Patrick Henry Quotes
Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
Elliot, Jonathan, editor. The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 3, 2nd ed., J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1836, p. 168.
Note the phrase “well regulated militia.” This is the exact same phrase which the Founding Fathers chose to use in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights over a decade later. And in this amendment the right to bear arms is provided for the “well regulated militia” and not for individuals as the Supreme Court has ruled many times. This quotation shows that the phrase was not just drafted by the founders, but had a clear and established meaning of which they were aware. Many people think that the phrase did not have a known meaning at the time but this quotation shows differently as the Constitutions of all the States were available to and studied by the Congress and most educated people.
Patrick Henry was an American attorney, planter, politician, and orator best known for his declaration to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.
