Sheldon Richman on gun control

Today, the people who would use guns to violate rights have little trouble getting them, while those who would use them to defend their rights have increasing trouble getting them...  Gun control is in effect a subsidy for criminals.

~ Sheldon Richman

Murray Rothbard on trying to limit government

[T]he man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, "Limit yourself"; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

~ Murray Rothbard

George Orwell on gun control

That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy.  It is our job to see that it stays there. 

~ George Orwell

(The photo below was taken by Dennis Call: "I love to wander the backroads of Texas.  It may never get completed, but I am putting together a coffee-table book called "Driving Texas."  It is a picture book of places/sights/only in Texas and other items of interest.")

"Only in Texas!"

Thomas Jefferson on gun control

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, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776 

(Dan Ferris' quote of the week on the Stansberry Investor Hour podcast, 9:30 mark, June 17, 2021)

Thomas Jefferson
1993

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Second Amendment

When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function, its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own.  So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia.  So...the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.

~ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, District of Columbia v. Heller, June 26, 2008

Kevin Duffy on gun control

The 2nd amendment isn't about duck hunting. What happens if the country is invaded? Where is the second line of defense? Worse, what happens if the country turns into a dictatorship or police state? What defense would we have from our own government?

Gun control will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It will keep guns away from the good guys, making us more vulnerable to armed criminals.

~ Kevin Duffy, October 2, 2017, in response to calls for gun control following the mass shootings in Las Vegas

Johnny Kramer on the persecution of Plaxico Burress for shooting himself in the leg

To summarize, [Plaxico] Burress is being prosecuted not for damaging another person's body or property, for which that person has filed a complaint, seeking restitution and/or damages; he's being prosecuted for not having a permission slip from the State to carry his own property. And the people who helped him get medical treatment are being threatened for not turning Burress in to the State for not having a permission slip and because the piece of his property, for which he didn't have a permission slip, involved in the victimless incident happened to be a gun; and for not cooperating with the State, once the non-crime came to its attention, in helping it gather evidence to prosecute Burress for the non-crime, and possibly to prosecute them for their involvement in the non-crime too.

The despicable treatment by the State of Burress, and the equally despicable threatening of those who went out of their way to help him with his accidental injury, is another example of the State's hegemonic relationship with the people it "serves," as Butler Shaffer has quipped, "the way a cannibal 'serves' his neighbor."

In a free society, Burress would be responsible for paying his hospital bill and for any damage to the nightclub, after which he could put the whole unpleasant accident behind him and get on with his life.

Instead, the State is going to ruin Burress' career and life, and cause unspeakable anguish for his loved ones, by locking him in a cage inside a socialist hellhole for a "crime" that hurt no one except for himself – and even that, just barely. The only victim in this "crime" is Burress.

~ Johnny Kramer, "The Persecution of Plaxico Burress," LewRockwell.com, December 3, 2008

Charley Reese on Barack Obama and gun control

There is not a stupid idea about gun control that Obama hasn't supported either verbally or with his vote.

The Second Amendment was not written for duck hunters. It was written for self-defense and for defense against tyranny. Obama ought to talk to some of the people who survived the civil-rights revolution about how they stayed up all night with their private firearms to protect their families. He ought to research the old Jim Crow laws, which banned blacks from owning certain kinds of firearms.

~ Charley Reese, "Obama Won't Win It All," LewRockwell.com, June 9, 2008

Gandhi on gun control

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.

~ Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth (1927)

Adolf Hitler on gun control

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.

~ Adolf Hitler