Some thoughts on the 2nd Amendment

I personally like the first of these the best:

"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
--Thomas Jefferson

"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
--Samuel Adams

"Disarmed citizens encourage crime and violence. Armed citizens encourage criminals to find a safer line of work."
--Harry Browne

"Australia's ban on handguns did not stop a killer from shooting 54 people, 35 of them fatally, in a 1996 rampage in Tasmania: He resorted to rifles. ... Thinking (gun control) measures will prevent episodes of mass murder is like thinking you can reduce drunk driving by banning Budweiser. ... After the 1996 slaughter, the Australian government outlawed semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. As part of the deal, it bought back 640,000 guns from their private owners. The result? In the first year of the new ban, the murder rate rose 3.2 percent and armed robberies were up 44 percent."
--Stephen Chapman

"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
--Jeff Cooper

"Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave."
--Andrew Fletcher, (1698)

"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 29

"Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins."
--Sammy the Bull Gravano, Mafia informant, on gun control

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."
--Patrick Henry

"I will not seek the capitulation of firearm manufacturers through the use of asinine lawsuits or the doling out of taxpayer-funded government contracts. I regret that you feel either of these tactics to be worthwhile endeavors."
--Thomas Jefferson

"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important, but especially so at a moment when rights the most essential to our welfare have been violated."
--Thomas Jefferson

"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
--Richard Henry Lee

"One man with a gun can control 100 without one. ... Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms."
--Vladimir I. Lenin

"The advantage of being armed...the Americans possess over the people of all other nations.... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 26

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 46

"Who would have guessed that the shots heard 'round the world 225 years ago would fall on deaf ears in a nation now more sympathetic to the gun-grabbing Redcoat than the gun-bearing rebel?"
--Michelle Malkin

"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
--George Mason

"Arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world as well as property."
--Thomas Paine

"One ironic legacy of the Clinton administration is the rearming of the American citizenry. Each time Clinton and his friends in Congress threaten another round of anti-gun regulations, the American people respond by stocking up...."
--Llewellyn Rockwell

"The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical."
--Joseph Sobran

"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."
--Joseph Stalin

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power by rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
--Justice Joseph Story, "Commentaries on the Constitution"

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
--Mao Tse-Tung

"The right of self-defense 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 when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
--Henry St. George Tucker, Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England," 1768

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the America people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
--George Washington

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power."
--Noah Webster