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UC-Berkely History Professor Brian DeLay is an expert witness states frequently have turned to recently to defend unconstitutional gun control laws in light of Bruen. This week The Duke Center for Firearms law published his article, ‘Bruen & The Myth of Continuity in American Gun Culture.’ In it, he pulls a trick I’ve seen regularly from state defendants and their experts. It goes like this . . .

While they insist that they should be able to use historical analogue laws up through the late 19th century (with some even citing early 20th century laws) as historical justification for their gun control laws, when it comes to firearms technology, they only want to talk about the founding era so they can claim the advancements in guns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries couldn’t be anticipated.

It’s true that the earliest repeating arms were rare, and most people of the founding era never used one. But that changed within less than a single lifetime. By the 1850s, revolvers were proliferating, and in the 1860s, repeating rifles came onto the scene and were the prevailing civilian small arm by the end of the century.

Yet not one state banned them.

If we’re going to look at reconstruction era analogues for gun regulation, then we should also consider that era for its firearm technology. The arguments DeLay makes in this article completely fall apart in that context.

To be fair, in the longer law review article he links to, he talks about nineteench century advancements, but only to downplay them and claim something like a revolver or Winchester rifle was still much slower to reload than a modern semiautomatic firearm. Sure, that’s true, but they were gigantic jumps in individual firepower over the single-shot firearms that came before, yet they weren’t banned.

His longer scholarly article argues that in the first ten years after Henry/Winchester lever action rifles were created, only around 10,000 were in circulation in the United States. Even if that’s true, so what? DeLay doesn’t contest that they became popular soon after, and again…they were not banned.

DeLay also doesn’t even try to argue revolvers weren’t popular in the 1860s, because they were.

Nothing proves that gun rights advocates are correct about the historical tradition more than the nineteenth century. DeLay and other historians try to silo the founding era and pretend the founders would have passed more gun control laws had they been faced with our circumstances. But their children and grandchildren in generations to come did not do so, even as firearms technology became much closer to what it is today.

As my historical sources thread proves, they wrote extensively, too, and largely opposed anything other than concealed carry laws.

DeLay’s longer article also weirdly sets the ammunition capacity limit for historical comparisons at 10, apparently because that’s what some states do today. But firearms going from single-shot to five or six rounds in a revolver — or much more in a rifle — are the relevant comparison.

They aren’t invalid just because their capacity was under 10 (some repeating rifles held more than 10 rounds, of course). The point is, capacities increased greatly from their single-shot origins, but once again, there was no movement to restrict them until the 1920s.

DeLay also makes much of machine gun regulations of the 1920s and later, some of which ensnared semiautomatic firearms and magazines over ten rounds in a minority of states. But he omits the fact that almost all of these laws were repealed by the 1950s insofar as they applied to semiautos and “high capacity” magazines. They were short-lived and constitute no historical tradition.

DeLay even throws some shade at Clayton Cramer (and, in his longer argument, David Kopel) for supposedly inventing a false narrative. That’s funny, considering Cramer is the one that exposed Michael Bellesiles’s fraud. If he hadn’t, historians like DeLay might still be citing it in their justifications for gun control laws today.

They accuse us of filling in historical gaps with assumptions, but that’s a textbook case of projection. Sure, there may be some ambiguity if you look solely at the founding era, but that ambiguity vanishes when looking at the nineteenth century.

 

Konstadinos Moros is an Associate Attorney with Michel & Associates, a law firm in Long Beach that regularly represents the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) in its litigation efforts to restore the Second Amendment in California. You can find him on his Twitter handle @MorosKostas. To donate to CRPA or become a member, visit https://crpa.org/.

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61 COMMENTS

    • “They lie”….yes. But they also bully, threaten, silence, de-bank, arrest, persecute, imprison, and steal elections.

      • They do all those things because they know that as long as the POTG are armed, they are ultimately impotent. The only way they can take the guns is if we give them up – they know this and we should know this and behave accordingly – i.e. give up nothing. So, all they have, is to pick at the margins, restrict this or that thing that they can get majority approval of (this is why POTG should accept absolutely NO infringements – give an inch, they take a mile), manipulate, lie, etc. They have no other recourse because they know that if they engage in force, en masse, against gun owners that they will, to put it simply, get shot.

    • Some quick history – realistic violence became nightly fare on prime time TV circa late ’50s.

      The modern era of school shootings began in ’66.

