The Famous Pro-Gun "Quotes" the Founding Fathers Never Actually Said (Click here to read more)
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"1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!" an unhinged Alex Jones once screamed at a slightly more-hinged Piers Morgan. Jonesies—who've gone all in for Cliven Bundy—love to cite America's founders to defend their gun caresses. Usually, they get it wrong.
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Sure,
the elite landed intellectuals who laid America's groundwork saw the
usefulness of their age's rudimentary firearms. But their views on guns
were complicated and narrow, with nuances that don't fit easily on
Second Amendment absolutists' bumper stickers.
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As gun-toters and their industry-funded lobby have simplified and meme-ified
their arguments, they've simplified our view of the founding fathers,
too—usually with distorted or fabricated quotes that give historians
paroxysms. Here are some of the gunners' greatest mythical quotations,
along with their nutty origins.
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1. "The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late."
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FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO: Thomas Jefferson.
TRUTH:
This is a "spurious" quotation, according to Jefferson scholars at his
ancestral home of Monticello; it reportedly first appeared in a 2007 revolutionary screed by a libertarian author who also managed to misspell "Capitol" in his book's title.
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