‘No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms’: What the Founders had to say about the 2nd Amendment

In the past week, President Biden has doubled down on calls to ban so-called assault weapons, urging Congress to pass “much stricter gun laws” in its lame-duck session. This comes after he signed into law earlier this year the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, an arguably unconstitutional piece of gun control legislation.

What the federal government seems to have forgotten is that the Constitution expressly states: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Throughout his career, Biden has occasionally made vague, passive references to his alleged support for allowing Americans to use their Second Amendment rights for hunting. But the Founders gave us the right to bear arms for more than just hunting; they gave it to us as a repellent against tyranny.

Here, in their own words, is their justification for the all-important necessity that Americans be armed:

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

In a letter to James Madison, he opined that “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

George Washington, in his first annual address as president, advised the nation that “free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.”

On another occasion, he told Alexander Hamilton "[i]t may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal services to the defence of it, and consequently that the Citizens of America (with a few legal and official exceptions) from 18 to 50 Years of Age should be borne on the Militia Rolls, provided with uniform Arms, and so far accustomed to the use of them, that the Total strength of the Country might be called forth at a Short Notice on any very interesting Emergency."

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote that “[b]esides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”

These are only a few of a whole host of quotes that confirm what the American Founders almost universally believed: that the right to keep and (responsibly) bear arms was essential to the preservation of freedom. As Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher said, “[t]he possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.”

Unfortunately, Joe Biden and the D.C. Swamp have totally disregarded the advice of our Founders. As the federal government infringes on the right of law-abiding citizens to arm themselves, the time has come for We the People to restore America to her founding principles.

To join us in our self-governing movement to save this great Republic and its liberties, sign the Convention of States petition below!