Charlton Heston
125th Annual NRA Members Banquet
April 20th, 1996
"If you want to feel the warm breath of freedom on your neck... If you want to touch the pulse of liberty that beat in our founding fathers, you may do so through the majesty of the Second Amendment.
Because there, in that wooden stock and blued steel, there lies what give the most common of men the most uncommon of freedoms. When ordinary hands are free to own this extraordinary symbol, representing the full measure of human dignity and liberty, that is as good as you can have it.
It doesn't matter whether its purpose is to defend our shores or your front door.. whether it is a rite of passage for a young man, or a tool of survival for a young woman.. whether it brings meat for the table or trophies for the shelf.. without respect to age, or gender, or race, or class, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms connects us all -- with all that is right.
And to those who say the Second Amendment doesn't mean what we say it means, let's settle that right now. The purpose of every line of the Bill of Rights was to protect the people from the state. Our founders refused to ratify a Constitution that didn't protect individual liberties. They were just a bunch of old, dead white guys, but they invented this country, and they meant what they said. The Second Amendment isn't about the National Guard or the police or any other government entity. It is about law-abiding, private U.S., citizens. Period."
