St. George Tucker quote

Found at Hot Air: written in 1803 in the View of the Constitution of the United States, he said:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most government it has been the study of rules to confirm 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 color of pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

More at the link. This is my shocked face 🙂 that an early American professor of law would state something so shocking about the shocking fact that people might be shocked to learn that the 2nd Amendment means exactly what it appears to mean.

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2 thoughts on “St. George Tucker quote

  1. The very next few sentences are also directly relevant:

    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 authorize 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.

    While he was speaking of England, the same thing happened here. The excuse is safety rather than hunting privileges, but the intent and effect is the same: gun ownership is restricted to only “the right people”.

  2. A polite well armed society and a militarized police can not long coexist.

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