If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them... Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here..
I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.
Legal gun ownership always prevails over the emotionalism of the gun control movement.
There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.
The reduction in gun violence President Obama claims to desperately want comes from law enforcement and prosecution, not from political rhetoric, lectures and sentence commutations for federal firearm law offenders and felons.
The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.
In a comprehensive study of all public multiple shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that the only public policy that reduced both the incidence and casualties of such shootings were concealed-carry laws. Not only are there 60 percent fewer gun massacres after states adopt concealed-carry laws, but the death and injury rate of such rampages are reduced by 80 percent.
Now there's a seven-day waiting period to buy a gun. Who can stay mad that long?
...the people who talk most about the need to regulate guns are also usually the same people who know the least about them. Ask these gun prohibitionists about the Second Amendment and they'll usually mention hunting or sport shooting.
I think that we should ban so-called junk guns. I think we should ban assault weapons like the weapons used here [in Fort Worth], yes. I think that the kinds of weapons that have no legitimate use for hunting or the kind of weapon that a homeowner would use, I think they should be banned, yes, those kind of weapons.
I sympathize with people who want to ban guns, but I can't agree with them. We have to be careful in our zeal to abolish guns that we don't wind up with counter-productive legislation that will leave armed only the people most likely to do harm with them.
To a lot of people, the Second Amendment is an extreme position.
The thieves and killers are goin' to have guns, so if the honest men don't have 'em they just make it easier for the vicious.
The Brady Bill's only effect will be to desensitize the public to regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.
The only people who use them [so-called assault weapons] are mass murderers.
I didn't see any NRA officials killing babies in Waco.
I don't get into the gun stuff. Some guys have guns who go hunting. Where do we stop (the gun control) at? I'm not a hunter, but we can't say people can't have guns.
Gun control is not the answer to stop crimes committed with firearms.
If someone can produce the law that keeps guns out of the hands of criminals but protects the right of law-abiding citizens to possess them, and doesn't infringe on those rights, I would consider that. But all the proposals I've seen do not achieve that goal. And we are missing a golden opportunity to have an important debate about violence in the USA. Violence in our society is the problem.
The right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the rights of other people.
Recent school shootings have lured ill-informed Americans into a war on our Second Amendment guarantees, led by the nation's tyrants and their useful idiots. ... The Second Amendment was given to us as protection against tyranny by the federal government and the Congress of the United States.
The Brady Act was passed in response to what Congress described as an 'epidemic of gun violence.'
We feel in the Department of Justice that we represent the people of the country who demand that some effort be made to reach the firearms evil.
See the related quotes below.
And nobody is talking about taking guns away from hunters or sportsmen or banning all guns. Nobody is talking about that.
In 1999, the NRA leadership in Washington, pretty much the same people intact, were for (expanded background checks.)
