Perhaps the most accurate conclusion one can reach with any confidence is that the core meaning of the Second Amendment is a populist / republican / federalism one: Its central object is to arm ‘We the People’ so that ordinary citizens can participate in the collective defense of their community and their state. But it does so not through directly protecting a right on the part of states or other collectivities, assertable by them against the federal government, to arm the populace as they see fit. Rather the amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification consistent with the authority of the states to organize their own militias. That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes — not a right to hunt for game, quite clearly, and certainly not a right to employ firearms to commit aggressive acts against other persons — a right that directly limits action by Congress or by the Executive Branch and may well, in addition, be among the privileges or immunities of United States citizens protected by §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment against state or local government action.

Laurence Tribe
American Constitutional Law
From The Smallest Minority

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke
(1729-97)
Irish philosopher, statesman.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Robert Heinlein

There is no such thing as truth either in the moral or in the scientific sense. The needs of the State are the sole determining factor. What may be necessary today need not be so tomorrow. This is not a question of theoretical suppositions, but of practical decision dictated by existing circumstances. Therefore, I may – nay – must – change or repudiate under changed conditions tomorrow what I consider correct today.

Adolph Hitler
Rauschning
The Voice of Destruction, pp. 223
[The discovery of the relevence of this quote to present day politicians and others will be left as an exercise for the reader.]

People are scared of people like you Joe.

Barbara Scott
June 3, 2005
Talking to her husband Joe Huffman regarding his blog.

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill
The Contest in America
Dissertations and Discussions, vol. 1, p. 26 (1868)

The G8 must take responsibility for weapons that are produced in their countries. We need the G8 to agree to comprehensive controls over all aspects of small arms proliferation — both the legal and illegal supply… 84 percent of those killed in wars since 1990 have been civilians.

Dianna Melrose of the Oxfam
speaking at a press conference on the G-8 summit.
From an article, “UK Aid Agencies Call on G8 to Control Arms Trade,”
Reuters, 13 May 1998.
From: http://www.prepcom.org/low/pc7/index.html#oxfam as of 01/07/99

[Ms. Melrose fails to realize that when civilians have effective means of protecting themselves there has never been a genocide.  It’s when government has a monopoly on small arms that the most civilians are killed.

The link above is dead.  But do a google search for {prepcom small arms}to find similar information on this same topic.  In the late 90’s gun ownership rights were under extreme pressure from all directions including international pressure on the U.S.]

What rational person thinks the Constitution needs restoring?

Jack Anderson
Page 15
Inside The NRA — Armed And Dangerous
ISBN 0-7871-0677-1
First Printing January 1996

[My comment would be what rational person doesn’t think it needs “restoring”? — Joe]

We ran into a pleasant interlude up in Vermont which emphasized the wisdom and social utility of the Vermont firearms laws. It seems that some foreigner from down below was in a supermarket when he observed one of the customers wearing a pistol openly. He got all flustered and immediately called 911. In due course a cop showed up and located the complainer, who pointed out the “culprit.” The cop agreed that the man really was carrying a pistol, and then he asked what the problem was. I suppose the poor fellow rushed off out the door and went back where he came from. Obviously the state of Vermont was too dangerous for him.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 6, No. 3
March 1998

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution-such call I good books.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62)
U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, “Sunday” (1849)
[First Amendent, Second Amendment–I would claim the same sort of criteria is useful when choosing a firearm. — Joe]

Yes, I know the math doesn’t work.  But sometimes the truth must be sacrificed to make excellent points.

Scott Adams
Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel
First Edition, Page 190, Copyright 2002

Most of America’s assault rifles are in the attics, basements, and closets of patriotic Americans who never fire them and to whom war against their own government would be an unthinkable nightmare.

The problem is that millions of such weapons are now being stored in the homes of ordinary Americans, especially in the Western United States. Assault rifles have a military appearance and contribute in a subtle, psychological way to growing resistance to government oppression. Most farmers, ranchers, and loggers who see their lives and families entirely destroyed by Babbitt and retainers will never fire a shot. The existence of these weapons, however, makes resistance, even legal resistance, more thinkable to these victims.

The bureaucrats and politicians do not fear armed criminals or armed political zealots so much as they fear peaceful Americans who will probably never use their assault rifles – but whose mental toughness may be enhanced by possession of military weapons.

The gun controllers are not deterred by the facts about guns and crime, because their primary fear is not of criminals. They fear ordinary Americans whose lives and freedom their policies are destroying. In this fear and in their world, they are on target.

Arthur B. Robinson Ph.D.
Access to Energy
July 1994, Vol. 21, no. 11