      TV violence elsewhere was heavily censored through (at least) the ’90s – especially in the “developed countries” incessantly cited by the typically “British” antigun trolls as gunfree utopias.

      Mention the correlation between TV violence, censorship and spree violence, and those same trolls will lie like the skanks they are, and claim that “English TV has always been quite violent”…

      • Further, all narcotics and weapons were over the counter cash sales in 1905. Realistic media violence was nil, and spree violence was rare. Economic and personal violence was suppressed by swift punishment and a reduced field of criminality.

        It ain’t the guns and drugs causing all the problems. It is largely a brew of criminality and media.

        • There was less violence in the Christian world because we were in fact, observant Christians.

          These atheists which I believe is what they are. Want to come up with a Any excuse to confiscate guns. And they have never believed in the first amendment whatsoever.
          There were wars in the 19th century, plenty of them. But that’s not what the focus is about. The focus is about societal violence. And that was very low in the 19th century.

          Because People basically had respect for other people’s things. And if you didn’t there was instant punishment from the property owners. And the larger society accepted that punishment dealt to the thieves, by the property owners.

  4. Let me say this again: If the military has access to a weapon, then the citizenry should have access as well.

    Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an Americans. -Tench Coxe

    • “Let me say this again: If the military has access to a weapon, then the citizenry should have access as well.”

      That’s what the NFA is for. Re-open the registry. Why California, New York, etc, need those toys, *now*.

      A more reasonable modern analogy would be the average citizen have the same level of armament as a typical policeman on patrol in his squad car. Typically a semi-auto shotgun, AR-platform rifle, and a Glock 17 in his holster, and extra standard-capacity magazines…

      • Geoff, you are absolutely correct! Tench Coxe wrote in 1788 “Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American”. US v. Miller 1938 made it clear the 2A protects firearms useful for military & militia purposes

        • Heller conflicts with the militia use of Miller. Heller defines protected arms as not both dangerous & unusual. With is defined as “In common use for lawful purposes. Caetano defines in common use a arms which are kept by at least 200,000 civilians. Non crew served automatic weapons are standard issue since post WWII for the infantry; however, in the US where there has been a registry since 1934 for automatic firearms there are less than 200,000 registered to civilians. The registry has been closed to additional registrations since 1986. Heller even references machine guns as an example of constitutional infringement. Unless there are 5 justices that want to expand the history & tradition test in Bruen to firearms in the NFA or compromise & rule the Hughes amendment to the 1986 FAOPA machine guns will remain virtual unobtanium for the masses. The more likely outcome that retains the text, history & tradition standard is the Hughes amendment will be declared unconstitutional because their are no historical analogs banning any arms in colonial or 1791 when 2A was ratified. I limit time period to 1791 because the 14th amendment ratified in 1868 only applied the BOR’s to the states. Reference 2A legal attorney/scholar Mark Smith, Four Boxes Diner YouTube page.

        • Efforts are currently underway to sue to get the NFA in all 50 states and territories, and the ‘Hughes’ amendment struck…

  6. We need to focus overturning the unconstitutional laws against full autos. Restricting and banning them in fear of criminals is NOT why we traditionally outlaw things in the USA.

    • An understanding of traditional thought processes and decision making is, however, sorely lacking in many of our current ruling class. They talk about “reasonable” and “common sense” all the time while displaying a lack of reason and sense – common or otherwise.

      I have often observed that in spite of the truth that modern Americans are among the wealthiest, healthiest, safest people in the history of human civilization that for many of them, their principle response to the world around them is fear and a cry for others to make them “safe”. How this dichotomy came to be true, I don’t know, but I certainly observe it all the time. People around me, regularly, talk about what they fear and how they feel unsafe or threatened and, yet, they get up and go outside and go to work and wander about without any means to protect themselves from their perceived ever-present “dangers” and, then, regard me as “paranoid” because I carry a gun. The dissonance (I’m reluctant to label it “cognitive” because it seems to me to be devoid of cognition) is bizarre. Sometimes I feel like I’m almost the only person I know who can discern black from white, up from down, male from female, and danger from safety.

      • When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. Fear is constant, and ignored by competent humans.

        When you have everything, you have it all to lose, chronically episodic fear is rampant, albeit often unjustified.

        Evolution has had little chance to act on the brains of humans living in the prosperity and safety we think of as normal – due to its rarity in our history. And yep, it shows…

        • “When you have everything, you have it all to lose, chronically episodic fear is rampant, albeit often unjustified.”

