Below are passages taken from “The Second Amendment Primer” written by Les Adams.
John Locke:
Whosoever uses force without Right…puts himself into a state of War with those, against whom he so uses it, and in that state all former Ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and everyone has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor.
Private persons have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them…
One may kill an aggressor where there is insufficient time to appeal to the law, for the law could not restore life to my dead carcass.
James Harrington:
The arms of the commonwealth are both numerous, and in posture of readiness, but they consist of her citizens.
Men accustomed unto their arms and their liberties will never endure the yoke.
The distribution of arms among the citizens prevents a monarch from overcoming a Republic.
Joyce Lee Malcom:
The Second Amendment was meant to accomplish two distinct goals. First, it was meant to guarantee the individual’s right to have arms for self defense and self preservation. These privately owned arms were meant to serve a larger purpose as well and it is the coupling of these two objectives that has caused the most confusion. The customary American militia necessitated an armed public or militia. The militia being the body of the people. The argument that today’s National Guardsmen, members of a select militia, would constitute the only persons entitled to keep and bear arms has NO historical foundation.
Jeffrey R. Snyder:
What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon the government the powers otherwise prescribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the governed.
A passage about dignity:
Dignity used to refer to the self-mastery and fortitude with which a person conducted himself in the face of life’s vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others. Now, judging by campus speech codes, dignity requires that we never encounter a discouraging word and that others be coerced into acting respectfully, evidently on the assumption that we are powerless to prevent our degradation if exposed to the demeaning behavior of others. These are signposts proclaiming the insubstantiality of our character, the hollowness of our souls.
It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because of judges, lawyers, or law enforcement. The defect is there in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.
The Second Amendment Primer by Les Adams is an excellent source of the history of the Second Amendment and what the founders intended when they wrote it.