...it is very important nonetheless for a federal court only one step below the highest court in the land to recognize that gun rights adhere to the American people, not to government-sanctioned groups. Rights, by definition, are individual. "Group rights" is an oxymoron.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few.... The hand entrusted with power becomes ... the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

In the midst of the American Revolution, with his armies demoralized and in retreat, Gen. George Washington asked Thomas Paine to speak to the hearts of his soldiers. Paine's writings became a book titled The American Crisis, which served to galvanize the spirit of the revolution and help turn the tide of the war. In one excerpt, Paine writes:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. ... Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered."

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Our founding fathers faced a time like this. The American Revolution eventually ended, and peace was signed in 1784. Our country was born with nearly $12 million in foreign debts and more than $65 million in domestic and state debts--and without a penny with which to settle those obligations!

But in less than 20 years, our founding fathers had not only eliminated the war debt but also had gone on to raise enough money for the Louisiana Purchase.

Looking back, those endeavors were sustained by hard work, guided by an optimistic vision of the future and inspired by a belief that unexpected opportunities were out there just waiting to be discovered.

Why should I trade one tyrant three-thousand miles away, for three-thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights just as easily as a king can.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

Today, freedom – political, economic, and individual freedom – lies destroyed or is in the course of being destroyed over great areas of the globe. And it has been destroyed and is being destroyed in the name of freedom.... A ruthless dialectical battle is being waged against the Christian way of life, against political liberty, against individual freedom, and it is being waged in the name of Freedom. Black becomes White; Tyranny becomes Freedom; The Forced Labor Camp stands for Liberty; The Slave State is represented as Democracy. This is the deadly challenge of Communism.

Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.

Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? The parties who may be arrested may be charged instantly with a well defined crime; of course, the judge will remand them. If the public safety requires that the government should have a man imprisoned on less probable testimony in those than in other emergencies, let him be taken and tried, retaken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving him redress against the government for damages. Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension.