Quotes about weapons

Firearms were as likely to create as to solve difficulties.

The pistol and dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue.

To a gun, all problems resolved into what could be shot at.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

Apart from the Volunteer companies, a lot of men in San Francisco carried guns for self-protection—not least, for protection from other men carrying guns.

If a society thinks it needs weapons, it must accept killing. If it thinks it needs violent men, it must accept rapine and assault.

And Canadians didn’t like guns, either—they had no Second Amendment, or whatever damned thing it was that made Americans think they could go around armed.

So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

I'm all for gun control, I just define it a little differently. If you can put 2 rounds into the same hole from 25 meters, that's gun control! If you're going to own a gun, you have an obligation to know what you're doing with it. When the Constitution gave us the right to bear arms, it also made us responsible for using them properly. It's not fair of us as citizens to lean more heavily on one side of that equation than on the other.

So I support waiting periods and training requirements for gun ownership, and I like the idea that it shouldn't be incredibly easy to get guns. I support the right to carry concealed weapons, but I think people who want a concealed-weapons permit need to pass a training and safety course. The Constitution calls for a "well-regulated militia." In other words, you need to know how to use your weapon, and practice with it.

Where I draw the line is at gun registration. A law that says that everybody who owns a gun has to be on record is too easy to abuse.

I believe very strongly that guns are instruments of death. That's all they're used for; there's no purpose for them other than to kill. I think you have to understand that in order to respect them. I have no fear of my teenage son handling weapons, because he has that respect.

What could be more absurd, to begin with, than our attitude of high moral outrage against other nations for manufacturing the selfsame weapons that we manufacture? The difference, as our leaders say, is that we will use these weapons virtuously, whereas our enemies will use them maliciously — a proposition that too readily conforms to a proposition of much less dignity: we will use them in our interest, whereas our enemies will use them in theirs.