Handgun Ban Quotes

The NRA is right...handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns.

To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes.

Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them.

There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. The only way to control handguns use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.

A handgun ban is not realistically enforceable. Confiscating guns would require house-to-house searches and alienate the very individuals whose compliance is essential to the success of any regulation. If gun ownership were prohibited, organized crime would step in to provide the firearms that will continue to be procured with criminal intent.

My guess [is] . . . that the great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment. . . . I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles and shotguns, and now I think we're prepared to get rid of the damned things entirely - the handguns, the semis and the automatics.

Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.

The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!

... immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act ... [which] would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns.

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.

We are at the point in time and terror where nothing short of a strong uniform policy of domestic disarmament will alleviate the danger which is crystal clear and perilously present. Let us take the guns away from the people.

We have to start with a ban on the manufacturing and import of handguns. From there we register the guns which are currently owned, and follow that with additional bans and acquisitions of handguns and rifles with no sporting purpose.

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.

To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?

That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.

When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man [Sir William Keith], who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

The people have a right to keep and bear arms.

The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?