Guns

Sourced

• But, you know, if I could say something right now, that something is drastically wrong with what's going on in our United States right now. And when an individual is turned down to get into the military and then can be -- is able to go out and buy a 9-millimeter Glock pistol, and he had one of the -- or his clips were the extended clips that were limited to law enforcement only, and, you know, that -- or somebody has to put a stop to that.
  • Bill Badger, U.S. Army Colonel (retired) who helped capture Jared Lee Loughner during the 2011 Tucson shooting — Wolf Blitzer (January 9, 2011). "Alleged Arizona Gunman in Court". The Situation Room (CNN). Retrieved on 2011-01-11. 

• The laws of [false utility] are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator?
  • Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 1764, Chapter 40 [1].
  • Has been falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson transcribed this passage (in the original Italian) in his Legal Commonplace Book, item 828.

• After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
  • William S. Burroughs, “The War Universe: Interviews with Raymond Foye”, Grand Street no. 37 (1991), p. 107.

• I think we ought to raise the age at which a juvenile can carry a handgun from 18 to 21.
  • George W. Bush, Second Bush-Gore Debate (11 October 2000), Winston-Salem, NC.

• The firepower wielded by organised crime groups in Mexico has not only led to mounting instability in the US's southern neighbour, but also contributed to lawlessness on the two countries' shared border and the deaths of American agents. As the US invests millions in Mexico's security through the Merida initiative, it does itself a disservice by allowing lax gun regulation to arm the same groups it is trying to combat. Poor gun regulation and oversight also threatens the US by providing potential terrorists with easy access to military grade weapons, as was boasted by American-born al-Qaida member Adam Gadahn in a recent video.
  • Rodrigo Camarena, "Time to Target Gun Control", The Guardian, 24 June 2011.

Mr. President, what is going on in this country? Does going to school mean exposure to handguns and to death? As you know, my position is we should ban all handguns, get rid of them, no manufacture, no sale, no importation, no transportation, no possession of a handgun. There are 66 million handguns in the United States of America today, with 2 million being added every year.

• Senator John Chafee (R-RI) (quoted in the Congressional Record of the 102nd Congress, Senate; June 11, 1992; Page: S7966).

• And I swear that I don't have a gun / No, I don't have a gun
  • Kurt Cobain, “Come as You Are” (1992).

• The good people of this world are very far from being satisfied with each other and my arms are the best peacemakers.
• The good people of this wirld are very far from being satisfide with each other & my arms are the best peesmakers.
  • Samuel Colt, letter to Charles Manby (18 May 1852)[2][3].

• God created men. Colonel Colt made them equal.
  • Old frontier saying[4].

• You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.
  • "Professor" Irwin Corey[5][6]. Often humorously attributed to Al Capone.

• The town in Georgia's got a law on the books / Says if we all got guns then we won't have crooks / Now what could make them think that way?
  • The Dead Milkmen, “Right Wing Pigeons“, Big Lizard in My Backyard (1985).

• Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.
  • Mahatma Gandhi, "An Autobiography OR The story of my experiments with truth", Chapter 27, Recruiting Campaign, from a leaflet urging Indians to serve with the British Army in World War II. [7]

• If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying -- that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 -- establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.
  • Orrin Hatch, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms"

• ...Let me make a short, opening, blanket comment. There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody -- except bad people...
  • Charlton Heston, on NBC's Meet the Press, May 18, 1997.

• ...England, where no one has guns; fourteen deaths. United States -- and I think you know how we feel about guns; whoo! I'm getting' a stiffy -- 23,000 deaths from handguns. But there's no connection, and you'd be a fool and a communist to make one.
  • Bill Hicks, Quoted in Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines, 2004.

• The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.
  • Adolf Hitler, dinner talk (April 1942), in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, pp. 425-426.

• GUN CONTROL! That is what the Branch Davidian compound attack was all about. David Koresh was a gun collector and a tax evader. Boy, they didn't like him, and one of the purposes for that raid was to scare the American people into submission. You better register your firearms. Make sure they know. They might come for you as they did for Koresh.
  • Kent Hovind, "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 4", 1996,

• The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.
  • Hubert Humphrey, “Know Your Lawmakers”, Guns magazine, February 1960, pg. 4.

• The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, ... or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.
  • Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Major John Cartwright (5 June 1824)[8].

• To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.
  • Richard Henry Lee, Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Letter XVIII (25 January 1778).

• I think these things ( firearms ) were invented by Satan himself, for they can’t be defended against with (ordinary) weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what’s coming.
  • Martin Luther, Table Talk (1569), 3552.

• Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate Governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple Government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the Governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
  • James Madison, Federalist No. 46 (1788).
  • Sometimes paraphrased as: “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms.”

• Every communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun.
  • Mao Zedong, "Problems of War and Strategy", 1938.

• Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual was to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.
  • George Mason, June 14, 1788, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adooption of the Federal Constitution, 2nd ed. (1861), Jonathan Elliot, v. 3, p. 380. (The "artful man" in the quote is Sir William Keith.) This quote has typically been rephrased by gun control opponents; for instance, "To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them."

• Tank: So what do you need? Besides a miracle.
  Neo: Guns. Lots of guns.
  • The Matrix (1999)[9].

• The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's goodbye to the Bill of Rights.
  • H.L. Mencken, “A Time to be Wary” (1933), collected in A Carnival of Buncombe.

• A gun is not just a bit of metal. There is a relationship between the person and the gun which develops and

changes. It became something he (Hamilton) could show off, then an extension of himself.

