Pro RKBA Statements

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AnklePocket

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Please add any that I missed. I'm in a 2nd Amendment debate on Tuesday in my public speaking class.

Anti-gunners are typically violent people at heart. This is why they fear gun ownership. They project their own fears of what they would do with a gun if they had one.

During the LA riots, the Koreans used military style semi-automatic rifles to keep the rioting, looting and murderous mobs from burning down their businesses.

An AK-47 in the hands of a law-abiding citizen is no more dangerous than any other tool.

Many are afraid of the personal responsibility that freedom requires.

10 out of 10 criminals favor gun control.

Laws that specifically target law-abiding gun owners blame and punish the wrong people.

Is a raped and strangled woman really morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun in her hand and a dead rapist at her feet?

The 2nd Amendment keeps hostile foreign forced foreign and keeps our government from becoming hostile.

Law-abiding citizens tend to remain so even after they're armed.

A government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens with the means of self defense is itself not worthy of trust.

Just because a criminal may use a firearm has no bearing whatsoever on the right of the law-abiding citizen to keep and bear arms. Our freedom is not dependent on how others behave.

The 2nd Amendment IS homeland security.

The right to keep and bear arms is about our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Guns contain no independent power to cause results apart from our decisions, character and purpose.

A state that deprives its law-abiding citizens with the means to defend themselves is itself a barbaric accoplice to violent crime.

Those who sacrifice freedom for the sake of security usually lose both.

Gun control is a false hope promised by an impossible utopia.

A free society, by definition, should not require its citizens to ask for permission to defend themselves.

Restricting 2nd Amendment Rights gives criminals greater predatory confidence.

Many politicians use guns as a means of scaring us into voting a certain way.

Efforts to undermine the 2nd Amendment threaten the core concept of liberty.

The armed citizen is the ultimate right of a free people.

Firearm ownership is a threat to their utopian illusion that doesn't exist.

The "civilized" elite distrusts the citizens more than they fear rapists and murderers.

The government doesn't necessarily possess moral judgement superior to that of the people.

Gun control laws ignore intent in that they are aimed at those who haven't actually done anything morally wrong. Such laws proclaim the moral content of your actions to be irrelevant. This sends a message that one's character isn't all that important, that understanding the difference between right and wrong doesn't matter and that it's more important to follow orders than to act responsibly and ethically.

We're concerned with politics over fact and logic.

Cont...
 
I read it quickly so I may have missed it:

"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns"
 
No people who look to government to solve their problems can call themselves a free people.

Gun controllers have a need to impose their superior wisdom and virtue on others.

This country hasn't remained free because of liberal activists.

Violent criminals are not deterred by gun regulations.

High crime cities tend to be those with the most restrictive gun laws.

2% of criminals that used guns used "assault weapons".

Gun owners with carry permits commit 0.02% of the crimes.

In Florida, a state that has allowed concealed carry since 1989, you're twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator than by a person with a concealed carry permit.

Many people see the right to protect themselves and their families as their single most important civil right.

You may hate guns, but were it not for them you would not be here to whine about them.

Giving up the right to arms is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Gun control doesn't stop criminals - it only prevents law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against them.

A dictator has no chance among men of self esteem.

People's views on guns usually indicate their views on personal freedom.

Anti-gun politicians are very dangerous to a free society.

Tyranny often masquerades as doing good.

Anti-gun fools are more dangerous to liberty than violent criminals.

If not for gun control, Hitler would not have been able to murder 21 million people. Despite having an extremely powerful army the Nazis still feared the civilian possession of firearms.

Government is not the source of our rights. We are simply born with them.

Cont...
 
You can't be made a slave if you're willing to die to be free.

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the Constitutional Rights secure." Albert Einstein

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." Thomas Paine

"All politics are based on the indifference of the majority." James Reston

"One of the greatest illusions in the world is the hope that the evils of the world are to be cured by legislation." Thomas Reed

"To those who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side." Thucydides

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." Ambrose Redmoon

That's all.
 
Compiled from my collection of Letters to the Editor, various articles, threads on THR, TFL and other forums and books.
 
These aren't specifically about the RKBA, more about general freedom vs over-regulation and "for the children"-style reasoning, but they are probably still quite relevant.

