without social justice and with a free-market ideology, guns, greed, and jails are bound to win.

The Second Amendment ensures that we have that choice, a choice not given to us by a government but a choice protected from government. That which government gives can be taken away, which is precisely why the Founders never enshrined the authority over gun rights within the often weak, easily influenced dominion of man. That authority, the authority to choose to lawfully carry or not to carry, is an individual choice. My holster, my choice. Let’s protect it.

The split has widened because the right has moved right, not because the left has moved left. Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford all supported the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1960, the GOP platform embraced "free collective bargaining" between management and labor. REpublicans boasted of "extending the minimum wage to several million more workers" and "strengthening the unemployment insurance system and extension of its benefits." Under Dwight Eisenhower, top earners were taxed at 91 percent; in 2015, it was 40 percent. Planned Parenthood has come under serious attack from nearly all Republican presidential candidates running in 2016. Yet a founder of the organization was Peggy Goldwater, wife of the 1968 conservative Republican candidate for president Barry Goldwater. General Eisenhower called for massive invenstment in infrastructure, and now nearly all congressional Republicans see such a thing as frightening government overreach. Ronald Reagan raised the national debt and favored gun control, and now the Republican state legislature of Texas authorizes citizens to "open carry" loaded guns into churches and banks. Conservatives of yesterday seem moderate or liberal today.

It turns out that the eastern U.S. founder crops were four plants domesticated in the period 2500–1500 B.C., a full 6,000 years after wheat and barley domestication in the Fertile Crescent. A local species of squash provided small containers, as well as yielding edible seeds. The remaining three founders were grown solely for their edible seeds (sunflower, a daisy relative called sumpweed, and a distant relative of spinach called goosefoot). But four seed crops and a container fall far short of a complete food production package. For 2,000 years those founder crops served only as minor dietary supplements while eastern U.S. Native Americans continued to depend mainly on wild foods, especially wild mammals and waterbirds, fish, shellfish, and nuts. Farming did not supply a major part of their diet until the period 500–200 B.C., after three more seed crops (knotweed, maygrass, and little barley) had been brought into cultivation. A

Even the most mundane, establishment-oriented law schools routinely teach that important legal cases lag far behind the social movements that create them,' writes Judith Brown, a 1968 women's liberation founder who became a lawyer. She continues: 'Supreme Court cases bob along behind social reality like little rowboats towed behind huge gun-ships... When we celebrate Roe v. Wade we celebrate--not the legal opinion of nine men in D.C.--but the thousands of women who forced a change so that what was once illegal became legal.

Dotcom believes one of the reasons he was targeted was his support for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He says he was compelled to reach out to the site after US soldier Bradley Manning leaked documents to it. The infamous video recording of the Apache gunship gunning down a group of Iraqis (some of whom, despite widespread belief to the contrary, were later revealed to have been armed), including two Reuters journalists, was the trigger. “Wow, this is really crazy,” Dotcom recalls thinking, watching the black-and-white footage and hearing the operators of the helicopter chat about firing on the group. He made a €20,000 donation to Wikileaks through Megaupload’s UK account. “That was one of the largest donations they got,” he says. According to Dotcom, the US, at the time, was monitoring Wikileaks and trying better to understand its support base. “My name must have popped right up.” The combination of a leaking culture and a website dedicated to producing leaked material would horrify the US government, he says. A willing leaker and a platform on which to do it was “their biggest enemy and their biggest fear . . . If you are in a corrupt government and you know how much fishy stuff is going on in the background, to you, that is the biggest threat — to have a site where people can anonymously submit documents.” Neil MacBride was appointed to the Wikileaks case, meaning Dotcom shares prosecutors with Assange. “I think the Wikileaks connection got me on the radar.” Dotcom believes the US was most scared of the threat of inspiration Wikileaks posed. He also believes it shows just how many secrets the US has hidden from the public and the rest of the world. “That’s why they are going after that so hard. Only a full transparent government will have no corruption and no back door deals or secret organisations or secret agreements. The US is the complete opposite of that. It is really difficult to get any information in the US, so whistleblowing is the one way you can get to information and provide information to the public.