          I would agree that this is among the best explanations for the current mood of our modern society but, it still strikes me that this requires one to not think very deeply. If one spends even a moment in thought and analysis one will find that all the ladders out there present a more significant danger to most of us than all the guns do. Gravity is, after all, a cruel mistress.

        • Gravity does not play favorites, indeed.

          Just speculation – the evolutionary novelty of our collective situation is why so many flounder, seemingly inexplicably. We just are not adapted. Yet…

        • @XZX

          You may be correct. Often, when people tell me that they fear they are not safe, I say, “But, demonstrably, you are.” There is a widespread sense out there, among average, everyday Americans and others in similar societies, that the world is becoming a more hazardous and frightful place when, the exact opposite is true. I can comprehend the lack of adaptation argument you pose but, it seems to me that observable reality should be more compelling than it apparently is.

          I have often related a story to people about my young brother who, when we were both children, died in a car accident because of the lack of a seatbelt in the car in which he was a passenger. People often respond that people still die in car wrecks. I respond, “Yes they do, but not because they went flying through the windshield.”

        • Over evolutionary time, the appearance of safety has been highly deceptive, and worriers survived, passing those traits. Now no tigers in the bushes, but the worriers still worry. It’s a bio-mechanistic kind of thing.

          Now tell me why so many folks want to pet tigers.

        • Yeah, interesting, some of the worriers survived but, at the same time, so did some of the risk takers. Where is the balance? Presumably that question cannot be answered for a few thousand years at minimum.

          Why do some people want to pet tigers? Your guess is as good as mine. Some of the same people who want to pet a tiger are afraid that my gun, or the weather or my use of gasoline in my car will kill them. Je ne sais pas.

          My principle frustration, I suppose, is that the worriers want me to worry about the same things as they do even though I have reasons to not worry about what worries them and worry, instead, about other things. Some sort of societal level acceptability of particular predilections and preferences filtered through some sort of “common” experience that, for whatever reason, is not all that compelling to me. People who are afraid to fly, for instance, rarely demand that I also fear air travel. People who are afraid of guns, however, demand that I also fear guns or, at least, accept public policy that is rooted in their particular fear. My response is typically, “Fine, you fear planes, don’t fly. You fear guns, avoid them.” But, they demand that one (or more) of their fears be accommodated by me while I do not demand that they accommodate my fears. If, for instance, I fear snakes, I do not require that all snakes be eradicated, rather, I avoid snakes. The anti gun crowd, because they fear guns for some reason, want to require that guns are eradicated. I suppose that I am inevitably going to be more favorable to my own thought processes but, being as objective as I can, I still see a dichotomy.

        • MN,
          As the quote goes…

          Hard times create good men.
          Good men create good times.
          Good times create soft men.
          Soft men create hard times…

      • The terms “common sense” & “reasonable” when used in the context of firearms rights are dog whistles. Also, when it comes to issues of exercising an individual right guaranteed by the Constitution common sense & reasonable are not valid justifications.

        • Oh, I agree that such terms are not justification. I’m just pointing out that those using them cannot even satisfactorily claim that their thoughts are described by such terms.

      • Fear for your personal safety causes self-regulation. And it’s a good thing it requires less government.

  7. The problem for those who argue history & tradition like the esteemed Professor Brian DeLay of my alma mater is their arguments aren’t going to fly with the SCOTUS majority. SCOTUS in 2016’s Caetano v. MA rules that the 2A didn’t freeze covered arms technology to 1791. This is no different than technologies used when exercising 1st amendment rights. Bruen says that 2A rights are not inferior to other BOR rights. Caetano involved MA ban on stun guns which didn’t exist until the late 20th century. His argument may fly with inferior court judges who are willing to willfully misread, Heller, & Bruen because they want to uphold obvious unconstitutional infringements on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.
    They ignore Heller by reading “for lawful purposes” as “for self defense”. Then they use a balancing test to uphold the infringement.

    • “SCOTUS in 2016’s Caetano v. MA rules that the 2A didn’t freeze covered arms technology to 1791.”

      If the 2A was frozen in the 1790s, then a free press applies only to a printing press powered by a human arm, one page at a time.

      To be secure in your person and papers wouldn’t apply to your smart phone and computer at home, while they obviously do… 🙁

  8. What? If Bruen requires a historical look, then the leftists might find history professors with an agenda to try to sway interpretations to their side? Surely they would not stoop to such low and base skullduggery?

