"I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it." Clint Eastwood

"Laws that forbid THE CARRYING OF ARMS... 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." -- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishment", 1764 (emphasis added)

"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -- James Madison, Federalist, No. 46.

"The great principle is that every man be armed.... everyone who is able may have a gun." -- Patrick Henry

"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 article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -- Tench Coxe in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.

"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" -- St. George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court and U.S. District Court of Virginia in Blackstone Commentaries, 1803

"That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe on 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 Adams in arguing for a Bill of Rights, from the book "Massachusetts," Pierce & Hale, 1850 pg. 86-87

‎"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." —Frédéric Bastiat, The Law