The right to keep and bear arms (often referred as the right to bear arms or to have arms) is the enumerated right that people have a personal right to firearms for individual use, and a collective right to bear arms in a militia.
The phrase "right of the people to keep and bear Arms" was first used in the text of the United States Bill of Rights (coming into law as the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States), although similar legal wording can be found in the 1688 English Bill of Rights which states "Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence". Beyond the United States of America, the general concept of a right to bear arms varies widely by country, state or jurisdiction.
Read more about Right To Keep And Bear Arms: Australia, Canada, Cuba, Finland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, North Korea, People's Republic of China, Sharia Law, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Yemen
Famous quotes containing the words right to, bear and/or arms:
“What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!—And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)