“If you’re going to try & read my mind, please do a better job.”
What? I just commented on what you said. No mind-reading required for that.
“You won’t get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There’s only one way to get real gun control: disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up, and if you don’t actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time... It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal experience.”
Ronald Reagan, 1983
“How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
Ronald Reagan, Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987
“[T]he Constitution does not say Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution says `the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.`”
President Ronald Reagan
“President Reagan, the owner of an AR-15, was a strong and consistent supporter of the Second Amendment and the NRA. He was a long time member, joining NRA in December of 1972 and upgrading to Life Member in August of 1979. He actively courted the NRA`s endorsement in both of his presidential campaigns, and was the first presidential candidate in history to receive that endorsement.
“Reagan felt at home before the assembled membership, saying “I`ve always felt a special bond with members of your group. You live by Lincoln`s words, `Important principles may and must be inflexible.` Your philosophy puts trust in people. . . . Good organizations don`t just happen. They take root in a body of shared beliefs. They flow from strong leadership, with vision, initiative and determination to reach great goals.”
“President Reagan shared our pursuit of great goals through the 1980s—the rollback of the most onerous provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968. And in 1986, President Reagan proudly signed the landmark Firearms Owners` Protection Act (FOPA) into law.
“Sadly, some gun-ban advocates have callously exploited Reagan`s passing to misrepresent his positions, staging scripted interviews with the most biased of national media outlets to insist that he supported their anti-gun agenda and even claiming that he never held an NRA membership. I can feel only sadness at these crass and desperate lies. They merit no response; the historical record is clear and amply documented.”
NRA Web site
“Melba King was a 22-year old nursing student, and was walking home one evening when she was approached by a mugger with a gun who demanded her money. Reagan, then working as a local radio sportscaster, espied the confrontation from his second-story rented room. Leaning out the window with a .45 caliber revolver, Reagan sternly directed the mugger to “leave her alone or I`ll shoot you right between the shoulders.” The mugger ran off, and Reagan calmed the woman, escorting her home safely.”
NRA Web site
Ronald Reagan lobbied members of the House of Representatives to support the 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban. The ban passed by only two votes; at least two House members publicly credited Reagan’s direct appeals for their “aye” votes.
In the early 1990s, President Reagan lobbied Congress to pass the Brady Law, a major gun safety initiative vigorously opposed by the gun lobby.
During Reagan’s tenure as President, bans on cop-killer bullets, undetectable handguns, and the manufacture and sale of machine guns became law.
Reagan would have been absolutely vilified by some here. Indeed, Reagan said it best when he said:
“When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it. “Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything. I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’ If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.” Ronald Reagan, in his autobiography, An American Life