"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 prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one"
Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria, criminologist, 1764
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege."
Ark. Supreme Court, 1878
"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 Constitution shall never be construed ... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms ..."
Alexander Hamilton
"...to disarm the people (is) the best and most effective way to enslave them..."
George Mason
"The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomandry of America from sixteen to sixty....Who are the militia? are they not ourselves?...Congress have no power to disarm the militia....Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth right of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."
Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788
"And by the way, Mr. Speaker, The Second Amendment is not for killing ducks and leaving Huey and Dewey and Louie without an aunt and uncle. It is for hunting politicians like (in) Grozney and in 1776, when they take your independence away".
Robert K. Dornen, U.S. Congressman. 1995
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..."
Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights.
"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..."
Samuel Adams
"Those who will give up essential liberties to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Benjamin Franklin
"On every question of construction (of the meaning of the Constitution), let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and, instead of trying what meaning can be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed".
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p 322.
"The prospect of hanging wonderfully concentrates the mind."
Samuel Johnson
"I don't care what those men wrote 200 years ago."
Governor L. Douglas Wilder, Virginia, quoted in USA Today, 29 Jan 93
"In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief in the chains of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
James Madison
"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us."
Thomas Jefferson Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816
"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 Ghandi
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it."
Albert Einstein
"A government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."
Nelson Rockefeller
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
Thomas Jefferson
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
Patrick Henry
"Men by their constitution are naturally divided into two parties: Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. Secondly those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests."
Thomas Jefferson 1824
"What no one seemed to notice, ... was the ever widening gap ... between the government and the people. ... And it became always wider. ... the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. ... Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about ... and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated ... by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.
Milton Mayer, "They Thought They Were Free; the Germans, 1938-45" (1955, University of Chicago Press)
"It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2nd, Probabilities. 3rd, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short."
Thomas Jefferson Letter to J. Norvell, 1807
"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 inevitably ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."
Patrick Henry
"The advantage of being armed . . . the Americans possess over the people of all other nations . . . Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison, Author of the Bill of Rights, in his Federalist Paper No. 46.
"If New York City outlawed handgun carrying, homicides would decline drastically"
Tim Sullivan, 1911, of the "Sullivan Law". (In fact, homicides boomed the following year.)
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Mr. Justice Brandeis, United States Supreme Court, Olmstead v. US, 277 US 438(1928)
"No Freeman shall be debarred the use of arms in his own lands or tenements"
Thomas Jefferson
"The people are confirmed by the next article of their right to keep and bear their private arms" Tench Coxe (at the ratification of the Second Amendment)
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense...."
Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers No.28
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self defense."
John Adams
"And what country can preserve it's liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Thomas Jefferson
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."
Noah Webster, 1787
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams , debates of 1776
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property....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. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of them; the weak would become the prey of the strong"
Thomas Paine, In Writings of Thomas Paine at 56 (1894)
"A government that does not trust it's law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is itself unworthy of trust."
James Madison, Federalist Papers
"A free people ought...to be...armed..."
George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790 in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms."
Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters From the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169
"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 the constant companion of your walks."
Thomas Jefferson, Encyclopedia of T. Jefferson, 318
"If Janet Reno chooses to send her jack-booted, baby burning agents to collect my firearms, she'd do well to instruct them in the preparation of a nutritious box lunch....it's going to be a long day."
Anonymous Internet Post 1995...vicariously attributed to a Cincinnati Police Officer
"An armed society is a polite society."
Ted Nugent 1995. Rock Star & NRA Board Member
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
"It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school."
Joycelyn Elders
"Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government."
David Boaz
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
H.L. Mencken
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
Plato
"An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods."
Ambrose Bierce
"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work."
L. Neil Smith
"'Society' is a convenience for those who need an excuse to control the lives - or steal the property - of others."
L. Neil Smith
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
Charles Austin Beard, historian
"What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear--and long-lost--proof that the second 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."
Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Committee Print I-IX, 1-23 (1982).
The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner."
United States Senate, Report of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Committee Print I-IX, 1-23 (1982)
"I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control."
George L. Roman
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment
"The welfare state reduces a citizen to a client, subordinates them to a bureaucrat, and subjects them to rules that are anti-work, anti-family, anti-opportunity and anti-property... Humans
forced to suffer under such anti-human rules naturally develop pathologies. The evening news is the natural result of the welfare state."
Unknown
"Since when is 'public safety' the root password to the Constitution?"
C. D. Tavares
"Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace."
George Orwell, 1984
"That government is best which governs least, because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson
"That government is best which governs not at all."
Henry David Thoreau, 1849
"What's the big deal about the Republicans gaining control of the government? It's kind of like one crash-test dummy letting the other one drive for awhile."
Jay Leno
"Liberty means responsibility; that is why most men dread it."
George Bernard Shaw
"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me and yet assure others that I am sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back."
Leo Tolstoy
"Argument with one who has rejected reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
Thomas Paine
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river."
Nikita Khrushchev
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
John Adams
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
John Philpot Curran, 1790
"Truth and news are not the same thing."
Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."
Henry Kissinger
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the USA", 1921
"I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS."
Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism
"The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it."
James A. Donald
"Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist
"Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence"
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark - Mapp vs. Ohio
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"
Patrick Henry
"Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them."
George Santayana
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation."
James Madison
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783
"When I was a kid I was told anyone could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
Will Rogers, 1920's
"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
Will Rogers, 1920's
"They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?"
Paul Harvey 8/31/94
"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas."
Joseph Stalin
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
Mark Twain
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that the only distinctly native American criminal class is Congress."
Mark Twain
"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision."
US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006
"If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools."
William Penn
"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA -ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."
Heinrich Himmler
"Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In
other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money."
