Notable quotes concerning guns

As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. - Ronald Reagan

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 If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity.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voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn. - Gandhi

You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass. (Explaining one of the reasons the Japanese choose not to invade the continental US during World War II.) - Admiral Yamamoto

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible. - Senator Hubert Humphrey

Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. - John F. Kennedy

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. - The Dalai Lama

There’s no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them while they were in progress. - Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose. - James Earl Jones

The ruling class doesn’t care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake. - Senator Malcolm Wallop

If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business. - David Prosser, Wisconsin Supreme Court justice

Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them. - Jeff Cooper

A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders. - Larry Elder

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They 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 to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. - Thomas Jefferson

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. - Thomas Jefferson

The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. - Thomas Jefferson

To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them. - George Mason

A free people ought to be armed. - George Washington

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. - Thomas Jefferson

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

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of a public safety hazard, don’t see the danger in the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like. - Alan Dershowitz

As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of “self-defense.” In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one’s home and one’s person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that. - Shane, played by Alan Ladd, in the movie Shane

An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it. - Jeff Cooper

If I had my way, sporting guns would be strictly regulated, the rest would be confiscated. - Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House)

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. - Thomas Jefferson

When seconds count between living and dying, the police are only minutes away. - Philip Van Cleave