Gun quotes
2.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"I don't care if they're licensed legal firearms, people who are not highly trained putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I'll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we're going to have tragedies as a result of that. I'm telling you right up front."
"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security."
"Some people`s photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that`s fine. But that`s not why I do them. I`m a gun for hire."
"[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."
"To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."
"One's god dictates the kind of law one implements and also controls the application and development of that law over time. Given enough time, all non-Christian systems of law self-destruct in a fit of tyranny."
"Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet."
"If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves, there wouldn't be a problem."
"The only defense against evil, violent people is good people who are more skilled at violence."
"War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
"I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an 18th century straitjacket, unsuited for this age...The evils it guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist today."
"As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless."
"There is a 3rd point of view on the gun control issue - those who I refer to as THE VICTIMS - but they remain strangely silent."
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes."
"Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila."
"For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark."
"A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is or who's out of work and where the job is or who's broke and where the money is or who's carrying a gun and where the peace is."
"While your guns raisin', mine is blazin'."
"French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody's afraid of French fries."
"Right now, America is under the gun. It's being tested and is being co-opted in a big way."
