attributed to Antisthenes,
in Aristotle, Politics 3.7.2
quoted in The Trial of Socrates
by I. F. Stone, page 15
I cannot be described as a "gun nut" of any variety. I am not a member of the NRA. I think recreational hunting is cruel and silly. I am strongly opposed to the use of violence. I think that the rate of firearms injuries and deaths in the US is a national scandal. I think many gun advocates are, frankly, jerks.
nevertheless
I believe that the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States plainly says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed", and that the reasoning of the Founders in including this amendment cannot be lightly discarded.
1) A Gun is Always Loaded.
2) Never draw a gun you're not prepared to fire, never point a gun at anyone you're not prepared to kill.
"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.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey"
"No slave shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. Arms in possession of a slave contrary to this prohibition shall be forfeited to him who will seize them."
A Bill Concerning Slaves, Virginia Assembly, 1779
Quoted in
101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution :
Ideas and Resources for Self-Liberation,
Monkey Wrenching and Preparedness
by Claire Wolfe
Page 37
"Last year Congress tried to take away $2.6 million from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In budgetary terms, it was a pittance: 0.1 percent of the CDC's $2.2 billion allocation. Symbolically, however, it was important: $2.6 million was the amount the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control had spent in 1995 on studies of firearm injuries."
"If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Yet few, if any, would argue that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to own any weapons they please."
"Today almost half of all Americans (and 60 percent of gun owners) live in states that license concealed weapons; abuse of lawfully carried guns turns out to be vanishingly rare. Remember, to get a permit you typically need to register with the police, pay a fee, pass a gun-safety test, have no criminal record, not be crazy and so on. In aggregate, people with concealed-gun permits handle their weapons more safely than off-duty cops."
"Irate, gun-toting white men are forming militias. Are they dangerous, or just citizens defending their rights?"
" ...about a great sadness which turns into madness, and which can afflict anyone who is told,
after many years of hard work, that he is unnecessary and irrelevant.
... eventually the tools of violence fall into his hands, and he uses them."
"Essentially, the movie picks up where Howard Beale, the deranged anchorman in "Network" -- another less than great milestone movie -- left off. And if things were bad in 1976 when Beale urged viewers to join him in proclaiming "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore," the intervening years have only made matters worse. ...
By the time he's finished giving a civics lessons to the crypto-Nazi owner of a military surplus store (Frederic Forrest), he's turned himself into a kind of nerd Schwarzenegger, complete with black combat fatigues and rocket launcher. "
"The discussion there is based in large part on research done by Clayton Cramer for his book, Firing Back (currently out of print). ...
Cramer further noted that although gun control laws were a part of how the Nazis suppressed political dissidents and rounded up German Jews for extermination, "they weren't the major part of the process." Later, when they invaded Eastern Europe, Cramer says the Nazis did indeed benefit from an inability of their victims to fight back. ...
Instead of propagating a falsehood, Cramer says he encourages people to read Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny, by J.E. Simkin & A. Zelman, from 1992, available from Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership. There people can see "the curious parallels between the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968 and the 1938 Nazi weapons control law." "
"Hitler didn't need to take away guns because there were already gun laws in effect (ironically, those original laws were in part designed to disarm the Nazis). (N.B.) -- ed. ...
But, really, in Nazi Germany, everything was under complete control, to the extent possible. You could go through the Bill of Rights and list off pretty much every right that we, in the U.S., are guaranteed and note that they were taken away in Nazi Germany. Did one particular one have more impact than the others? I doubt anybody can answer that question. "
"Denying those convicted of a crime of violence the right to legally buy a gun succeeded in cutting their subsequent arrest rates for gun-related or violent crimes, California researchers said on Tuesday. ... A 1991 California law blocked gun purchases by people convicted of violent misdemeanors, assaults or other violent crimes in which there was no serious injury, much as a federal law bars convicted felons from legally buying a gun. University of California, Davis, researchers compared three-year arrest rates among groups of violent misdemeanants before and after the state law was passed and found that those denied a gun were at 30 percent lower risk of being arrested for a crime involving a gun or violence. 'A 30 percent reduction in risk is significant', said study author Garen Wintemute, recommending wider use of gun purchase bans for violent ex-convicts."
"Corky", vice president of the
Chosen Few motorcycle "gang" (sic)
quoted in
Thirteen Seconds : Confrontation at Kent State
by Joe Eszterhas, page 308.
(I have paraphrased -- ed.)
"I think many gun advocates are, frankly, jerks."
I regret to say that in doing the research for this page I've found the situation to be even worse
than I thought when I first wrote this.
Update :
Even worse. Why is it so darned hard to use common courtesy, huh?
"An armed society is a polite society" --
Does this mean that some gun enthusiasts only feel a need to be respectful of those who can hurt them?
Why should I respect you if you don't respect me?
(Where "me" is any random reader who might come across your words some day).