Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object.

Therefore, if you are attacked, retaliate instantly. Be sudden. Be quick. Speed is your salvation.

Anyone who willfully and maliciously attacks another without sufficient cause jeopardize the lives of others.

If you must use your hands, use them with all the strength you possess... If you choose to strike, by all means strike hard.

Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen.

The best personal defense is an explosive counterattack.

One correspondent, who is into psychology, notes that in his experience people who are hoplophobes are nearly always nutty in other ways, too. Hoplophobia [fear of guns], of course, is not simply an attitude but rather an aberration in which the sufferer clings to an idea which he himself knows to be unsound, such as the idea that inanimate instruments have a will of their own or that lawbreakers abide by the law.