    • The defendants & those filing amicus briefs supporting the defendants view are doing that now. They are having some success in inferior federal courts which is where there are many judges that are hostile to the peoples rights. These judges aren’t stupid so their actions are deliberate delaying actions.

  9. What? Dishonesty on the part of people who regularly tell the American people that we just need one more “minor” infringement and that will fix the problem of those dastardly guns going out and shooting someone? Oh, say it ain’t so! I am sure they won’t tell us yet another lie! I am absolutely certain they are every bit as honest as President Biden!

  10. Moderated again because I implied B!dumb is a dishonest person…W0rd un!mpressed is owned by leftists who believe in censoring conservative thought.

  11. The Trump appointed demented radical Far Right Fanatical Judges claim if there was no ban in 1776 then any new gun laws are Unconstitutional. The facts are otherwise.

    Before 1776 MSNBC News did a study on pre-revolutionary gun laws and there were many in all the larger cities. There were bans on concealed and open carry. There were bans on keeping loaded guns in the house. There were bans on firing weapons within city limits. Just to give a few examples of gun laws, none of which were rescinded after 2A was written.

    If we carry the thinking of the Moronic Radical Far Right Court further any post Colonial laws banning slavery are Unconstitutional. Any Colonial laws banning women and minorities from voting are Constitutional. Any Colonial laws banning interracial marriage are Constitutional. Any Laws that discriminate against gays or LGBT people are Constitutional. All because such outlandish and uncivilized laws were legal in Colonial America.

    In reality the bombshell book “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson unearthed the long forgotten letters of the racist Jefferson and Madison and the fanatically racist Patrick Henry and how they were terrified of the ongoing slave revolt in Haiti and how they feared the revolt would spread to the Colonies. This was the reason for the Second Amendment and it was to cajole the States into joining the Federal Governments by letting them have their own standing armies to murder slaves. It had zero to do with the individual’s right to own weapons. As a matter of fact many State Militials locked up their arms in armories.

    It is rather obvious to all but the mentally challenged Far Right Fanatics that The Second Amendment was deliberately written as vaguely as possible so the courts could regulate or outright ban firearms which they have been doing since 2A was signed.

    Remember too that the 1933 Machine gun and Silencer ban and the Reagan Machine gun ban were all ruled Constitutional by the Supreme Court. Assault rifles could certainly be added to that ban if the court so chooses to uphold such a ban.

    Remember there were no Assault Rifles holding 100 rounds of high velocity ammo in 1776 so therefore the Court made fools of themselves in their attitude that if it was not a reality in 1776 it cannot therefore be banned in the present day.

    “Compelling … Backed by rigorous research, Anderson lays out the case that throughout history, Black Americans have largely been restricted from the right to bear arms … Anderson’s book prompts another question: Can a Constitution rooted in anti-Blackness ever be a vehicle for freedom and justice for Black people? The Second is an important opening, and offers an opportunity to rethink our attachment to the Constitution and our entire body of laws.” – The Washington Post

    “A provocative look at the racial context for Americans’ right to bear arms, Anderson’s forcefully argued new book contends that the Second Amendment was inspired by “fear of Black people” ― a desire to ensure that whites could suppress slave rebellions.” – New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

    “Absorbing . . . With the nation reeling from a spate of mass shootings and President Biden again pushing for common-sense gun reform, The Second, available June 1, is as timely as some of Anderson’s best known books. . . . The Second adds another dimension to the gun debate and proves that it is stained with the anti-Blackness mindset that disfigures every debate from voting to housing, from education to health care.” – Boston Globe

    “The author of the award-winning White Rage targets the Second Amendment in all its moral and legal travesties. From James Madison’s capitulation to a slavery-obsessed Patrick Henry, right up to last year’s bloody rampage in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Anderson strikes the perfect balance between righteous wrath and intellectual rigor.” – Oprah Daily, “20 of the Best New Summer Books to Pick Up This June”

  13. I came home from Vietnam and walked down to my local hardware store and bought a 38 caliber revolver and two 1911s. I paid my money and the clerk put the guns and one box of ammunition for each in a bag and I walked out. What a time in America.

    • Now that’s just wrong. Talk about something that should never happen in America. I’m sure you didn’t go to war and risk your life to come home to such disrespect.

      They should have boxed the guns.

  14. The problem we have is that people continuously refuse to follow. President Eisenhower’s instructions in his final address to the country.

    They use the Ghostly and mythical, “military-industrial complex” as a distraction.

