“The great object is that every man be armed. … Everyone who is able may have a gun.”
Most Americans of the liberal/left persuasion, the ones who believe guns are evil, might think it’s Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Association. These days, lefty anti-gun nuts think of Heston as something akin to the Antichrist. They revile the NRA with a passion previously reserved for the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. So Heston, of course, would be their prime suspect. No. 2 on the list would be anyone associated with the NRA.
But, as in their position on the Second Amendment, they’d be wrong. The one who said it was Patrick Henry. You might have heard of him. Yeah, the guy of “Give me liberty or give me death” fame. One of the Founding Fathers. A patriot. A revolutionary. One of those guys who knew the intent of the Second Amendment, because he was there when it was written.
Misinformation about the Second Amendment’s intent – specifically, that it only applies to militiamen – is one of the myths Poe tackles in his book. He gives the Henry quote and another from Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and great-uncle of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”