The 2nd Amendment is uniquely American. It was the work of the Founding Fathers – men who had to fight for their freedom from tyranny, and who intended for the means of that fight to never be taken away from American citizens. Here are our favorite quotes on the right to bear arms.

Quotes About Guns and Freedom

“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one 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.”
– Rep. Hubert H. Humphrey

“The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed.”
– Jeffrey R. Snyder, "A Nation of Cowards"

“A man with a gun is a citizen. A man without a gun is a subject.”
– Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

“Arms are the only true badge of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave.”
– Andrew Fletcher

“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves... and include all men capable of bearing arms.”
– Richard Henry Lee

“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”
– Frederick Douglass, famed civil rights leader in 1867, in response to post-Civil War segregation laws

“Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.”
– Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese journalist

“Get yourself a Glock and lose that nickel plated sissy pistol.”
– Tommy Lee Jones, “U.S. Marshals”

Second Amendment Quotes

“No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved in its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defence of the state... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.”
– An unknown "M.T. Cicero", in a letter to the State Gazette of South Carolina, 1788

“You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.”
– Rush Limbaugh

“Historical examination of the right to bear arms, from English antecedents to the drafting of the Second Amendment, bears proof that the right to bear arms has consistently been, and should still be, construed as an individual right.”
– U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings, U.S. v. Emerson (1999)

“In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the ‘collective’ right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.”
– Stephen P. Halbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right"

“Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.”
– Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice

“The Second Amendment wasn't written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.”
– Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, 2013

“If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts 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

“The Second Amendment wasn't written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.”
– Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, 2013

“Let us hope our weapons are never needed – but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government – and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.”
– Edward Abbey

“Nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to 'the people' refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention 'the people,' the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset...The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms...The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.'”
– Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Continue reading Second Amendment Quotes: Pro-Gun Quotes on Individual Freedom and the Right to Bear Arms at Ammo.com.

I like the article, but you have Tom Coburn's quote in two places.

Worth noting is that several of those quotes in defense of the Second Amendment are from people who are not Conservative, nor even in favor of widespread gun ownership. They are, however, true Constitutional lawyers who understand it.

flashguy

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Chairman Mao.

A reality of human nature, which is why we have the Second Amendment.

“[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Scalia, for the majority in Heller.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
I like the article, but you have Tom Coburn's quote in two places.

Thanks! The reason Tom Coburn is in there twice is because I screwed up!

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:
Worth noting is that several of those quotes in defense of the Second Amendment are from people who are not Conservative, nor even in favor of widespread gun ownership. They are, however, true Constitutional lawyers who understand it.

flashguy

I don't look forward to such a lack of bias from future lawmakers.

The most fundamental statement of the right to keep and bear arms has nothing to do with the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and would apply regardless of whether the Amendment had ever existed:

“The right of self defence is the first law of nature.”
— St. George Tucker, 1803

Without the right to possess the effective means to defend ourselves at all times, saying we have a fundamental right to self-defense is meaningless. It would be like saying we have the right to freedom of religion but may not possess the holy scriptures of our religion, that we have freedom of the press but cannot possess printers to exercise that right, or that we have the right to life but require someone’s permission to eat or breathe.

I believe it’s very unfortunate that that simple and obvious fact is so poorly understood even by people whose primary reason for owning guns is for self-defense.
I don’t have the right to live my life because a two-century-old document says I do; I have that right because I’m a living being.

quote:

“[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Scalia, for the majority in Heller.

Personal security, for whom?

Some great quotes to be sure.

If it weren’t for 18 year olds with guns, we’d still be British