P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

I'm very interested in the early American history, the time when the country came together.

America was founded by religious people; devout people who came here because they wanted freedom of religion, It's what made America different from every other country.

I support the Second Amendment. I lived in Arkansas for 18 wonderful years. I represented upstate New York. I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership. It goes back to the founding of our country.

As long as there have been guns in America there have been regulations governing their use and storage. Without government direction there would have been no body of Minutemen to muster on the town greens at Lexington and Concord. If the Founders had imbibed the strong gun rights ideology that drives today's gun debate we would all be drinking tea and singing, "God save our gracious Queen.

America’s gun culture is an invented tradition. It was not present at the creation of America, whenever we fix that point. Rather, it developed in a single generation, among those who experienced the onset of the Civil War. All cultural attributes have a starting point, and a path of development. America’s gun culture is unusual only in that one can determine the precise period in which a specific artifact became central to a nation’s identity and self-conception. Prior to the 1860s, guns were not perceived as a significant component of America’s national identity, essential to its survival.

If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.

The population of America is roughly 300 million and there are 300 million guns in this country, which is terrifying.

All of us in all the Americas will be living at the point of a gun.

America was founded by people who believe that God is their Rock of safety.

There is an all-out assault now on the Christian community in this country.

AR-15s, in particular, are often called America's gun. They're some of the most popular rifles in the country, especially when it comes to sports shooting.

There should be at least ten times the number of rifles in the country as there are now.

I simply like guns because you can't shoot people without them.

America didn't create religious liberty. Religious liberty created America.

That's a large part of the source of the gun culture. You have to have a gun when you go into Starbucks, because who knows what's going to happen. It just doesn't happen in other countries.

I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington. And if people have an opinion, it's a religious opinion that is heartly felt, obviously they should be allowed to practice that and no government should interfere with them.

Everyone values the good nature of a man with a gun.

America was built on an attempted genocide, anyway. Guns were completely necessary.

It goes with the passionate intensity and deep conviction of the truth of a religious belief, and of course of the importance of the superstitious observances that go with it, that we should want others to share it - and the only certain way to cause a religious belief to be held by everyone is to liquidate nonbelievers. The price in blood and tears that mankind generally has had to pay for the comfort and spiritual refreshment that religion has brought to a few has been too great to justify our entrusting moral accountancy to religious belief.

In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.

If guns cause crime, all of mine are defective.

Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.

Faith in public life does not mean that God tells you to bomb another country or to go get Saddam Hussein. Faith in public life means that every child, regardless of their religious belief, should have health care and be able to go to school. Because my faith saying I can bomb Iraq is the same as your faith saying you can take over a passenger plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.

From Samuel Adams to Patrick Henry to Benjamin Franklin to Alexander Hamilton, all the Founders intended religion to provide a moral anchor for our liberty in democracy.

America is a nation that is founded on the principle of religious freedom. That is the reason this country exists.