When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.
I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of people - law-abiding citizens use if for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets.
when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns.
No legislation is going to stop a criminal from getting a gun, and anybody who says it will is wrong. Criminals will get a gun no matter what they have to do. They'll steal it. They'll borrow it. They'll have someone else buy it for them.
I think we can provide common-sense approaches to the issue of illegal guns that are ending up on the streets. We can make sure that criminals don't have guns in their hands. We can make certain that those who are mentally deranged are not getting a hold of handguns. We can trace guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers that may be selling to straw purchasers and dumping them on the streets.
The crime gun market has been a huge segment of the gun industry’s sale. It’s been a share of the market they haven’t been willing to surrender.
We know that the crime committed by people with guns by criminals, they get the guns by flouting the law to begin with. They don't go to gun shows.
The vast majority of gun owners don't kill, but people who do kill, tend to kill with guns, and often with illegal guns.
Background checks applied universally and nationally would take millions of illegal guns off the streets of our cities.
Most gun dealers follow the law and run honest businesses. But the statistics show that 1 percent of dealers sell more than half of all illegal guns. Why isn't the federal government going after them? Here's one reason: unlike mayors, members of Congress don't get a phone call in the middle of the night when a cop is shot and killed. They don't deliver the eulogies.
Even though New York is the safest big city in the nation, there are still far too many illegal guns on our streets. Nearly all of them arrive from out of state - and most are sold by a small group of rogue gun dealers who refuse to obey federal laws.
Illegal guns don't belong on our streets and we're sending that message loud and clear. We're determined to see that gun dealers who break the law are held accountable, and that criminals who carry illegal loaded guns serve serious time behind bars.
Why in the world is it not a felony to traffic and sell illegal guns in our country? This is an outrage.
Selling illegal guns was a misdemeanor—not a more serious felony.
We are going to trace more effectively, how these guns are ending up on the streets, to unscrupulous gun dealers, who often times are selling to straw purchasers. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill.
An inmate in a Florida prison wrote to agree with me on the availability of guns, saying that a 'criminal can and will get a stolen gun faster than you can get your car washed.' He also points out that many criminals prefer guns gotten illegally, since they will be harder to trace.