John D. MacDonald Quotes

According to FBI statistics for 2008, only 22 percent of murder victims were killed by strangers. More than 30 percent were slain by family members, boyfriends, and girlfriends. Nearly half of all murders were committed by friends, neighbors, and casual acquaintances.

The United States homicide rate without guns is higher than most European country’s homicide rates including guns.

No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None. Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.

We have to be concerned about the gun killing that people who are Americans, who are Irish, and who are English, who are all around the country.

If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

I think that dealing with guns is one way to handle the violent-crime issues that we have in this country.

The U.S. has more guns per capita and supplies more guns to the world than any other country. What would be a fistfight without guns turns into dead bodies with them. Families with guns in the house are more likely to shoot themselves accidentally than to shoot any intruder. Women abused by their partners have a five-fold increased risk of being killed when their partner owns a gun. Every three hours, at least one child is wounded or killed by gunfire.

Strangling is the most intimate way to kill someone.

Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws...It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem.

Gun control is not the answer to stop crimes committed with firearms.

You all saw him - he had a gun.

No country that permits firearms to be widely and randomly distributed among its population - especially firearms that are capable of wounding and killing human beings - can expect to escape violence, and a great deal of violence.

There are no free and democratic and wealthy countries in the world that have US rate of gun violence. We have to worry about loners and alienated people. We have to do better on mental health.

This woman goes into a gun shop and says, 'I want to buy a gun for my husband.' The clerk says, 'Did he tell you what kind of gun?' 'No,' she replied. 'He doesn't even know I'm going to shoot him.

I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers.

This massacre in Orlando is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship or a movie theater or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision, as well.

We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.

Roller-skates and disco are a lot of fun, I'm much too young and stupid to operate a gun.

Many times, when you go to arrest somebody, they pull their gun, and here I am, a federal agent, telling them to drop their gun. But the gun is like that. I give them a split second to drop it, and they drop it. I could have shot them - who is going to complain?

The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

Then I realize from the hollow sound of her gun's click that her gun isn't loaded. Apparently she just wants to slap me around with it.

The number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing.

My biggest frustration so far is the fact that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage. We're the only developed country on Earth where this happens. ... And it happens once a week. And it's a one-day story. ... The country has to do some soul-searching on this.

The only people who use them [so-called assault weapons] are mass murderers.

We need to take violence against women seriously. It is the biggest indicator of whether a country is violent inside itself, and whether it will be militarily violent against another country.