    As he stated, the enemies of the United States are atheistic in nature, they do not support a free and open society. One that requires Individual responsibility and consequences for their actions. They have never supported the first amendment.

    President Eisenhower stated the greatest danger was from the federal government funding education in this country. Schools will produce and say whatever the government wants them to say, or produce.

    And eventually, the schools would be able to hire crackpots like this Professor. And so many like minded others. Who would never be able to find employment anywhere else.

    I like the “military-industrial complex”. It provides me with all the guns and ammunition. I can afford. And as a history guy. I know that it was the Fairchild Aircraft Company. Where the AR15 originally came out of. And not a gun company.

  15. The only difference between the Patriots of the 1770s/80s and the citizens of today. Is courage and the resolve to be Free, from government Tyranny. Nothing more…Nothing less.

  16. I know it’s pneumatic rather than exothermic, but isn’t the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) Girardoni rifle a repeating (~22 shots) kinetic projectile weapon? Even though the Bill of Rights wasn’t ratified until 1791, this rifle was in service from 1780 to 1815 and would have been commonly enough known to be banned if there was any inclination to do so. Kalthoff repeaters (among others) predated the Girardoni (~1630 or earlier). So regardless of how rare they might of been, such repeating weapons would be known about amongst those in the weapons or warfare business. Again, no laws to limit.

    To quote Fred Guercio: “Whoever says all our Founding Fathers knew of was a single shot musket and claimed Our Early USA Government had no knowledge of more powerful large
    capacity repeating rifled guns or defense weapons is gravely mistaken.”

    Search YouTube for “Girandoni Rifle” (although inventor’s name was Girardoni).

    • The “Girandoni Rifle” has been extensively covered and discussed here in TTAG over the years. A truly frightful weapon if you were indigenous and saw a white man approaching… 🙂

      • Pretty much like pronouncing “Garand” the same way he did, I just prefer using the Italian name of the inventor (Bartolomeo Girardoni) rather than the German spelling (Bartholomäus Girandoni). I do admit it changed over the years and also once it got to America. We’re still talking about the same thing. I’m just amazed, given the recent historically based decision of Roger “Saint” Benitez, and this post exposing the perversion of history, this wasn’t otherwise already mentioned.

    • he ONLY reason the Girardoni and other significant repeating/semiautomaic weapons were now massibely more common is that, being complex and sophisticated pieces of equipment, were very dear, and in very limited prduction. They cost many multuples more than even the best single shot long guns. The underlying truth however is that they existed, were widely known, and in “common use” (meaning anyone who could afford them and wanted them could and did have them) The legal issue today is “were they in exitance and were they known” to the framers. The single answer to both questions is a strong affirmative. The myth that they were nonexistend and/r unknown falls into the same category of “the AR rifle can vapourise the human body from the inside in seconds” Yeah, and I gots me a pet chikkin can fly to the moon and back, all by herself, in a week.

      WHEN will these clowns who stand up in front of senate committees and judges during depositions and such start being charged with perjury when they spew such blatant lies? If that were to become standard practice the entire anti-gun industry would fold like a cheap polyester suit.

  17. “DeLay and other historians try to silo the founding era and pretend the founders would have passed more gun control laws had they been faced with our circumstances.”
    And then,
    “They accuse us of filling in historical gaps with assumptions,”

    We assume that you are not allowed to assume……………..jerks.

    • Historians & lawyers that make the argument that the writers and ratifiers of the 2A only wanted to cover existing technology besides pushing their illogical arguments are wasting their time. They should do what the Federalist Society did starting in the early 1980’s, change the makeup of elite law schools so that eventually there will be a SCOTUS majority of living constitutionalist. This is why it took 50 years for Roe to be overturned. Prior to 2022-2023 SCOTUS session there wasn’t a court majority that was willing to do more than trim a birthing person’s right to abortion. Chief justice Roberts worries to much about the public’s opinion of the court to outright overturn Roe & Casey to sign Alito’s opinion. When ACB replaced the Notorious RBG there was 5 justices who were likely to sign onto a clean ash canning of Roe & Casey. The majority of 6 justices who follow the text, history & tradition philosophy are expanding the people’s & state’s rights thereby trimming federal government powers. They are also very skeptical of the power of the executive branch which is indicated by WV v. EPA in 2022 and Sackett v. EPA. in 2023.
      P.S. Academics & lawyers who make Prof. DeLay’s argument are hypocrites; because, how can they say the 2A applies only to 1791 arms technology and the 1st applies to all technologies? It is the same problem those who argue the people in the 2A only applies to members of the militia.