• • Dr. Mick North, interviewed by Ed Vullimay, The Guardian, pg. T2, August 7th 1996. North's daughter

Sophie was killed in the Dunblane school massacre by Thomas Hamilton.

• ...there's one thing for sure; you can't kill sixteen children in less than two minutes with a club, a knife or even a machete.
  • Dr. Mick North, interviewed by Ed Vullimay, The Guardian, pg. T2, August 7th 1996.

• And in my mind, I'm going why can't I just shoot this guy in the spine right now; shoot him in the spine, explain the facts of life to him
  • Ted Nugent, as guest DJ on WRIF-FM, Detroit, September 28, 1990; referring to an encounter with a Hare Krishna

• To my mind, it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.
  • Ted Nugent, God, Guns, & Rock'n'roll (2000), p. 10.

• If people don't want to defend themselves, they deserve to die.
  • Ted Nugent, quoted by Wisconsin State Senator David Zien, November 3, 2005 [10].

• There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?
  • Arms dealer Yuri Orlov (played by Nicolas Cage), Lord of War, 2005 [11].

• The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong.
  • Thomas Paine, “Thoughts on Defensive War”, July, 1775. (Written anonymously but attributed to Paine.)

• Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God.
  • Superintendent Pang from the film Hard Boiled (1992)[12].

• You don't need no gun control. You know what you need? We need some bullet control. Man, we need to control the bullets, that's right. I think all bullets should cost $5000. $5000 for a bullet. You know why? 'Cause if a bullet costs $5000, there'd be no more innocent bystanders...
  • Chris Rock, "Bigger and Blacker" (HBO, 1999)

• A great many sportsmen have urged me to support this bill. It is hard for me to understand the interest of sportsmen in pistols. I myself have fished and hunted a great deal. I have a deep interest in outdoor sports and the various associations which foster them, but it is common knowledge, of course, that fishermen never use a pistol and hunters practically never use a pistol... [even for] theoretical self-protection, the value of a revolver is very problematical.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1931, opposing the Hanley-Fake firearms bill which would have increased access to hanguns. Quoted in Gun Violence in America:The Struggle for Control, Alexander DeConde, 2003 (p.132).

• For the purpose of securing the working class in the possession of complete power, and in order to eliminate all possibility of restoring the power of the exploiters, it is decreed that all workers be armed.
  • Russian Constitution of 1918, (Article I, chapter 2, paragraph G).

• Any politico who's afraid of his constituents being armed, should be. Leaders of the anti-gun movement (for the most part, politicians who enthusiastically advocate confiscatory taxation and government control of everything) realize that a populace is much easier to herd, loot — and dispose of — if it has been stripped of its weapons. The naked fraud and transparent fascism of victim disarmament must be eradicated through the repeal of all gun laws at every level of government.
  • L. Neil Smith, "The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet," The Libertarian Enterprise, 18 October 2009[13]

• Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon — rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.
  • L. Neil Smith, "The Atlanta Declaration,"[14] presented at WeaponsCon I, Atlanta, Georgia, September 1987

• The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
  • Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), p. 708.

• A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for military supplies.
  • George Washington, January 8, 1790, First State of the Union Address [15]; part of this accurate quote has also been used as part of improperly altered statements on the internet, and a few published works, such as America : The Final Chapter (2009) by Jessi Winchester, p. 213: "A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."

• Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe.
  • Noah Webster, Examination into the the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (1787) in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, Paul Leicester Ford (1888), p. 56.

• Remember when she had Tom Selleck on her program a while back? She blind-sided Tom Selleck! He's a good fella, ain't never hurt nobody, but he's in the NRA, so she hates that. She was like, 'Well, you're in the NRA. Let me tell you something, Tom: guns kill people!' Do you believe she said that? On the Rosie O'Fatass show! She looks right at him and says, 'Guns kill people!' Let me tell you something: husbands that come home early kill people! Alright? The gun was just sitting there! If guns kill people, I can blame misspelled words on my pencil! Git-r-done!
  • Larry the Cable Guy (Daniel Lawrence Whitney), Git-r-Done DVD, 2003

• If you take guns away from legal gun owners then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys. Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her. You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs. You'd use a rock or tear one of these chairs out of the floor. Hey, maybe I've been watching too many Bruce Willis movies!
  • Bruce Willis (2006)[16].

• The old TT is better than judo and karate. (russian: Лучше старенький ТТ, чем дзюдо и каратэ)
  • Russian proverb [17]

• Whatever happens, we have got
  The Maxim gun, and they have not.
  • Hilaire Belloc The Modern Traveller (1898).

• You see in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.
  • Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

• Francine: Look at you two. Who would've thought guns would bring you so close together?

Stan: I know. If only we could get some guns to the Middle East.

• American Dad!, "Stannie Get Your Gun", 2005.

Misattributed

• "A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." - Falsely attributed to Sigmund Freud.
  • This has been sourced to General Introduction to Psychoanalysis [18] [19] [20] [21] due to a misreading of a 1990 essay by Don B. Kates [22]. The quote is Kates' own characterization of a passage in Freud and Oppenheim, Dreams in Folklore, and not Freud's words.

• "The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson
  • This has been sourced to "The Papers of Thomas Jefferson", asserted to have been edited by C.J. Boyd. The quote does not appear in Jefferson's collected papers as searched in Google Print. The name of the editor is also problematic: some volumes of Jefferson's papers were edited by Julian P. Boyd, not C.J. Boyd.

Unsourced

• If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
  • American adage
• Guns do not like jokes and do not forgive mistakes. (Russian: Оружие шуток не любит, ошибок не прощает.)
  • Slogan of Soviet Army

See also

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution