Posted on 05/15/2003 3:22:25 PM PDT by Drew68
Useful Quotes:
"If I were writing the Bill of Rights now there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment... This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud', on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies - the militia - would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kink of weapon he or she desires."
- Warren Burger, former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, Parade Magazine, 1/14/90
The following quotes have been gathered by Handgun-Free America to help researchers find more information about how others view guns in America. Listing of these quotes in no way infers that HFA endorses these quotes or the individuals and organizations who have said them.
"I believe all handguns should be abolished." - Sen. John Chafee, 1/9/97.
"If it were up to me, We'd ban them all." - Rep. Mel Reynolds, CNN Crossfire, 12/9/93.
"Ultimately, I would like to see the manufacture and possession of handguns banned except for military and police use." - Rep. Bobby Rush, Chicago Tribune, 12/5/99.
"We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases." - Rep. William Clay (D-MO), St. Louis Dispatch, 5/8/93.
"If it was up to me, no one but law enforcement officers would own hand guns." - Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, 11/13/98.
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights or ordinary Americans to own firearms ... that we are unable to think about reality." - President Bill Clinton, March 1, 1993.
"We are going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!" - Representative Chuck Shumer, 12/8/93.
"Mr. President, what is going on in this country? Does going to school mean exposure to handguns and to death? As you know, my position is we should ban all handguns, get rid of them, no manufacture, no sale, no importation, no transportation, no possession of a handgun. There are 66 million handguns in the United States of America today, with 2 million being added every year." - Senator John H. Chafee, (R-RI), 6/11/92.
"Mr. speaker, we must take swift and strong action if we are to rescue the next generation from the rising of tide armed violence. That is why today I am introducing the Handgun Control Act of 1992. This legislation would outlaw the possession, importation, transfer or manufacture of a handgun except for use by public agencies, individuals who can demonstrate to their local police chief that they need a gun because of threat to their life or the life of a family member, licensed guard services, licensed pistol clubs which keep the weapons securely on premises, licensed manufacturers and licensed gun dealers." - Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, 8/12/92.
"Indeed, that the Second Amendment poses no barrier to strong gun laws is perhaps the most well-settled proposition in American constitutional law. Yet the incantation of this phantom right continues to pervade Congressional debate." - Erwin N. Griswold, Solicitor General, Nixon Administration (Washington Post, 11/4/90)
"My personal opinion is that guns kill people." - Sam Donaldson, ABC News Primetime Live, 2/22/90.
"We will never fully solve our nation's horrific problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture and sale of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons." - USA Today, Dec. 29, 1993.
"Twenty years ago, I asked Richard Nixon what he thought of gun control. His on-the-record reply: 'Guns are an abomination.' Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles. - William Safire, LA Daily News, 6/15/99.
"Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Fayetteville, Tennessee; Springfield, Oregon -- all towns that live in infamy because a troubled teenager with access to a deadly gun went on a killing spree. There are no panaceas to stop such violence but there are too many guns and too many teenagers have too easy access to them. It is an outrage to deny that as too many politicians in the back pocket of the National Rifle Association are too wont to do." - CNN Capital Gang, 5/23/98.
"Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed by sister democracies such as Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily." - Charles Krauthammer, columnist, "Disarm the Citizenry".
"We are inclined to think that every firearm in the hands of anyone who is not a law enforcement officer constitutes an incitement to violence. Let's come to our senses before the whole country starts shooting itself up on all its Main Streets in a delirious kind of High Noon." - Washington Post, 8/19/65.
"By a curiosity of evolution, every human skull harbors a prehistoric vestige: a reptilian brain. This atavism, like a hand grenade cushioned in the more civilized surrounding cortex, is the dark hive where many of mankind's primitive impulses originate. To go partners with that throwback, Americans have carried out of their own history another curiosity that evolution forgot to discard as the country changed from a sparsely populated, underpoliced agrarian society to a modern industrial civilization. That vestige is the gun - most notoriously the handgun, an anachronistic tool still much in use." - Time, 4/13/81.
"As you probably know by now, Time's editors, in the April 13 issue, took a strong position in support of an outright ban on handguns for private use." - Time Magazine, Letter to NRA, 4/24/81.
"The only way to discourage the gun culture is to remove the guns from the hands and shoulders of people who are not in the law enforcement business." - New York Times, 9/24/75.
"Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership? Because it's the only alternative to the present insanity. Without both strict limits on access to new weapons and aggressive efforts to reduce the supply of existing weapons, no one can be safer." - Editorial, Los Angeles Times, 12/28/93.
