Thomas Jefferson stated, “The great thing about the Second Modification is that it’s going to not be wanted till they attempt to take it.”
In June 2024, Snopes obtained an e-mail from a reader asking about a quote purportedly originating from Founding Father and third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson. The reader’s e-mail displayed a quote meme posted on X by @SunIslandMusic in November 2023 claiming Jefferson as soon as stated, “The great thing about the Second Modification is that it’s going to not be wanted till they attempt to take it.” The meme displayed a watermark for an internet person with the deal with @ChristiChat.
Shared by Congressman
A June 2024 search of Fb and X discovered numerous users recently reposting the same quote with Jefferson’s title. Former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn additionally reposted the quote on X in 2021, at a time when he was serving the state of North Carolina’s eleventh Congressional District.
No Proof
Nonetheless, no documentary proof exists of Jefferson saying or writing the phrases within the quote.
On Oct. 14, 2010, Anna Berkes, a supervisor for public companies and collections improvement with the Thomas Jefferson Basis, printed a page in regards to the quote on the muse’s web site, Monticello.org. Berkes wrote, “We at present don’t have any proof that Thomas Jefferson stated or wrote, ‘The great thing about the Second Modification is that it’s going to not be wanted till they attempt to take it’ or any of its listed variations.”
The one variation of the quote Berkes talked about on the web page learn, “The individuals is not going to perceive the significance of the Second Modification till it’s too late.” We positioned different related variations in a number of sources however none of them credibly linked the quote to Jefferson.
‘To Paraphrase Thomas Jefferson’
The oldest point out of the precise quote in a search carried out on the newspaper-archiving web site Newspapers.com displayed a result from 1994 within the South Carolina newspaper The Greenville Information.
On April 12, 1994, The Greenville Information printed a letter from a reader named Gregg Kinds. On the finish of his letter, Kinds wrote, partially, “If the American individuals enable our Constitutionally protected freedoms to be stolen behind the disguise of a ‘Crime Emergency,’ we are going to reside to remorse it. The warning bell is ringing. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, ‘The great thing about the Second Modification is, it is not going to be wanted till they attempt to take it.'”
In different phrases, it is potential the quote merely originated in a “letters from readers” newspaper column as a supposed paraphrase of an unknown and unconfirmed Jefferson writing. We have been unsuccessful in our try and discover a option to contact Kinds.
For additional studying, we beforehand printed a report taking a look at one other pretend Jefferson quote about firearms. We additionally reported the facts behind a preferred meme about different purported quotes from three Founding Fathers – Jefferson included – and creator Thomas Paine, titled, “Rattling These Pesky Information.”