CNN and The New York Times are called fake news by some people on our side, while the president personally thanks infowars.com and its founder Alex Jones for “standing up for the values that makes this country great.” Jones, it must be noted, has rarely met a bizarre conspiracy that he didn’t fully embrace and is one of the most egregious polluters of civil discourse in America. He believes, for instance, that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government and that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, in which twenty first-graders were killed, was a hoax staged by the government as a pretext to confiscate our guns. Those grieving parents that we all saw were—according to Jones—paid actors. It was disheartening to learn that in the days immediately following his election, as President-Elect Trump was receiving the well wishes of world leaders, he also took time to place a call to this man to let him know how important his support had been to the success of his campaign. Giving away one’s agency and becoming captive to such outlandish and vile alternative facts would be bad enough were one an average person, quietly living his or her life. But giving away one’s agency to such a confusion of fact and fantasy when one has power—well, that is truly dangerous.

Hoplophobia, the Flight from Personal Responsibility “Hoplophobia” is defined as the morbid fear of firearms. The term is derived from the Greek word, hoplon, which refers to weapons. The late Colonel Jeff Cooper, firearms instructor, author, father of “the modern technique of the pistol,” and founder of Gunsite Firearms Academy, attributed anti-gun zealotry to hoplophobia, which he defined as an irrational aversion to and fear of firearms and other forms of weaponry. Cooper opined that anti-gun hoplophobes held the idea that firearms and other deadly weapons have a will of their own.

Jefferson, who was only 33 years old at the time, was himself one of the freemen at large who exercised the right of the "use of arms." When Thomas was 10 years old, his father Colonel Peter Jefferson gave him a gun and sent him into the forest to promote self-reliance.36 By the time his father died when the lad was only 14, "he had already taught him to sit his horse, fire his gun, boldly stem the Rivanna when the swollen river was 'Rolling red from brae to brae,’ and press his way with unflagging foot through the rocky summits of the contiguous hills in pursuit of deer and wild turkeys.

Under the laws in effect in Georgia in that epoch, bearing arms was required. Conflicts with Native Americans prompted a 1770 enactment that "every male white inhabitant of this province, (the inhabitants of the sea port towns only excepted who shall not be obliged to carry any other than side arms) who is or shall be liable to bear arms in the militia . . . and resorting . . . to any church . . . shall carry with him a gun, or a pair of pistols."17 Each man was required to "take the said gun or pistols with him to the pew or seat," and these arms were to "be fit for immediate use and service.

The Supreme Court has ruled that government may not forbid law-abiding citizens to keep a handgun in their home for self-protection. But as this is written, most lower courts have found a way to uphold almost every other form of gun control, including laws that strip you of your constitutional right the moment you set foot off your private property.

Jefferson wrote from Paris on August 19, 1785, to his 15-year-old nephew Peter Carr, advising him on advancement in mind, body, and soul. After recommending the Greek and Roman classics in the original languages, Jefferson noted that "a strong body makes a strong mind," and advised two hours of exercise each day: ''As to the species of exercise of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind . . . . Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.

During this period, the colonists sought allies from any quarter, reaching out to friendly Native Americans. The address of Massachusetts to the Mohawk and other eastern tribes drafted by Samuel Adams and dated May 15, 1775, used simplified language in perhaps one of the most concise and forceful renditions of the American cause: brothers: the great, wickedness of such as should be our friends, bur are our enemies, we mean the ministry of Great Britain, has laid deep plots to take away our liberty and your liberty, they want to get all our money; make us pay it to them, when they never earned it; to make you and us their servants; and let us have nothing to eat, drink, or wear, but what they say we shall; and prevent us from having guns and powder to use, and kill our deer, and wolves, and other game, or to send to you, for you to kill your game with, and to get skins and fur to trade with us for what you want: but we hope soon to be able to supply you with both guns and powder, of our own making.

The day after Bunker Hill, John Hancock wrote to Joseph Warren—not knowing that he had been killed in the battle—that the Continental Congress had ordered ten companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to join the army near Boston. "These are the finest Marksmen in the world. They do Execution with their Rifle Guns at an Amazing Distance."108 Similarly, John Adams wrote to James Warren: "They are the most accurate Marksmen in the World; they kill with great Exactness at 200 yards Distance; they have Sworn certain death to the ministerial officers.

But when the Redcoats began their withdrawal back to Boston, the officer noted that the Americans ambushed them from houses and from behind walls and hedges. Some of the rebels would ride horses to get ahead of the troops, find a hiding spot, and take a shot—then repeat the maneuver to fire again. The officer conceded, "These fellows were generally good marks-men, and many of them used long guns made for Duck-Shooting."21 This attested to the shooting skills of the colonists and indicated that private arms designed for hunting were in common use.