"No presidential candidate has yet come out for the most effective proposal to check the terror of gunfire: a ban on the general sale, manufacture and ownership of handguns as well as assault-style weapons." - Guns Along the Campaign Trail, Washington Post, 7/19/99.
"There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. I used to think handguns could be controlled by laws about registration, by laws requiring waiting periods for purchasers, by laws making sellers check out the past of buyers. I think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns." - Michael Gartner, President, NBC News, in USA Today, 1/16/92.
"Whatever is being proposed is way too namby-pamby. I mean, for example, we're talking about limiting people to one gun purchase, or handgun purchase a month. Why not just ban the ownership of handguns when nobody needs one? Why not just ban semi-automatic rifles? Nobody needs one." - Jack E. White, Time national correspondent, Washington Times, 5/8/99.
"The great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment ... I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles and shotguns, and I think we're prepared to get rid of the damned things entirely - the handguns, the semis and the automatics." - Roger Rosenblatt, Time Magazine, 8/9/99.
"I don't understand why we're piddling around. We should talk about getting rid of guns in this country." - Juan Williams, Washington Post, on Fox News Sunday, 5/23/99.
"Repealing the Second Amendment is no cause for the faint-hearted, but it remains the only way for liberals to trigger an honest debate on the future of our bullet-plagued society. So what if anti-gun advocates have to devote the next 15-20 years to the struggle? The cause is worth the political pain. Failing to take bold action condemns all of us to spend our lives cringing in terror every time we hear a car backfire." - Walter Shapiro, USA Today columnist, 9/17/99.
"Get rid of the guns. We had the Second Amendment that said you have the right to bear arms. I haven't seen the British really coming by my house looking for it. And besides, the right to bear arms is not an absolute right anyway, as New York's Sullivan Law proves. We talk about ourselves as a violent society, and some of that is right and some of it is claptrap. But I think if you took away the guns, and I mean really take away the guns, not what Congress is doing now, you would see that violent society diminish considerably." - Roger Rosenblatt, PBS NewsHour essayist, 5/20/99.
"We urge passage of federal legislation - and meanwhile, in its absence, the partial remedy of state law - to prohibit, with few and narrowly drawn exceptions, the private ownership and possession of handguns, much the way existing laws prohibit machine guns, grenades and cannons." - ACLU Board of Directors, adopted September, 1976.
"The Union agrees with the Supreme Court's longstanding interpretation of the Second Amendment that the individual's right to keep and bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a 'well-regulated militia'. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected." - ACLU policy statement #47 (1986).
"The League, therefore, supports a ban on the further manufacture, sale, transportation and importation for private ownership of handguns and their parts." - League of Women Voters of Illinois Gun Control Position-in-Brief.
"One tenet of the National Rifle Association's faith has always been that handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. For once, the NRA is right and America's leading handgun control organization is wrong. Criminals don't buy handguns in gun stores. That's why they are criminals." - Josh Sugarman, Executive Director, Violence Policy Center, June 1987.
"I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than the police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ... no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun." - Dean Morris, Director, LEAA.
"Firearms are currently exempt from the health and safety laws that apply to every other consumer product in America, from toasters to teddy bears. Applying those same standards to guns is the real key to reducing firearm death and injury in America. Under these standards, handguns would be banned because of their high risk and low utility." - Violence Policy Center, 3/16/99.
"[T]he Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms." - U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals, Silveira v Lockyer, 12/5/02
"[The] National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is the people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding. - Robert H. Bork, former Federal Appeals Court Judge (Distinguished Lecture Series, UC Irvine, 3/14/89)
"Since the Second Amendment ... applies only to the right of the State to maintain a militia and not to the individual's right to bear arms, there can be no serious claim to any express constitutional right to possess a firearm." - U.S. v Warin (6th Circuit, 1976)
"There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police." - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Adams v. Williams, 1972 (dissent)
"Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you're gonna have. It's pathetic. It really is pathetic. It's sad. We're living in the Dark Ages." - Sylvester Stallone.
"To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes." - Sarah Brady, Tampa Tribune, 10/21/93.
"My own view on gun control is simple. I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns, would be banned." - Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.
"Mutual protection should be the aim of citizens, not individual self-protection. Until we are willing to outlaw the very existence or manufacture of civilian handguns we have no right to call ourselves citizens or consider our behavior even minimally civil." - Garry Wills, historian/writer, John Lennon's war, Chi. Sun-times, 12/12/80.
