"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission, which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government

"The power of the state is measured by the power that men surrender to it." Felix Morley

"The Constitution is a limited grant of enumerated powers...and a series of restrictions that prohibit government officials from interfering with the exercise of rights that preexist government."
J. Hornberger 11/2001 http://www.FFF.org/comment/ed1101h.asp

"It is naive to believe that the Supreme Court will invalidate any government action that receives both congressional and presidential imprimatur as necessary and proper to protect Americans against the terrorist threat. If our liberties are to be protected, it is up to us to protect them."
Sanford Levinson 10/17/01
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20011017_levinson.html

"What the subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear - and long lost - proof that the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms."
U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, 1982 Subcommittee on the Constitution

"Not only is it the right of every free person to bear arms, it is a must for continued freedom from oppression and crime."
Sheriff Cook 8/14/01 http://www.SierraTimes.com/archive/files/aug/14/sheriff.htm

"...gun laws only result in armed criminals preying on defenseless citizens."
Lt. Harry Thomas, July 1989 American Rifleman pg.58

"We are adamantly opposed to registration of guns...There is no difference in licensing the gun owner or registering the gun; that is just semantics."
Charles Canterbury, President, SC Fraternal Order of Police, 12/10/93, in The Washington Times

"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."
Cesare Beccaria, Criminologist, 'On Crimes and Punishment'

"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, 1938

"We never thought that there would be any effect on illegal gun crime, because this is a totally separate issue. What we were campaigning for was to make sure that a civilian could not be legally trained to use a handgun."
Anne Pearston, UK, 2001 http://lewrockwell.com/watson/watson12.html

"You have plenty of rights in this country, provided you don't get caught exercising them."
Terry Mitchell

"There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the people had not been 'brainwashed' about gun ownership and they had been well armed. Hitler's thugs and goons were not very brave when confronted by a gun. Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half starved group of Jews took up 10 handguns and made asses out of the Nazis."
Theodore Haas, former prisoner of Dachau Nazi death camp

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania

"I have seen an American general and his officers, without pay, and almost without clothes, living on roots and drinking water; and all for LIBERTY! What chance have we against such men!"
young British officer to Colonel Watson describing the American militia rebels in Georgetown, SC [Source: 'Marion, The Life of Gen. Francis Marion' by M. L. Weems, Ch.18]
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