The act provided that each militiaman must provide himself with arms, ammunition, and accouterments as follows: That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service . . . .53 There is no mistaking the act's above language that "every citizen so enrolled . . . shall . . . provide himself with a good musket or firelock." Over two centuries later, a revisionist history purported to quote the act as having read that "every citizen so enrolled, shall . . . be constantly provided with a good musket or firelock," and then asserted that "Congress took upon itself the responsibility of providing those guns."54 Neither statement was true.

One 2004 study of women who’d had an abortion found that about two-thirds of them had received no counseling ahead of time, and only 11 percent who did receive counseling said it was adequate. Just 17 percent said they were counseled on abortion alternatives, and about two-thirds reported feeling pressured to choose abortion. A majority said they weren’t sure of their decision at the time they received an abortion.74 Some women obtain an abortion under duress from their partner, whether literal force or other coercion such as financial pressure or threats to leave the relationship.75 According to some surveys, a majority of women who seek abortion do so because of lack of support from a partner.76 “I can’t tell you how many [post-abortive black] women have fallen into my arms in tears because their significant other put a gun to their head or threatened to kill them or had someone escort them into an abortion clinic to keep them there to make them have an abortion,” pro-life leader Catherine Davis, founder of the Restoration Project, told one of us (Alexandra) in a 2020 interview.77

It was no secret that the people were arming themselves. That could be surmised in newspaper advertisements, such as an early 1774 notice in the Boston Gazette that a merchant "has just imported for sale, a neat assortment of guns, complete with bayonets, steel rods and swivels, a few neat fowling pieces, pocket pistols.

Washington's last will and testament included the following: "To General de la Fayette I give a pair of finely wrought steel pistols, taken from the enemy in the Revolutionary war."32 Washington died in 1799, and the inventory of his estate lists seven swords and seven guns in the study, "1 pr Steel Pistols" and "3 pr Pistols" in an iron chest, "1 Old Gun" in the storehouse, and one gun at the River Farm.33 Patrick Henry died a few months earlier, also in 1799, and the inventory of his estate includes "1 large Gun" and "1 pr. pistols.

Jefferson acquired arms in the same manner as he sought learned books and fine wines. His memorandum books kept between 1768 and 1823 show numerous references to the acquisition of pistols, guns, muskets, rifles, fusils, gun locks, and other gun parts; the repair of firearms; and the acquisition of shot, gunpowder, powder flasks, and cartridge boxes.40 Included were a pair of "Turkish pistols . . . so well made that I never missed a squirrel at 30 yds. with them.

In retirement at Monticello, Jefferson again had ample time for hunting, and he was a true sportsman. His servant Isaac recalled: Mr. Jefferson used to hunt squirrels and partridges; kept five or six guns. Oftentimes carred Isaac wid him. Old Master wouldn't shoot partridges settin'. Said "he wouldn't take advantage of 'em"—would give 'em a chance for thar life. Wouldn't shoot a hare settin', nuther; skeer him up fust.

strike or assault another.”23 Even though these definitions of “arms” signify weapons carried by hand, Webster added that “fire arms, are such as may be charged with powder, as cannon, muskets, mortars, & c.”24 However, elsewhere Webster states: “The larger species of guns are called cannon; and the smaller species are called muskets, carbines, fowling pieces, & c. But one species of fire-arms, the pistol, is never called a gun.”25 The Framers certainly had in mind the kinds of arms that General Gage confiscated from Boston’s civilians and that militia acts required: muskets. shotguns, pistols, bayonets, and swords. When the Constitution was being debated, Webster asserted that the people were sufficiently armed to c.efeat any standing army that could be raised, implying that they had similar arms.26 However, the words “keep and bear arms” suggest that the right includes such hand-held arms as a person could “bear,” such as muskets, fowling pieces, pistols, and swords, and not cannon and heavy ordnance that a person could not carry or wear.

On Assault Weapons.... Democratic Countries that ban the sale military style weapons suffer millions fewer gun deaths to their population. Also; there is NO WAY that such guns (automatic machines) are approved under the Second Amendment. It was not the intent of Thomas Jefferson or the other Founding Fathers that automatic machine guns could be widely available for use in the slaughter of fellow citizens (such as children, women, babies, grand folks and everyone in between). The Founders language in the Second Amendment instead described "a well regulated militia" which the general public is not.

Over time, I have come to believe that the ultimate objective of most gun control advocates is to gradually eliminate the private ownership of guns.10 Pete Shields, the founder of Handgun Control, Inc., is well known for his statement that: “The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition—except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors—totally illegal.