Citizens & Modern Weapons

The massacre in an Orlando nightclub has brought forth the usual, Fascist, demands to take away modern and effective guns from The People.

Below, you will find the relevant comments of a very well known Founder of our Republic and one of his lesser co-actors in the USA's first Revolution.

A. "No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms"; "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government"; “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.” "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." (President Thomas Jefferson)

B. “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Their swords and every other terrible instrument of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.”(Emphasis added); “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms (Tench Coxe; Member of The Continental Congress and, later, constitutional scholar and author). [Emphasis added]