Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
Revenge in the hands of your enemies is a loaded gun. You can beg them for mercy, wave the white flag of surrender, but the only true elixir for the vitriol they bestow is a measure of hatred dispensed of your own.
No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None. Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.
Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.
This is what I would call old politics. This is the stuff we're trying to get rid of. Because the problem is, when we start breaking down into conservative and liberal, and we've got a bunch of set predispositions, whether it's on gun control, or its' on health care, any attempt to do health care is socialized medicine.
For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.
When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.