Gun quotes

black market

I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. George L. Roman

An inmate in a Florida prison wrote to agree with me on the availability of guns, saying that a 'criminal can and will get a stolen gun faster than you can get your car washed.' He also points out that many criminals prefer guns gotten illegally, since they will be harder to trace. Thomas Sowell

equality

People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest,strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman

explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

God may have made men and women, but Colt made them equal. Anon

totalitarian regimes and genocides can't happen without gun control

Ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.

Heinrich Himmler

Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered—one does not usually lead to the other—but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed. Daniel D. Polsby, Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 73, Number 3, Fall 1997

security

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

defense

No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Thomas Jefferson

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? Patrick Henry, (1788)

Wear a gun to someone else's house, you're saying, 'I'll defend this home as if it were my own.' When your guests see you carry a weapon, you're telling them, 'I'll defend you as if you were my own family.' And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible: 'I don't trust you unless you're rendered harmless'! L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms, history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall. Adolf Hitler, Edict of March 18, 1938.

dissuasion

An armed man need not fight. Robert Heinlein, "Beyond this Horizon", 1942.

victim disarmament

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one. Thomas Jefferson, quoting Beccari's "On Crimes and Punishment"

Because drug dealers shoot each other in London, Norfolk farmers can't have guns to defend their homes. I mean, no one wants a gun - except at 4am when they hear a strange sound in the kitchen.

Jeremy Clarkson

In case we have to shoot Democrats. It happened during the Civil War, and it could happen again. PJ O'Rourke, on why Conservatives oppose gun control

Don't think of it as 'gun control', think of it as 'victim disarmament'. If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals. Anon

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. William S. Burroughs

statistics

Allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths. If those states that did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and more than 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly. John Lott & John Mustard, University of Chicago.

HCI claims one child per day killed by handgun accidents; the figure from the National Safety Council is an average of 256 per year for ALL ages, 10-15 a year for kids under age 5, and 50-55 per year for kids under age 15. For comparison, 381 kids under five drowned in pools in 1980, while 13 were killed by handgun accidents. 432 were killed by fires caused by adults falling asleep while smoking. Car accidents take 190 times as many lives as handgun accidents. HCI cooks the books by picking a particularly violent year and taking anyone under 25 to be a child', thus approaching 365 per year.It still falls short, though.

While handguns are used in vast numbers of crimes annually, they are used more often by good citizens to repel crime - approximately 581,000 crimes vs. about 645,000 defense uses annually.

Most murders are not 'acquaintance murders', committed by normally law abiding citizens who murder because of the accessibility of a gun in a moment of anger. Most murderers are highly disturbed aberrant individuals, characterized by felony records, alcohol and/or drug dependence, and life histories of irrational violence against people around them. 74.4 percent of arrested murderers nationally had prior arrests for violent felony or burglary and, on average an adult record of a six year criminal career with four major felony arrests.

Differentials in international crime rates are a function of socio-cultural and economic factors, not the percentage of gun ownership. In fact, there is an *inverse* correlation between violence rates and the percentage of gun ownership in many foreign countries, the most noteworthy being Switzerland and Israel.

A handgun ban is not realistically enforceable. Confiscating guns would require house-to-house searches and alienate the very individuals whose compliance is essential to the success of any regulation. If gun ownership were prohibited, organized crime would step in to provide the firearms that will continue to be procured with criminal intent. Don B Kates, "Guns, Murders, and the Coinstitution", 1990.

According to the 'Statistical Abstract of the United States', 1987 edition, there were only 1,695 firearms accidents that led to deaths in 1983. Over 99.9% of all households with a handgun did not experience a fatal firearms accident during 1983, there were also over 44,000 deaths caused by car accidents; over 12,000 deaths caused by accidental falls; over 5,000 deaths caused by fires; over 4,500 deaths due to accidental poisonings; 5,254 deaths from drowning. The rate of accidental gun deaths has also been decreasing. In 1970, it was 1.2 per 100,000; in 1983, it was 0.7 per 100,000 - remember that about 40% of firearms accidents are hunting accidents. This means that the already-low accidental gun death rate is reduced even further when one considers just gun accidents in the home. A.M. Gottlieb, "Gun Rights Fact Book"

In 1945, for every million Americans there were 350,000 firearms and 18 fatal gun accidents. By 1995, there were 850,000 firearms per million, and fatal gun accidents had fallen to six. Myron A Calhoun

logic

Reality: "If we can sue the gun manufacturers for human actions, does this mean we can sue the car manufacturers for being hit by a drunk driver?"

They (in favour of gun control) must believe in the existence of a substantial number of persons who are willing and able to break serious laws such asthose prohibiting murder, assault, and robbery, yet who are not willing or able to break gun control laws. Dr. Gary Kleck, "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America"

I support car ownership although cars can be used to drive drunk. I support pharmaceutical manufacture although drugs can be abused. I support swimming pool ownership although kids can drown in them. I support steak-knife ownership although they can be used in stabbings. I support free speech although people say things I don't like to hear. I support freedom of religion although cults do the damnedest things. I support parenthood although parents can abuse their children. I support pregnancy although abortion couldn't happen without it. I support penis ownership although they are used in rapes. I support gun ownership although guns can be used in crime. I support open elections although a moron became President.

Anon

"A well-educated electorate being necessary to the prosperity of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed."

Do you conclude from this that only voters may own books? Do you believe that all "inflammatory" books should be stored in libraries, since no honest person needs such a book at home where a child might read it? Does this statement make you want to register books, or ban some of them, or prevent them from being read in public? Should there be a waiting period for the purchase of "dangerous" books, magazines, and newspapers? Should speed reading courses be restricted to police and military to prevent "assault reading" by citizens? Do you think that banning legal possession of easily-concealed novels will stop criminals from reading?

Should we stop teaching children to read, since what they might read could be harmful to them?

See also http://libertarianwiki.org/Racist_origins_of_US_gun_control