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Claim:

Thomas Jefferson said, "The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."

In June 2024, Snopes received an email from a reader asking abouta quote purportedly originating from Founding Father and third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson. The reader's email displayed a quote meme posted on X by @SunIslandMusic in November 2023 claiming Jefferson once said, "The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it." The meme displayed a watermark for an online user with the handle @ChristiChat.

A June 2024 search of Facebook and X found numerous usersrecentlyrepostingthe samequotewith Jefferson's name.Former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn also reposted the quote on X in 2021, at a time when he was serving the state of North Carolina's11th Congressional District.

However,no documentary evidence exists of Jefferson saying or writing the words in the quote.

On Oct. 14, 2010, Anna Berkes,a manager for public services and collections development with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, published a page about the quote on the foundation's website,Monticello.org. Berkes wrote, "We currently have no evidence that Thomas Jefferson said or wrote, 'The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it' or any of its listed variations."

The only variation of the quote Berkes mentioned on the page read, "The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late." We located other similar variations in several sources but none of them credibly linked the quote to Jefferson.

The oldest mention of the exact quote in a search performed on the newspaper-archiving website Newspapers.com displayed a result from 1994 in the South Carolina newspaper The Greenville News.

OnApril 12, 1994, The Greenville News printed a letter from a reader named Gregg Styles. At the end of his letter, Styles wrote, in part, "If the American people allow our Constitutionally protected freedoms to be stolen behind the disguise of a 'Crime Emergency,' we will live to regret it. The warning bell is ringing. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, 'The beauty of the Second Amendment is, it will not be needed until they try to take it.'"

In other words, it's possible the quote simply originated in a "letters from readers" newspaper column as a supposed paraphrase of an unknown and unconfirmed Jefferson writing. We were unsuccessful in our attempt to find a way to contact Styles.

For further reading, we previously published a report looking at another fake Jefferson quote about firearms. We also reported the factsbehind a popular meme about other purported quotes from three Founding Fathers Jefferson included andauthor Thomas Paine,titled, "Damn Those Pesky Facts."

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Jefferson Said 'Beauty of 2nd Amendment' Is It's Not Needed 'Until They Try To Take It'? - Snopes.com

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BOB BARR: When It Comes To The Second Amendment, The More Things Change The More They Remain The Same - MDJOnline.com

Today the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal rule banning bump stocks, ruling that a bump stock does not transform a firearm into an automatic weapon.

Project 21 Ambassador Craig DeLuz, a Second Amendment expert, discussed this case last week with NTD News Steve Lance, highlighting the implications that the decision would have both for the Second Amendment and separation of powers.

Craig DeLuz

On Capitol Report, Craig told Steve:

I think its an interesting decision for this reason: In this case, you have an administration thats decided that they are going to take something thats defined in statute and theyre going to try to redefine it in order to ban a firearm or a firearm part that they dont like.

Now when it comes to, for example, bump stocks: Not a lot of people own bump stocks. Not a lot of people are interested in owning bump stocks. So a lot of people decided, well were not even gonna really pay attention to that.

The problem with that is: What happens when you have an administration come along who starts to then say, well Im gonna redefine firearms or firearm parts that people do like? Right? Weve already allowed them to violate the separation of powers by trying to legislate from the executive branch. Believe it or not, the ATF does not get to make the law. They get to enforce the law.

I think thats probably the biggest part of what were going to be seeing in this decision. Its not just about the Second Amendment. Its a direct attack on the Second Amendment, but its really also about protecting the rest of the Constitution and separation of powers. I believe that this Supreme Court in particular recognizes the overreach that many in the executive branch at all levels of government sadly have undertaken.

The implication is going to be, number one, whether or not executive offices or executive departments have the ability to basically legislate from their departments. Part of it is going to be that.

The other part is going to be whether or not it is going to further the folks who dont support the Second Amendment in their belief that OK, so you have a right to keep and bear arms; you have the right to own a gun. But you dont have a right to the firearm parts that you want. You dont have a right to the gun that you want. You dont have a right to build your own firearm. You dont have a right to sell firearms.All of these things are now in question.

And theyre realizing that they cant take away the Second Amendment, but they can nibble away at all the things around the Second Amendment such that it becomes too cumbersome or too expensive to be able to exercise that right.

Theres always pressure on Congress to revisit the Second Amendment. The challenge is that most of the people who are applying that pressure, and most of the folks in Congress, have little to no understanding of firearms or firearms technology. So oftentimes what happens is that when they start to push solutions, those solutions dont actually solve the problem.

Thats also, quite frankly, been the issue in the courts. In many cases you have judges adjudicating over some of these court cases and they have very little understanding, once again, of firearm technology. For example, what is the definition of a gun? What is, in this case, a machine gun, when were talking about bump stocks? And when you look at the actual technology, you find out that in many cases the things that they are offering as solutions are not solutions.

Its smoke and mirrors. Its this Ive got to do something mentality.

And I always go back on that, and I always say, You know what? My car wont start, so I need to rotate the tires because, you know, Ive gotta do something.

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Craig DeLuz: What the Supreme Court's Bump Stocks Ruling Means for the Second Amendment and Separation of ... - National Center for Public Policy...

(AP) Less than six years ago, then-President Donald Trump took on the influential gun lobby after the deadliest massacre in modern U.S. history. He announced that he had told the National Rifle Association that bump stocks are gone, arguing they turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.

On Friday, Trumps campaign to return to the White House defended a Supreme Court decision to strike down his own ban on those devices. Trump has been endorsed by the NRA and claimed this year in a speech that he did nothing to restrict guns.

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The Supreme Court's ruling called new attention to Trump's complicated record on the Second Amendment, one that he has downplayed this year given his conservative base's aversion to gun control even as Americans broadly support stricter restrictions on firearms, according to public polling.

As president, Trump grappled with the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida and other mass shootings, and at times pledged to strengthen gun laws, only to back away from those vows.

At a meeting with survivors and family members of the Parkland shooting in 2018, for instance, Trump promised to be very strong on background checks and later scolded a Republican senator for being afraid of the NRA. He claimed he would stand up to the gun lobby and finally get results on quelling gun violence.

But he later retreated after a meeting with the group, expressing support for modest changes to the federal background check system and for arming teachers, while saying in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that there was not much political support (to put it mildly).

Now, he casts himself as the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House."

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for his campaign, issued a statement Friday saying the court's decision should be respected.

President Trump has been and always will be a fierce defender of Americans Second Amendment rights and he is proud to be endorsed by the NRA, Leavitt said.

President Joe Biden called the Trump-era ban an important gun safety regulation, while the Democratic incumbent's campaign criticized Trump for nominating three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down the ban.

Weapons of war have no place on the streets of America, but Trumps Supreme Court justices have decided the gun lobby is more important than the safety of our kids and our communities, said Michael Tyler, a Biden campaign spokesman.

The Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration overstepped when in 2018 it banned bump stocks after a mass shooting in Las Vegas where hundreds were wounded and dozens were killed. The devices allow a rate of fire comparable to machine guns.

The decision did not elicit an outpouring of response from most Republican members of Congress. That reflects the precarious situation it puts many in the GOP in as the ruling is seen as a victory for the pro-gun community despite overturning a Trump-era ban.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie is a Kentucky Republican who has antagonized Trump and who supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis failed bid for the White House. On Friday, he posted on X that Congress makes the laws, not the administrative branch and then wrote the top court had invalidated Trumps bump-stock ban. Other Republican federal lawmakers simply called it an unconstitutional ban but did not mention Trump.

The decision on Friday may gain more attention in the key Western battleground state of Nevada, where in 2017 a high-stakes gambler killed 60 people before killing himself, leaving his exact motive a mystery.

A Nevada state lawmaker who was among the 22,000 concertgoers who fled the barrage of bullets in Las Vegas in October 2017 said that No community has felt the devastating impact of bump stocks more than Nevadans.

Now more than ever, it is important to elect Democrats up and down the ballot to ensure we keep our communities safe from the epidemic of gun violence and prevent soulless, morally corrupt, and bankrupt MAGA Republicans beholden to the gun lobby from being in charge of the public safety of our communities, said assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui, a Democrat.

_____

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Farnoush Amiri and Scott Sonner contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:
Trump defied the NRA to ban bump stocks, now says he 'did nothing' to restrict guns - FOX 29

The Supreme Courts decision overturning the Trump-era ban on so-called bump stocks reflects an understanding of the mechanics not just of gunsmithing but also the Constitution. It is the latest step by the high court to restore the Second Amendment as a first-class article in the Bill of Rights. It will be decried by the left, particularly because the vote within the court was on ideological lines, but it bodes well for the rule of law.

All Americans were horrified at the massacre that in 2017 took the lives of 58 and wounded hundreds at Las Vegas. The slaughter was perpetrated by a man using firearms equipped with bump stocks. These accessories enable a gun to fire numerous bullets with a single pull of the trigger provided that the shooter maintains forward pressure on the rifles front grip with his non-trigger hand, Justice Clarence Thomas observes in the high courts majority opinion.

This tragedy, Justice Thomas adds, created tremendous political pressure to outlaw bump stocks nationwide. Yet before any legislation could emerge from Congress, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives took it upon itself to ban the devices. The agencys argument was that bump stocks transform a semi-automatic rifle into a de facto machinegun. Such weapons are banned under the National Firearms Act of 1934.

That law defines a machinegun as a weapon that, with a single function of the trigger, fires automatically more than one shot. The six justices in the majority found that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is actually not a machinegun, though, because it cannot fire more than one shot with just a single function of the trigger. Even if it could, Justice Thomas notes, it would not happen automatically.

Under this close analysis of the workings of rifles equipped with bump stocks in an opinion that even includes diagrammatic illustrations of the applicable components of the firearms in question Justice Thomas concludes that ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns. As Justice Samuel Alito notes in a concurring opinion, the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.

It might be tempting to view this dispute as a straightforward example of regulatory overreach by a federal agency, an all too common feature of the administrative state that seeks to impose the will of bureaucrats on Americanss lives. Yet the Second Amendment the palladium* of our liberty stands as a subtext in this case. The gravity of the right to bear arms makes it all the more egregious to infringe it via an unjustifiable regulation.

That understanding animates Justice Alitos observation that an event that highlights the need to amend a law, a reference to the Las Vegas shooting, does not itself change the laws meaning. By contrast, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, warns that todays ruling will have deadly consequences. She accuses the majority of misinterpreting the law passed in 1934, and says the ruling enables gun users and manufacturers to circumvent federal law.

For years, though, ATF denied that it had any legal authority to regulate bump stocks, Justice Thomas explains. That is why, he adds, liberals like Senator Feinstein groused that it was a mistake for the ATF to ban bump stocks. The regulation hinges on a dubious analysis, she said in 2018, claiming that bumping the trigger is not the same as pulling it. Feinstein called for Congress, not regulators, to act on the matter.

The late senators view is echoed by Justice Alito in his concurrence. There is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machineguns, he writes. Congress can amend the law, he adds, and might have already if ATF had stuck with its earlier interpretation. The Nines ruling today is a reminder that the right to bear arms, like the other liberties vouchsafed in the Constitution, cannot be so casually bumped aside by federal regulators.

________

* The phrase used for the Second Amendment by Judge St. George Tucker and, later, by Justice Joseph Story.

See more here:
The Rational Ruling on Bump Stocks - The New York Sun