"There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government. Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power. In doing so we can only assure that we will eventually be totally subject to it. When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon the ruled."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Presidents of the United StatesTelevision personalitiesActors from IllinoisRadio personalitiesAutobiographers from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Column published in Guns and Ammo (1 September 1975)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"Well, from here I will go to Bonn and then Berlin, where there stands a grim symbol of power untamed. The Berlin Wall…"
"President Reagan is a man with a very special sense of religion. Reagan sees a proper role for government and a prope…"
"Reagan pulled together the Republican Party’s free-market optimists, ultraright libertarians, family-values moralists…"
"I don’t want to be controversial, but I do see that under Ronald Reagan and Bush’s administration there was a fantasy…"
"I would think to myself [...] that the battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War …"
"When Reagan was nominated in 1966 by the Republicans it marked a qualitative turn for the worse in California and nat…"
"What do you do when your President ignores all the palpable, relevant facts and wanders in circles?"
"[A] lapse into fiscal indiscipline on a scale never before experienced in peacetime."
"He [Reagan] demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to pu…"
"President Reagan was the Churchill of his era. His commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and his boun…"