Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2023-10-18 Oct 18, 2023[T]he power to declare war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.~ James MadisonDo not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.~ Matsuo BashoDestiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.~ Aeschylus Oct 17, 2023Did you hear that we're writing Iraq's new Constitution? Why not just give them ours? We're not using it anymore.~ Jay LenoThe First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.~ Judge Kermit Victor LipezEuropean merchants supply the best weaponry, contributing to their own defeat.~ Saladin Oct 16, 2023The difference between [people who take civil liberties seriously] and others ... is that such serious people begin with a constitutional understanding that declines to trivialize the Second Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment, just as they likewise decline to trivialize any other right expressly identified elsewhere in the Bill of Rights. It is difficult to see why they are less than entirely right in this unremarkable view. That it has taken the NRA to speak for them, with respect to the Second Amendment, moreover, is merely interesting -- perhaps far more as a comment on others, however, than on the NRA.~ William Van AlstyneYour right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins. ~ Zechariah Chafee, Jr. Oct 13, 2023One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin[U]nderlying the gun control struggle is a fundamental division in our nation. The intensity of passion on this issue suggests to me that we are experiencing a sort of low grade war going on between two alternative views of what America is and ought to be. On the one side are those who take bourgeois Europe as a model of civilized society: a society just, equitable, and democratic; but well ordered, with the lines of responsibility and authority clearly drawn, and with decisions made rationally and correctly by intelligent men for the entire nation. To such people, hunting is atavistic, personal violence is shameful, and uncontrolled gun ownership is a blot on civilization. On the other side is a group of people who do not tend to be especially articulate or literate, and whose world view is rarely expressed in print. .... They ask, because they do not understand the other side, “Why do these people want to disarm us?” They consider themselves no threat to anyone; they are not criminals, not revolutionaries. But slowly, as they become politicized, they find an analysis that fits the phenomenon they experience: Someone fears their having guns, someone is afraid of their defending their families, property, and liberty. Nasty things may begin to happen if these people begin to feel that they are cornered.~ B. Bruce-BriggsWhat country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.~ Thomas Jefferson Oct 12, 2023The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them~ Tench CoxeThe right is general. It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been explained elsewhere, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. . . . [I]f the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of the guarantee might be defeated altogether by the action or the neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for that purpose.~ Thomas CooleyThe framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.~ Walter E. Williams Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print