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Guns Quotes

The page has a mixed set of names: Krist Novoselic, Thomas Jefferson, 50 Cent, Ida B. Wells and the legal scholar Adam Winkler. The sourced lines include Frederick Douglass’s Life and Times (1892), on the freedman’s need for more than freedom, and Emerson’s 1847 poem about naming all the birds without a gun.

Three popular lines carry flags. The statement about not allowing subject races to possess arms, credited to Hitler, is disputed. The Massachusetts amendment credited to Samuel Adams is disputed, and the notes show it differs from what is documented in the state convention of 6 February 1788. A passage on arms discouraging and keeping the peace, credited to Thomas Paine, is marked misattributed.

Random quote on Guns

Most quoted on guns:

This Glock I clutch; in God I trust.

T.I.

Let me make a short, opening, blanket comment. There are no "good guns". There are no "bad guns". Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people.

Charlton Heston

And I swear that I don't have a gun. No, I don't have a gun. No, I don't have a gun

Kurt Cobain

The majority falls prey to the delusion—popular in some circles—that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth—born of experience—is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.

Alex Kozinski

In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are; for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Abraham Lincoln Tour of Richmond (1865)

Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer – its guarantor. The people's votes and the people's guns are always inseparable twins.

Robert Mugabe

Guns are the Crutches of the Impotent.

Arthur C. Clarke

Huey Freeman: I'll check the old testament, but I'm pretty sure Moses wasn't packin' heat.

Aaron McGruder

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

A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

George Washington

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

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.

Joseph Story Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833)

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

James Madison Federalist Papers (1787)

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

The spirit of murder seems to be on the increase in our day. This is partly due to the increase of firearms and to their cheapness, also to the fashion which prevails in many quarters of carrying deadly weapons. The frequency with which shooting is done also has its effect to break down the feeling of sacredness which should surround human life.

George Q. Cannon

Frontier towns with and without gun legislation were violent places, more violent than family-friendly farming communities and Eastern cities of the time, but those without restrictions tended to have worse violence. “I've never seen any rhetoric from that time period saying that the only thing that's going to reduce violence is more people with guns,” says Winkler. “It seems to be much more of a 20th-century attitude than one associated with the Wild West.”

Adam Winkler

Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual was to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

George Mason

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 the constant companion of your walks.

Thomas Jefferson

I've got a nine millimeter, ready to go off any minute. So, you feel it? Because of the law, I've had to conceal it. If you fuck around you're going to make me reveal it. Hey!

Akon

“People were allowed to own guns, and everyone did own guns [in the West], for the most part,” says Winkler. “Having a firearm to protect yourself in the lawless wilderness from wild animals, hostile native tribes, and outlaws was a wise idea. But when you came into town, you had to either check your guns if you were a visitor or keep your guns at home if you were a resident.”

Adam Winkler

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