%start%%cat=//%quote%"A nationwide study by Don Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 % of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11%, more than five times as high."//%Author%GEORGE WILL ("Newsweek") (11/15/93)
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"On the whole, CITIZENS ARE MORE SUCCESSFUL GUN USERS THAN ARE THE POLICE. When police shoot, they are 5.5 times more likely to hit an innocent person than are civilian shooters."//%Author%DAVID KOPEL ("Trust the People: The Case Against Gun Control" - CATO Institute Policy Analysis No. 109)
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"The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in OUR hands. It has been there all along. In a nationwide study, Don Kates at the St. Louis University School of Law found that police succeed in wounding or driving off criminals only 81% as often as armed citizens and are 15% more likely to be wounded or killed themselves. More than FIVE TIMES as many cops shoot some innocent individual in the process as civilians do."//%Author%L. NEIL SMITH ('The Atrocity Engineers')
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"Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way."
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge, Past President of the United States
"Anti-domestic violence and women's groups create the impression that guns are always part of the problem and never part of the solution. The current mainstream of feminism -- from which most anti-domestic violence advocates proceed -- is an expression of left liberalism. It rejects private solutions based on individual rights in favor of laws aimed at achieving social goals.
A responsible individual holding a gun in self-defense does not fit their vision of society. In the final analysis, such advocates do not trust the judgment of the women they claim to be defending. ... The true meaning of being anti-domestic violence means is to help victims out of their victimhood and into a position of power."
-- Wendy McElroy
For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant - merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
- Mark Twain
"The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill."
- Ayn Rand
"Better to die on your feet,... than to live on your knees"
- Zappata
"If you have got to resist, your chances of being hurt are less, the more lethal your weapon."
- Dr. Arthur Kellerman New England Journal of Medicine
"A gun is 32 times more likely to be used to defend against criminal threat than to kill anybody."
- Dr. Preston Covey
"Reckless, homicidal and suicidal people may own guns but gun ownership does not make anyone reckless, homicidal or suicidal."
- Dr. Preston Covey
"A ruler is legitimate only in so far as he upholds the law. A ruler that violates the law is illegitimate. He has no right to be obeyed; his commands are mere force and Rulers who act lawlessly, whose laws are unlawful, are mere criminals."
- John Locke
"Freedom consists in a people's being governed by laws made with their own consent."
- Swift: Drapier's Letters (1725).
"I don't trust a government I can't shoot back at"
- Claire Wolfe
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are inclined to obey the law.
- From Unintended Consequences by John Ross
"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
- Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England."
Hoplophobia (n.): The irrational fear of weapons, correctly described by Freud as "a sign of emotional and sexual immaturity". Hoplophobia, like homophobia, is a displacement symptom; hoplophobes fear their own "forbidden" feelings and urges to commit violence. This would be harmless, except that they project these feelings onto others. The sequela of this neurosis include irrational and dangerous behaviors such as passing "gun-control" laws and trashing the Constitution.
We are free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
- William Faulkner
"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired servants of our rulers. Only the government-and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."
- Edward Abbey "The Right to Arms" [New York, 1979]
"...a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly."
- Jeffrey R. Snyder, "A Nation of Cowards"
"One of the ordinary modes by which tyrants accomplish their purpose, without resistance, is by disarming the people and making it an offense to keep arms".
- Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms."
- Aristotle, "Politics"
I am willing to defend my property and liberty with the same force and enthusiasm as the ones that try to take it away!
- Bruce Montague.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience", 1849
"Canadian politicians, unlike Americans or those who've actually lived under oppression, value peace higher than freedom. Peace-seekers need reminding that cattle on a well-run farm have the ideal peaceful existence: abundant food, warm accommodation, no threats - until the day they go to the slaughter house. That's not the sort of peace most of us value." Peace is Lloyd's game, a Nobel Prize is his aim
- PETER WORTHINGTON Toronto Sun January 12, 1999
When asked "Is it worth risking my life to defend my property?", I ask "Is it worth risking your life to take away my property?"
- Bruce Montague
"Today's citizen is obliged to find his freedom only in the narrow ruts pre-approved by his bureaucratic overlords. "Risk-free liberty" is the ideal of the Welfare State: citizens are permitted only liberties which have been declawed, defanged, neutered, certified and wrapped in benevolent restrictions."
- James Bovard
"One cannot have a right to life without the right to defend it with deadly force."
- Bruce Montague
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only after the last Gun is seized.
Only then will you find out that Money Cannot Be Eaten.
~Cree Prophecy~
"Trusting contemporary governments means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people's lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives. Modern Leviathans seek progress by giving some people the power to play God with other people's lives, property, and domestic tranquility."
- James Bovard
"Sovereign immunity creates a two-tier society - those above the law and those below it, those whom the law fails to bind and those whom the law fails to protect. In some parts of this nation, laws against abusing pets are better enforced than are laws against government employees abusing citizens. Sovereign immunity presumes that the more evils that government officials are permitted to commit, the more good they will achieve. Sovereign immunity presumes that in order to protect people, government must be permitted to destroy them."
- James Bovard- freedom in chains
"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)"
- Ayn Rand
The following appears to be the mindset of the anti-gun group:
1."The more helpless you are, the safer you are from criminals."
2.That ordinary people, in the presence of guns, turn into slaughtering butchers, and revert to normal when the weapon is removed.
- excerpted from a list by Michael Z. Williamson.
"Our country is at an awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but it's too early to shoot the bastards."
- Claire Wolfe
"Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions... Liberty and responsibility are inseparable."
- F.A. Hayek
"Pity the poor, wretched timid soul who is too faint hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the song of the damned:
"I can't fight back, I have too much to lose; I own too much property; I have worked too hard for what I have; they will put me out of business if I resist; I might go to jail; I have my family to think about."
Such poor miserable creatures are hiding their cowardice behind pretended family responsibility."
- Author Unknown - If you have that much to fight for, then you should be fighting.
Misc. One-Liners
- An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
- A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
- Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface.
- Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
- If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
- Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
- If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
- Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
- 64,999,987 firearm owners killed no one yesterday.
- Guns only have two enemies: Rust and Politicians.
- Know guns, Know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
- You don't shoot to kill; You shoot to stay alive.
- 911 - government sponsored Dial a Prayer.
- Assault is a behavior, not a device.
- Criminals love gun control - it makes their jobs safer.
- If Guns cause Crime, then Matches cause Arson.
- Only a government that is afraid of it's citizens try to control them.
- You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
- When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
- The American Revolution would never have happened with Gun Control.
"You may not like guns. You may choose not to own one. That is your right.
You might not believe in God. That is your choice.
However, if someone breaks into your home at 3AM the first two things you are going to do are:
1) Call someone with a gun.
2)Pray they get there in time."
- A wise man.
"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, For trying to change the system from within."
- Leonard Cohen
"We fight not for glory, nor for wealth, nor honour but only and alone for freedom which no good man surrenders but with his life."
- Robert the Bruce
If you can't trust a weapon to an individual, how can you trust it to a group of individuals?
- unknown
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