MORE PRO-GUN QUOTES
The following collection of pro-gun quotes can be helpful for debates, research papers, and letters to the editor.
A. Click here to see Founding Fathers' Quotes!
B. Click here for Earliest Pro-Gun Quotes in chronological order.
C. Click here for Pro-Gun Quotes in Works of FICTION.
D. Click here to Return to Main Quotes Page!The quotes are listed by category and whenever possible, a hyperlink to the quote in context is included. Last Updated 03/01/01.
The Constitution & Firearms
"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).
"The second amendment to the federal constitution, as well as the constitutions of many of the states, guaranty to the people the right to bear arms. This is a natural right, not created or granted by the constitutions." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
"The "arms" here meant are those of a soldier ... The citizen has at all times the right to keep arms of modern warfare, if without danger to others, and for purposes of training and efficiency in their use, but not such weapons as are only intended to be the instruments of private feuds or vengeance." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
A bill of rights is in the nature of a classified list of the rights and privileges of individuals, whether personal, civil, or political, which the constitution is designed to protect against governmental oppression, containing also the formal assurance or guaranty of these rights. It is a charter of liberties for the individual, and a limitation upon the power of the state. Such declarations are found in all the state constitutions. And the lack of a bill of rights was one of the objections to the federal constitution most strongly urged when it was before the people for their ratification. Very soon after the adoption of the constitution, this defect was remedied by the adoption of a series of amendments, of which the first eight may be said to constitute the federal bill of rights. Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
"If the legislature attempts to violate or defy the constitution, it will be held in check by the judicial department." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
"A written constitution, at least in a free country, is a supreme and paramount law, which all must obey, and to which all statutes, all institutions, and all governmental activities must bend, and which cannot be abrogated except by the people who created it." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
"...the term "constitutional government" is applied only to those whose fundamental rules or maxims not only locate the sovereign power in individuals or bodies designated or chosen in some prescribed manner, but also define the limits of its exercise, so as to protect individual rights, and shield them against the assumption of arbitrary power." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
"A constitution differs from a statute or act of a legislature in three important particulars:
(1) It is enacted by the whole people who are to be governed by it, instead of being enacted by their representatives sitting in a congress or legislature.
(2) A constitution can be abrogated, repealed, or modified only by the power which created it, namely, the people; whereas a statute may be repealed or changed by the legislature.
(3) The provisions of a constitution refer to the fundamental principles of government, or the establishment and guaranty of liberties, instead of being designed merely to regulate the conduct of individuals among themselves. But the tendency towards amplification, in modern constitutions, derogates from the precision of this last distinction." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895."Some scholars mistakenly believe that the function of the preamble is to restrict the keeping and bearing of arms to members of the militia." Leonard W. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights, Paperback 1999 edition, Chapter 6, Page 133.
"Believing that the amendment does not authorize an individual's right to keep and bear arms is wrong. The right to bear arms is an individual right. The military connotation of bearing arms does not necessarily determine the meaning of a right to bear arms. If all it meant was the right to be a soldier or serve in the military, whether in the militia or the army, it would hardly be a cherished right and would never have reached constitutional status in the Bill of Rights." Leonard W. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights, Paperback 1999 edition, Chapter 6, Pages 134-135.
"The very language of the amendment is evidence that the right is a personal one, for it is not subordinated to the militia clause. Rather the right is an independent one, altogether separate from the maintenance of a militia. Militias were possible only because the people were armed and possessed the right to be armed. The right does not depend on whether militias exist." Leonard W. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights, Paperback 1999 edition, Chapter 6, Pages 135.
Fighting Off Tyranny"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)
"The right of revolution is the inherent right of a people to cast out their rulers, change their polity, or effect radical reforms in their system of government or institutions, by force or a general uprising, when the legal and constitutional methods of making such changes have proved inadequate, or are so obstructed as to be unavailable." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895. The reference to this "inherent right" was removed from 4th edition version in 1927.
"Moreover, "legitimate defence can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State".[44] Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason.[45]" His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, Section 55, Encyclical Letter on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life, March 25, 1995.
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." Sen. Hubert Humphrey, Know Your Lawmakers, Guns Magazine, Page 4, Feb. 1960. Articles citing this quote include: Gun Ownership: A Constitutional Right; The Fifth Auxiliary Right; Lethal Laws; Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment; Beyond the Second Amendment: An Individual Right to Arms Viewed Through the Ninth Amendment; The Assault Weapon Panic.
"…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 Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church — and there was nobody left to be concerned." - Pastor Martin Niemöller, Congressional Record, 14, October 1968, page 31636. A number of paraphrases of this quote have appeared and are available HERE.
"As I proceeded further and further with my inquiry into the atrocities that had been committed on the people, I came across tales of Government's tyranny and the arbitrary despotism of its officers such as I was hardly prepared for, and they filled me with deep pain. [end Page 430] What surprised me then, and what still continues to fill me with surprise, was the fact that a province that had furnished the largest number of soldiers to the British Government during the war, should have taken all these brutal excesses lying down." Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Chapter XXXV, In The Punjab, Page 430-431, Dover paperback edition, 1983. This book was originally published by Public Affairs Press in 1948.
On Individual Gun Ownership"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn." Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Chapter XXVII, Recruiting Campaign, Page 403, Dover paperback edition, 1983. This book was originally published by Public Affairs Press in 1948.
"Finally, I contended that the debate over the question of self-defense was unnecessary since few people suggested that Negroes should not defend themselves as individuals when attacked. The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration." Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Chapter II, Black Power, Page 27, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., First Edition, 1967.
"As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of "self-defense." In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law." Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Chapter II, Black Power, Page 55, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., First Edition, 1967.
Government, Laws & Citizenship"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying--that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976--establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime." 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).
Liberty & Freedom"The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle,... that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"…whatever crushes individuality is despotism." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
"Liberty, whether natural, civil, or political, is the lawful power in the individual to exercise his corresponding rights. It is greatly favored in law." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
The Militia
Justice System