Malcolm X Quotes

I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family -- whether it's from an intruder, or whether it's from a government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.

It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.

Where I stand at is on the Second Amendment where the right to bear arms is not just for hunting and fishing and things like that. But it's the right of the American people to have a means of defense against a tyrannical government. So, sometimes you got to have that back-up plan.

The first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution.

It is admitted that all men have an equal right to the enjoyment of their life, property and personal security; and it is the duty as it is the object, of government to protect every man in this enjoyment.

And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second, we have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don't forget the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that's what we're going to have to do.

National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.

People have increasingly come to regard the government as a source of rights rather than as a defender of pre-existing individual rights.

The protection of a man's person is more sacred than the protection of his property.

It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.

The right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the rights of other people.

The Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenryThis is for usThis is for us when our government becomes tyrannical

Because the state can no longer protect us from crime, it wants to take away from us the means of protecting ourselves. This is the logic of gun control.

If you believe in the right to life, then you must believe in the right to have the means to defend that life.

Gun laws are an attempt to nationalize the right of self-defense. Politicians perennially react to the police's abject failure to prevent crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens. The worse government fails to control crime, the more the politicians want to restrict individuals' rights to defend themselves. But police protection in most places is typical government work - slow, inefficient, and unreliable.

Every person, whether in wartime or not, should keep a pistol and rifle in his house at all times. If a person is not going to protect himself, and wishes the government to do it for him, how can he complain when the government decides to protect itself against him, and executes him?

Americans have the right to choose to be unarmed and helpless. Be my guest.

I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens.

I certainly respect privacy and privacy rights. But on the other hand, the first function of government is to guarantee the security of all the people.

Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.

Democracies have been, and governments called, free; but the spirit of independence and the consciousness of unalienable rights, were never before transfused into the minds of a whole people....The feeling of equality which they proudly cherish does not proceed from an ignorance of their station, but from the knowledge of their rights; and it is this knowledge which will render it so exceedingly difficult for any tyrant ever to triumph over the liberties of our country.

The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to enjoy and acquire property

If there is no absolute right to freedom of speech, why must there be an absolute right to the freedom to bear arms.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.