I agree...  great thread.

It all boils down to personal responsibility.  Every decision and action you take in your life has consequences.  

If you choose to kill someone, you will face consequences.

If you choose to drink alcohol and get behind the wheel of your car, there are consequences.

And yes, if you choose to have unprotected sex, there may be consequenses.  

Dammit man, take responsibility for your own actions.  Freedom and liberty are based upon self-reliance.  You cannot be self-reliant if you do not or will not accept the consequenses of your actions.

I own and carry firearms because I am ready to accept the consequenses of my actions if I need to use them in defense of my family.

ROTFLMAOKS!
[b][i]Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare.[/b][/i]

Well, no, not really.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, [i.e. freedom and liberty] religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles."
George Washington

"Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people."
George Washington

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Benjamin Franklin

"No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government."
Thomas Jefferson

"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."
James Madison

"Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed . . . so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger."
Patrick Henry

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
Patrick Henry

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net."
John Adams

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man."
Samuel Adams

"The diminuition of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and [b]liberty will not long survive the extinction of morals.[/b]"
Samuel Adams