Stockpicker, I am sorry, but for me and millions upon millions of others our forefathers left more than enough writtings to explain why they put the 2nd amendment in our Bill of Rights and a large part of it was to defend ourselves from a government of tyranny....... The dates of their writtings tell what was in their minds and intentions at the time it was being written up and ratified, if you can't see that it is a personal issue it isn't because it isn't there....
Constitution went in to effect on March 4, 1789 and the bill of Rights was raitified in 1791...
“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
-Thomas Jefferson
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason
Co-author of the Second Amendmentduring Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
"We should not forget that the spark which ignited the American Revolution was caused by the British attempt to confiscate the firearms of the colonists."
- Patrick Henry
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ..."
Richard Henry Lee writing in Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Letter XVIII, May, 1788.
"The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full posession of them."
Zachariah Johnson
Elliot's Debates, vol. 3 "The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution."
"... the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms"
Philadelphia Federal Gazette
June 18, 1789, Pg. 2, Col. 2 Article on the Bill of Rights
"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; ..."
Samuel Adamsquoted in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, August 20, 1789, "Propositions submitted to the Convention of this State"
"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 Henry Lee
American Statesman, 1788
"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States
"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. "
Noah Webster
American Lexicographer
"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 to James Madison
"We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;
-Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. Memorial Edition 16:45, Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.'
"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
"what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787
"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 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."
- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
- Albert Gallatin, Oct 7 1789
"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 it or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln, 4 April 1861
