WHY ARE AMERICANS ARMING UP? A Supreme Court Justice and a Despot Explain

In the last two months, Americans have purchased enough weapons to outfit the entire Chinese and Indian armies combined.

We are in danger of forgetting that the Bill of Rights reflects experience with police excesses. It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy.

History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.

--Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

--Adolph Hitler

Via: Stephen P. Halbrook (PDF).