Our Founding Fathers on the Second Amendment

By

 M. Richard Maxson

      The Founding Fathers were quite clear on their views of the second amendment. With all the “debate” that forces in the shadows continues to disarm America we need to revisit their views.

• "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
  - Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776

• "The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
  

                                                                                                – Samuel Adams

• "…arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside… Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them….”

                                                                                                 –Thomas Paine

 

• "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them…”

                                - Richard Henry Lee

• "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.”

                                                                                                   – George Washington

• "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.”

                                                                                                 – Thomas Jefferson

• "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

                                                                                                – Thomas Jefferson

• "I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”

                                                                                               – George Mason

• "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves …”

                                                                                               – Richard Henry Lee

• "The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”
  

                                                                                              - Zachariah Johnson

• "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 pretense, raised in the United States.” .

                                                                                              – Noah Webster

       To those who claim that this amendment has outlived it's purpose because it was written in a different time or was somehow not meant to be what it says it is we say – NUTS!

PROGRESSIVISM  is the belief that all things in the past are obsolete and only the present and the future is relevant. We say "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." Human knowledge is accumulative. To ignore all of mankind's progress is a form of mental illness.