“We can either live in a paranoid politically correct world frantically trying not to offend the Hitlers and Mohammeds, and blaming their victims when they kill, or we can be free men and women who have chosen to take the power to defend our rights into our own hands.

While a thousand organizations use the Holocaust as a platform for speeches about tolerance, Children Of Jewish Holocaust Survivors [Jews Can Shoot] is conducting firearms training… Freedom is not defended with empty idealism easily perverted into appeasement of evil, but with the force of arms.”

All too many of the other great tragedies of history - Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few - were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece... If a few hundred Jewish fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Silveira v. Lockyer, 2003

Habah l'hargecha hashkem l'hargo -- "If someone is coming to kill you, rise against him and kill him first."

Commentary

8 Most Influential People in Shooting History

by Doris Wise Montrose on October 9, 2021

Please feel free to add your own in the comments.

As with all the G&A lists on our wonderful site, this one is a daunting task. My charge here is to come up with eight of the most influential personages in firearms history. Well, considering that guns go back about 700 years, narrowing down the candidates is nothing less than challenging. But we’ll give this old college try. Aren’t we doing this just for the engaging debate, anyway?

When one realizes that the originators of such things as gunpowder, the first firearms and different firing mechanisms were mostly anonymous, we are, of necessity, limited to more recent history. Below you’ll find my particular heroes, in chronological order. Please feel free to add your own in the comments.

By Garry James

There Are Far More Defensive Gun Uses Than Murders. Here's Why You Rarely Hear of Them.

"All too many of the other great tragedies of history—Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. ... If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars." — Silveira v Lockyer, (9th Cir. 2003) (Kozinski, J. dissenting.)

8 Most Influential People in Shooting History

Don't let California persecute gun owners

There Are Far More Defensive Gun Uses Than Murders. Here's Why You Rarely Hear of Them.