(Most taken from http://www.eff.org/EFF/quotes.eff)


"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that
oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the
beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
- H.L. Mencken

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion"
- Edmund Burke

"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
- Hume

"All bad precedents begin with justifiable measures."
- Julius Caesar

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe
to be unpopular."
- Adlai Stevenson

"The first measure of a free society is *not* that its government performs
the will of the majority. We had that in 1930s Germany and in the South
until the '60s. The *first* measure of a free society is that its
government protects the just freedoms of its minorities. The *majority* is
quite capable of protecting itself."
- Jim Warren, _GovAccess_, Nov. 29, 1995

"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties
through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many
small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may
seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."
- U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977

"The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because
nobody ever tries to ban the other kind."
- Mike Godwin, staff counsel, EFF

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery!?"
- Patrick Henry

"...o long as the people do not care to exercise their
freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for
tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves
in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise,
to put shackles upon sleeping men."
- Voltaire

"Legislation needs a better reason than that lawyers like it, and that
America does it."
- Lawrence Lessig, Stanford U. law professor (and EFF boardmember)

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
- John Hay, 1872

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace.
We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. May your chains set lightly upon
you. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity
forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."
- Goethe

"People who fight may lose. People who do not fight have already lost."
- Bertolt Brecht

"The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on
skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
- author Robert A. Heinlein on censorship.

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. They they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came
for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then
they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
- Martin Niemoeller, on the Nazi Holocaust

"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet."
- Myhr Lyle <[email protected]>, email signature file, 1995.

The Puritan hated bear-bating, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
- Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)

There is not anything in this world so abused as the sentance "Salus populi suprema lex esto" [Let public safety be the supreme law].
- John Seldon (1584-1684)

Necessity if the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
- William Pitt (1759-1806)


And finally:

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
- Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)
 
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. "
-Ayn Rand-

"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it."
-Jeff Cooper

Defense with a gun results in fewer injuries to
the defender (17.4%) than resisting with less powerful means
(knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%; physical force, 50.8%; evasion,
34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries than not resisting at all
(24.7%).10 Guns are the safest and most effective means of
protection. This is particularly important to women, children, the
elderly, the handicapped, the weak, and the infirm, those who are
most vulnerable to vicious male predators.

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/KleckAndGertz1.htm

http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Suter/med-lit.txt

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus/previous/cvus72.pdf
 
The CDC lists 86 accidental deaths and 110 suicides involving guns by children under 14 in 2000. Some anti-gun activists have expanded the definition of "children" to age 19 and claim that 13 children are killed per day by guns in the USA. This number is often argued to be an exaggeration.

More shocking are the numbers involved when guns are taken away:

Countries having successful gun control laws in the 20th Century -- and the results of those laws:

1915-1917 Ottoman Turkey, 1.5 million Armenians murdered
1929-1953 Soviet Union, 20 million people that opposed Stalin were murdered.
1933-1945 Nazi occupied Europe, 13 million Jews, Gypsies and others that opposed Hitler, murdered
1948-1952 China, 20 million anti-communists or communist reformers, murdered
1960-1981 Guatemala, 100,000 Maya Indians, murdered
1971-1979 Uganda, 300,000 Christians and political rivals of Idi Amin, murdered
1975-1979 Cambodia, 1 million educated persons, murdered
1995 Srebrenica Bosnians disarmed by the UN, the UN withdrew, Srebrenica was overrun and over 8,000 now-disarmed people were murdered by the Serb army.

That’s more than 2000 unarmed men, women and children murdered by their own government for EVERY SINGLE DAY in the 20th century.

“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.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." -Senator Hubert H. Humphrey-
 
The CDC lists 86 accidental deaths and 110 suicides involving guns by children under 14 in 2000.
Click to expand...

Ready, do you have that site for the CDC where you can punch in different age ranges and causes of death and get the total number of deaths per category? I used to have it bookmarked, now cant findit.
 
I think in the arena of debate it is good to quote some authorities like the founding fathers rather than just spouting slogans.
 