Dave Barry
"MTV may talk about lighting fires and killing children, but Janet Reno actually does something about it."
Spy Magazine
"The only difference between a welfare state and a police state is time."
Ayn Rand
"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical
Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount
of individual freedom to Americans... And so a lot of people say
there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being
abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the
announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects,
about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like
that to try to make people safer in their communities."
President Bill Clinton, MTV's "Enough is Enough", April 19, 1994
(Clinton's MTV appearance occurred on the first anniversary of
the conflagration at Waco.)
"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking
up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it."
Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator: Feb 5 1995, Interview on 60 Minutes
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of men better than himself"
John Stuart Mill
"We now are led to believe that it is politically incorrect to take the Constitution literally. We knew that the liberals held that view, but it is interesting to see them admit it at last."
Jeff Cooper
"It would seem that when backlash faces backlash, we have polarization. When we have polarization there is little room for discussion. Much as we might like to reason together, this serves no purpose when our adversary has already made up his mind, with or without reason. Thus the nation faces a crisis unprecedented since 1861. Since there is little point in argument we must fall back on prayer."
Jeff Cooper
"Most of us could get along with much less government than we have; there are others, though, who seem to require lifelong shepherding from prenatal care to the electric chair. It makes no sense to talk of self government to a man who cannot even govern his own behavior"
Paul Kirchner
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
P.J. O'Rourke
"I would rather live in a society which treated children as adults than one which treated adults as children."
Lizard: Anonymous Internet Contributor
"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements,and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider, environmental activist, in Discover, Oct. '89
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."
"Liberty is independence backed up by force."
Voltaire
"A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think he's the only one who can save the ship."
Ivern Ball
"Of course we arrest the innocent sometimes. Otherwise there would be no terror."
Curt Rich quoting a former secret policeman from Hungary
"Governments can encourage the cultivation of private virtue. They can provide a framework in which we may pursue virtue (or happiness), but they cannot make us virtuous (or happy), and the effort to use the coercive power of government for that purpose not only fails to produce private morality, it undermines public morality as well."
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
"It is no answer to this argument to say, that if an unconstitutional act be passed, the mischief can be remedied by a repeal of it; and that this remedy may be brought about by discussion and the exercise of the right of suffrage; because, if an unconstitutional act be binding until invalidated by repeal, the government may, in the mean time disarm the people, suppress the freedom of speech and the press, prohibit the use of suffrage, and thus put it beyond the power of the people to reform the government through the exercise of those rights. The government have as much constitutional authority for disarming the people, suppressing the freedom of speech and the press, prohibiting the use of the suffrage and establishing themselves as perpetual and absolute sovereigns, as they have for any other unconstitutional act."
Lysander Spooner, A Defence For Fugitive Slaves 27-28 (1850)
"There are remedies worse than the disease."
Publilius Syrus Sententiae, c. 50 B.C.
"There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."
Winston Churchill
"All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded."
Anonymous
"What luck for rulers that people don't think."
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945)
"How to tell the species of bear you are looking at: Go over to him and kick him in the behind. Run up a nearby tree. If he climbs the tree and eats you, he's a black bear. If he knocks the tree down and eats you, he's a grizzly."
Backpacker Magazine October 1990
"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."
Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment
"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction."
Caesar Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
"Your manuscript is both good and original. Unfortunately, the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good."
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
Sir John Lubbock
"I could prove God statistically."
George Gallup
"I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat."
Will Rogers
"I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me and the rest of the world can kiss my ass."
Last words of murderer Johnny Frank Garrett, 28, executed in Texas in February, 1992.
"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."
Bertrand Russell
"A recently released federal study, however, showed that 50% of all hunting accidents come from hunters falling out of trees."
Column by Roger Simon: From some LA paper
"No experiment can be more interesting than we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth."
Thomas Jefferson
"Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy..."
Edmund Burke
"The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity..."
Henry Clay, 1850
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
Samuel Adams
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity"
Sigmund Freud in "General Introduction to Psychoanalysis"
"Deadly assault weapons which were developed to wage war have no place in civilian hands, and we will work to pass a ban on these weapons."
Attorney General Janet Reno 1993
"We have to do something about guns. If only this nation would rise up and tell the NRA to get lost."
Attorney General Janet Reno to the National Black Prosecutors Association 1993
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles...that we are unable to think about reality."
President Bill Clinton, USA Today, March 11. 1993
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption for authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the People against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well. But they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Senator Daniel Webster, New Hampshire
"If somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me."
Diane Feinstein, Senate hearings on terrorism, April 27, 1995
"Hoplophobia is, after all, not a reasoned position, but rather a mental aberration. Being basically emotional, it is a feeling rather than an examined forensic position"
Colonel Jeff Cooper
"These amendments to our proposed Constitution, hereafter known as The Bill of Rights, are established in order to protect and guarantee the rights of the individual citizen against the tyranny of the federal government. A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no government should refuse".
Thomas Jefferson, Dec. 20, 1787
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependency;
From dependency back into bondage."
Alexander Fraser Tyler (1748 - 1813)
The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their 'constitutional' right of amending it or their 'revolutionary' right to dismember or overthrow it."
Abraham Lincoln, First inaugural address, March 4, 1861. (sometimes incorrectly cited as an April 4th speech)
"...in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. Society...practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,...penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them..."
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe & precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, Sep. 7, 1803.
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;..."
Thomas Jefferson to Justice John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:45. (Complete letter of June 5, 1824)
"The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals ... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."
Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789
"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 [Section 13: Restraints on Powers of Congress con't]. Whole Book.
"Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped;..."
Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers # 29.
I always wanted to use it in response to the Art Mob when I was in college, though. 
