quotations about guns
Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That's a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It's a good thing.
ROBERT HEINLEIN
Beyond This Horizon
You know, we can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles -- it's something I strongly support -- we can't be so fixated on that that we are unable to think about the reality of life that millions of Americans face on streets that are unsafe, under conditions that no other nation ... has permitted to exist.
BILL CLINTON
remarks at Adult Learning Center in New Brunswick, Mar. 1, 1993
If guns cause crime, than matches cause arson.
THOMAS F. SHUBNELL
Giggles, Gags, and Quips: Special Picks
My alarm tells me you're in my house. My gun tells me not for long.
ANONYMOUS
Nowadays you don't go around on the street kicking people, punching people -- because if you do (makes gun shape with hand), well that's it -- I don't care how good you are.
BRUCE LEE
interview, Pierre Berton Show, 1971
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to acquiring an understanding of the facts surrounding the gun control debate is the firm conviction of many on both sides that most of the critical facts are self-evident. Is it not indisputable that the availability of guns increases the homicide rate and plays a large role in America's high violence rates? How could the possession and use of deadly weapons NOT raise the murder rate? Alternatively, is it not obvious that widespread private gun ownership deters crime? The debaters begin with premises that are so thoroughly taken for granted that they never consider evaluating them.
GARY KLECK
Targeting Guns
Freedom requires guns.
FRANZ GRILLPARZER
Poems
Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use -- their only other use -- is to kill people.
STEPHEN KING
attributed, The Theatrical Firearms Handbook
Gun-rights advocates like to make this all about liberty, insisting that their freedom to bear arms is of utmost importance and that restricting their freedom would be a violation of basic rights. But liberty is not a one way street. It also includes the liberty to enjoy a night out with friends, loving who you want to love, dancing how you want to dance, in a club that has historically provided a refuge from the hate and fear that surrounds you. It also includes the liberty to go to and send your kids to kindergarten and first grade so that they can begin to be infused with a love of learning. It includes the liberty to go to a movie, to your religious house of worship, to college, to work, to an abortion clinic, go to a hair salon, to a community center, to the supermarket, to go anywhere and feel that you are free to do to so without having to weigh the risk of being gunned down by someone wielding a weapon that can easily kill you and countless others. The liberty of some to own guns cannot take precedence over the liberty of everyone to live their lives free from the risk of being easily murdured.
DAVID S. COHEN
"Why It's Time to Repeal the Second Amendment", Rolling Stone, June 13, 2016
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
People use guns but, in a sense, guns use people too. When we have the technology for violence easily to hand, our choices are skewed and we are more vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action.
ROWAN WILLIAMS
"Archbishop of Canterbury backs calls for stricter gun controls in US", The Guardian, December 22, 2012
The guns reminded me that this was just an attempt to punch holes in the darkness that enveloped us now.
MICHAEL POELTL
The Judas Syndrome
A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
ANONYMOUS
A gun is like breath to a drowning man--it has to be drawn in haste.
JAMES M. CAIN
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978
As surely as there are camels' backs and straws to break them, moments arrive when citizens say they've had enough, when they rise up against political leaders who do not speak for them and whose moral fecklessness imperils lives. We may be witness to such a moment now with the protests by American teenagers sickened -- and terrified -- by the latest mass murder at the hands of someone with easy access to a weapon fit for a battlefield, not a school.
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
"Will America Choose Its Children Over Guns?", New York Times, February 20, 2018
My father died many years ago now--of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.
KURT VONNEGUT
Slaughterhouse-Five
We lose eight children and teenagers to gun violence every day. If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials. We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence.
ELIZABETH WARREN
A Fighting Chance
Happiness is a warm gun.
JOHN LENNON
"Happiness is a Warm Gun", White Album
That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that being alive is a crock of shit.
KURT VONNEGUT
Timequake
One shot, two shot, three shots, four shots! All I hear is gunshots, this is where the fun stops. Bodies drop; hit the floor. Music's off; party stops. Everybody, hit the door! Somebody's licking shots off!
EMINEM
"One Shot, 2 Shot", Encore