The courts have decided that a person with a felony can not be charged with having an unregistered gun, because that would violate his right of self incrimination. (Illinois, I think)

Criminals use guns to break laws that have severe penalties. Can anyone believe that a gun control law with a few hundred dollar penalty will be honored by someone that will commit armed robbery or murder and take the chance of the rest of his life in jail?

If gun control laws are directed at the law abiding, "for the children?"would we not be better using the money spent there for gun safety education?
 
"If the representatives of the people betray there constituents, then there is no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all forms of government"
--Alexander Hamilton

"The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States"
--Noah Webster

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
George Washington

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty, suspect everyone who approaches that jewel, unfortuneately, nothing will preserve it but downright force, when you give up that force, you are ruined, becuse the great object is that every man be armed.
--Patrick Henry

"Let us not make it (the Constitution)a blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless . if it is, then we have no Constitution."
--Thomas Jefferson

"What country before ever existed for a century and a half without rebellion? And what country can preserve their liberties if there rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
--Thomas Jefferson

One loves to possess arms, thought they hope they never have occasion for them"
--Thomas Jefferson to George Washington -1796

"False is the idea of utility...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 of liberty. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...such laws serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
--Thomas Jefferson's "commonplace Book" 1774-1776 quoting from "On Crimes and Punishment"

"The people are not to be disarmed of there weapons. They are to be left in FULL POSSESSION of them"
--Zacharia Johnson

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas Paine

"Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers"
--George Mason

"While the people have property, arms in there hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny"
--Rev. Nicholas Collin, 1789

"....Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...."
--Richard H. Lee, 1788

"...I think I can announce it as a fact, that it is not the wish or the intrest of the government , or any other upon this continent,separately or collectively, to set up for independence, but this at the same time you may rely on, that none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and priviledges which are essential to the happiness of every free state, and without which, life, liberty, and property are rendered totally insecure...."
--George Washington ,1774

"They that can give up an essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"
--Ben Franklin, 1759

"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property....Horrid mischief would ensue were the law abiding deprived the use of them"
--Thomas Paine, "Thoughts on Defensive War"-1775

"A small number of electors, or a small number of representatives are equally dangerous, but unequal, the danger is increased."--
Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"-1776

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in it's best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one, for when we suffer or are exposd to the same miseries by a government that we might expect from a country without government, our calamities are heightened, by reflecting that we funrnish the means by which we suffer"
--Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"-1776

"And that the said Consttution be never construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms...."
--Samuel Adams, 1779

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of 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."
--Daniel Webster

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
--James Madison

"A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand."
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.

"A Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it."
Heres a big list:


-- J. Trenchard & W. Moyle, An Argument Showing, That a Standing Army is Inconsistent With a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarch (London, 1697).

The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.
--George Washington

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
--Thomas Jefferson

"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms..."
--Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 1778

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
--Edmund Burke, Speech at country meeting of Buckinghamshire, 1784



edited to add:
Dalai Lama:

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."

Ghandi:

"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."

Thomas Jefferson:

"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."

Theodore Roosevelt:

"The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come is to teach men to shoot!"

John F. Kennedy:

"Today, we need a nation of minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to conciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."


Heehee, snuck in Ghandi and the Dalai Lama! Beat that, Brady Bunch!:D
 
as important as some of these slogans may be,

what will make a far more forceful statement will be a cohesive and logical arrangement for them. I suggest you use an Outliner on a PC to make them easy to move and organize--the one in Word should work well.

Choose the primary "idea" about the 2nd Amendment that you understand well, and organize these slogans according to their relationship to your primary point.

For example, my preference for arguing this (right now) would be to avoid the 'old' argument about individual and militia interpretations, and go to the issue of more guns equals less crime.
 
AnklePocket

(On the "crime guns" argument) Why do we concentrate so stridently on the 1/2 of one percent of firearms used in the commission of a crime while completely ignoring the 99.5% of firearms which will never be used in a crime? It would take the confiscation of 200 firearms to eliminate the one firearm (statistically) that will be used in the commission of a crime.

(On the registration argument) In an attempt to register the seven million firearms in Canada, the government will have spent one billion dollars by early 2004; and only one-half of that number have been registered to date. There are 250 million firearms in the United States. Do the math.
 
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