Gun Quotes : Legal

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  • "The right of bearing arms for a lawful purpose is not a right granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” ~ Supreme Court: U.S. vs Cruikshank
  • "The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the high powers delegated directly to the citizen, and is excepted out of the general powers of government. A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.” ~ Supreme Court: Cockrum v. State
  • Supreme Court: D.C. versus Heller (and other rulings) concluded that the 2nd, "protects an individual's right to possess a firearm, unconnected to service in a militia".
  • "The Second Amendment is not the right to shoot deer, it is to defend your liberties if we're taken over by tyrants" ~ Judge Andrew Napolitano (New Jersey Superior Court Judge, Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at Brooklyn Law School)
  • "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." ~ Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
  • "One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms." ~ Constitutional scholar Joseph Story, 1840
  • 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.
  • The [2nd Amendment] may be considered as the true palladium of liberty… The right of self defense is the first law of nature.... Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color of pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. ~ St. George Tucker (One of the first Judges and law professors to write about the 2A)
  • No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. ~ Political Disquisitions, a British republican tract of 1774-1775

References