  18. To me it does not even matter if there were bans on certain guns in the 1700’s.
    The amendment says “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
    It means what it says and even if some ban was put in place way back when, this simply means the infringements began earlier than any of us thought, but they are still unconstitutional infringements and as such should be removed.
    Full Stop.

  19. The Right To Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.
    According to that We The People a citizen militia should have access to any arms that any army processes. It’s why the Second Amendment was written, to give We The People the power we need to overthrow a tyrannical government or defend Our country.
    State constitutions give us the right to protect ourselves, the US constitution gives us the Right to protect the country.
    No state, no person,should be able to take that away and if they think they can or do then they are not American Citizens.
    Our dependence on what a judge or judges decree is going to be Americas down fall of its Freedom’s.

    • mostly good, except for one critical error: you state the constutions GIVE us this or that. No, they GIVE us precisely NOTHING. They merely NAME some rights then command GOVERNMENT to keep their grubby pas off them. Then, just to be sure, it further states there are other RIGHTS not named that are ours because of our birth, and then declares government cannot mess with THOSE rights either Please stop promoting the false meme that the Constituion GIVES us anything. If government have the power to GIVE us something it also have the power to take that thing away. Our rights do NOT come frim government, they come from the God who made us.

  20. The antis can cry all day long but as I knew would be the case after Bruen and Heller dictated the course inferior courts must follow and clarified how rulings were going to be done. It would take a while but courts would have to fall in line with the the commands set in motion by the USSC rulings.

    Interest balancing is out the window and courts are going to have no choice but obey.

  21. Something these historians also seem to be ignoring is the simple fact that many farmers and frontiersmen were better armed than the average infantryman. Long rifles, a variety of edged weapons, a brace of pistols, including multi barreled weapons. While expensive and not as common, there were several examples of functional breach loading and some repeating long guns available as well.
    With the militia clause, civilian guns should include any weapon of military utility. Including select fire, or full auto weapons.
    And, contrary to what the pResident says, we could then, and still can today, own cannon.

    • if this is a valid pint, they should also eliminate kitchen knives, cricket bats, any form of archery tools, and large frying pans and bricks.

      It ain’t the arrow, its always the Indian.

  23. “This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.

    —- St. George Tucker (Blackstone’s Commentaries…. With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government of the United States and of the Commonwealth of Virginia. 5 vols. Philadelphia, 1803, on the Second Amendment)”

    • “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)”

      “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”

      “Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right.

      —- Justice Antonin Scalia, District of Columbia v. Heller”

      “Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it’s off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.

      —- Huey P. Newton”

      “There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the people were not “brainwashed” about gun ownership and had been well armed. … Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half-starved group of Jews took 10 handguns and made asses out of the Nazis.

      —- Theodore Haas, Dachau survivor”

      ”

      “It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal experience…You won’t get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There’s only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up, and if you don’t actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time.”

      —- Ronald Reagan”

      “But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.

      —- Jeffrey R. Snyder”

      “After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

      —- William S. Burroughs”

    • “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 (D)”

      “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”

      “Man has to wring Liberty not only from tyrants, but also from his fellow men who are not only unwilling to fight for it, but to let anyone else fight for it.

      —- Paul I. Wellman – ‘The Iron Mistress’ (novel based on the life of Jim Bowie), 1951″

      “A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

      —- Frederick Douglass, 1867, civil rights leader in response to post-Civil War segregation laws”

      “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’, 2013”

      • “A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

        During the build-up to our War for independance from Britain, the Colonials made frequent and effective use of the Firs Box.. that is, “the Letter Box”. letters to the press, to government officials, elected leaders, and to a form of general distribution known as the “Broadside”, a printed sheet of commentary, criticism, call to action, etc. THET, after this First Box )letter boxcome the remaining three, only ever needed should the first one fall on blind eyes and closed minds. The “Federalist Papers” (Madison?) fell int this Firs Box category and were a powerful force toward realising the break from England. Those treatises are very excellent reading even today, and deal with many issues yet with us now.

    • “One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms.

      —- Joseph Story, ‘Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States’, United States Constitutional law : containing a brief commentary on every clause, explaining the true nature, reasons, and objects thereof ; designed for the use of school libraries and general readers. With an appendix, containing important public documents, illustrative of the Constitution, 1779-1845, published 1847″

      “As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.

      —- Jeffrey R. Snyder, ‘A Nation of Cowards’ (on issues involving race), 1993”

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