"We are beyond the stage of restrictive licensing and uniform laws. We are at the point in time and terror when nothing short of a strong uniform policy of domestic disarmament will alleviate the danger which is crystal clear and perilously present. Let us take the guns away from the people. Exemptions should be limited to the military, the police and those licensed for good and sufficient reasons." - Patrick V. Murphy, NYC Police Commissioner, 12/7/70.
"I would have preferred to invent something which helps people and makes life easier for farmers. A lawnmower, for example." - Mikhail Kalashnikov, 82, inventor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle.
"Sorry, it's 1999. We have had enough as a nation. You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison." - Rosie O'Donnell, talk show host.
"I believe, very strongly, that handguns should be banned and that there should be stringent, effective control of other firearms." - William Buchmeyer, Judge, Patterson v Gesellschaft, 1206 F. Supp. 1206, 1216 (N.D. Tex. 1985).
"Guns are evil." - Natalie Merchant, 10,000 Maniacs Concert, 1993.
"The existence of a gun factory is an absurd. That's the interruption of Mankind's evolution. It interrupts the evolution of Mankind. It's an absurd Man making firearms." - Helio Luz, former Chief of Police, Rio de Janeiro, 3/17/1997.
"Guns and violence -- an American dyad. The US has more firearms per capita in civilian hands than any other country in the world. Those opposing gun control say, "Guns don't kill people, people do." But people with guns kill and maim other people MORE OFTEN, MORE QUICKLY, and MORE EFFICIENTLY than people using any other means. To me and just about every pediatrician I know, the answer to preventing children using or being shot by guns is to KEEP CHILDREN AND GUNS APART." - Dr. Marilyn Heins, M.D. F.A.A.P.
"I have the right, when navigating the streets of Philadelphia - thoroughfares supported by my taxes - to drive, walk, or ride Septa unmolested by criminals carrying handguns. The streets of Philadelphia belong to the citizens, and we would all be safer if handguns were not allowed in these public spaces. The collective rights of the community to live free of widespread handgun violence outweighs the rights of individuals to carry defensive handguns against unknown enemies. The idea that disallowing handguns in public spaces will lead to a generalized loss of freedom is a fiction created by the gun industry out of economic necessity." - Kip Leitner, Philadelphia Enquirer, 2/26/99
If there are additional quotes you would like to add to this page, please e-mail us at info@handgunfree.org.
Here is a selection of quotes from gun-grabbers that I found amusing --particularly since most of these folks have since been rendered powerless.
Hope this hasn't been posted before.
and check out the rest of their site!
"A well-regulated milita, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Amendment II, United States Constitution
I forgot all about that!!! I knew I recognized his name LOL!!!
If you go to their website (which I recommend for it is highly amusing) they repeat the old, tired song-and-dance about how "militia" means Nat'l Guard and not individuals.
yawn...
Works for me. I am an army of one belonging to an army of many.
In other words, it's irrelevant.
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)
All the Bill of Rights pertain to INDIVIDUAL rights. That is why they are there in the first place. The First Amendment does not only pertain to well-regulated newspaper publishers.
In a way, I wish the USSC would just take a position on this and settle it once and for all.
Although, if the USSC declares it a "collective" right and not an "individual" right, I'm still not giving up my guns. Free men may keep guns regardless of what some black-robed judges say.
Note that it doesn't say "the right of a militia to keep...". Every other Amendment in the Bill of Rights which uses the term "people" calls for a right conferred on an individual, not a collective.
SCR
"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United
States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of
being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military
movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not
a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it.
To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes
of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through
military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to
acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the
character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to
the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would
form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country,
to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the
people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil
establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would
abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent,
would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed,
because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be
aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them
properly armed and equipped"
-Alexander Hamilton, Principal architect of the justice system in which Warren Burger was employed, FEDERALIST No. 29, 01/10/1788
EAT IT, WARREN.
I think the emphasis being on the independent clause meant that the right of the people to keep and bear arms was a necessary condition for them to form a well-regulated militia, and that infringing it would ultimately infringe on their society's ability to defend itself. Stating that the dependent clause, the "militia" clause, is the main emphasis means that the amendment does not apply to "the people" per se, but only those in the militia, which would make it truly unique in the Bill of Rights. To state either one and then hold that it only applies to sporting weapons is simply weird.
The very language of the Second Amendment refutes Justice Burger's claim:
...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
I'm people. We are all people. Why is that language unclear?
tired song-and-dance about how "militia" means Nat'l Guard and not individuals.
When the 2nd amendment was written, there was no such thing as a National Guard.
Militia is defined as:
1.An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
2.A military force that is not part of a regular army and is subject to call for service in an emergency.
3.The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for military service.
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