People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.

[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good.' Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution? It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game.

It would also be strange to find in the midst of a catalog of the rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated "Militia." Dispassionate scholarship suggests quite strongly that the right of the people to keep and bear arms meant just that.

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.

To many Americans, everything from the Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by the groveling enthusiasts as part of their plan to get themselves martyred.