Fake Jefferson on the Second Amendment
“The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it away,” a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson often reads.
The quote pops up on social media sites like Pinterest constantly, which seems like a strange place for people to talk about trying to overthrow the U.S. government with their personal firearms. But it makes sense that this quote would be popular online; it seems to have originated in the internet era.
The oldest known use of this quote is in the 2007 short book On A Hill They Call Capital: A Revolution Is Coming by Matt Carson. The book is a novel, so perhaps it can be forgiven for manufacturing a fake Jefferson quote, but the quote doesn’t even make sense on its face. No wonder the book has some pretty terrible reviews on Amazon.
