"Supreme Court Ratings Fall as Session Nears End"
"Public perceptions of the Supreme Court are falling as its session nears the end and a number of significant rulings have been released. Just 26% of voters now say the Supreme Court is doing a good or an excellent job. That’s down from 31% two weeks ago and 41% a month ago .
These results were obtained from polling conducted before the Supreme Court issued a much anticipated decision on gun control and the Second Amendment. While voters are evenly divided on the need for stricter gun control, most believe that cities do not have the right to ban handgun ownership....
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of unaffiliated voters want Justices who will strictly interpret the law but a plurality believe that the Court typically operates in the opposite manner.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters believe most Supreme Court Justices try to advance their own personal agendas from the bench."
And thank you to Mike Rivero for the following passages:
"It's an individual right to keep and bear arms. Period, end of discussion.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764 -- Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -- The Federalist, No. 46 - James Madison
"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775 - Thomas Paine
"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins." -- Debate, U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789 - Elbridge Gerry
"That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State..." - George Mason
"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possesion and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" - Patrick Henry
"Gaurd with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!" - Patrick Henry
"While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny." - Rev. Nicholas Collin, Fayetteville Gazette (N.C.), October 12, 1789
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson, in letter to William S. Smith, 1787."
