Gun control remains one of the most passionately debated topics in the modern world, attracting a myriad of opinions and perspectives. "Quotes About Gun Control" offer a lens into this ongoing dialogue, encapsulating the arguments, emotions, and philosophies of its proponents and opponents.
Delving into these quotes, we find a rich tapestry of beliefs reflecting society's complex relationship with firearms, shedding light on the fundamental questions of safety, freedom, and individual rights.
Quotes About Gun Control (2024)
The debate surrounding gun control is as diverse as it is polarizing. The following compilation showcases a range of thoughts and reflections on this topic, illustrating the myriad of emotions, beliefs, and perspectives surrounding the conversation on firearms and their place in society.
"To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens." - Adolf Hitler
"Gun control means being able to hit your target." - George Orwell
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"Gun control is not about guns, it's about control." - Unknown
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people." - National Rifle Association
"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery." - Thomas Jefferson
"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war." - Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and the spirit of a man to preserve his own liberty." - Samuel Adams
"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason
"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." - Clint Smith
"Guns are our friends because in a country without guns, I'm what's known as 'prey.' All females are." - Ann Coulter
"An armed society is a polite society." - Robert A. Heinlein
"A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything." - Shane, from the movie Shane
"Gun control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound." - L. Neil Smith
"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise, they will win and the decent people will lose." - James Earl Jones
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
"Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost $5,000. Because if a bullet cost $5,000 there would be no more innocent bystanders." - Chris Rock
"Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?" - Joseph Stalin
"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not." - Thomas Jefferson
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Louis D. Brandeis
"It's not a gun control problem; it's a cultural control problem." - Bob Barr
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem." - Theodore Rubin
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms." - Adolf Hitler
"A gun gives you the body, not the bird." - Henry David Thoreau
"Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing." - Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense." - John Adams
"The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." - United States v. Cruikshank
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." - Ronald Reagan
"The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave." - James Burgh
"I have a love interest in every one of my films: a gun." - Arnold Schwarzenegger
"I'm not for gun control, I'm just not that up on the idea of assault weapons." - John Mellencamp
"By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia,’ the ‘security’ of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms,’ our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy." - John F. Kennedy
"I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it." - Clint Eastwood
"If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law." - Winston Churchill
"Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them." - James Madison
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Samuel Adams
"Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of Americans to feel safe." - Dianne Feinstein
"The rifle itself has no moral stature since it has no will of its own." - Jeff Cooper
"I don't believe gun owners have rights." - Sarah Brady
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle." - Joseph Stalin
"If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words." - Unknown
"Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates." - Lieutenant Lowell Duckett
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." - Wayne LaPierre
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic." - Joseph Story
"Today's liberals wish to disarm us so they can run over us unopposed. Like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin." - Charley Reese
"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." - James Madison
"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time." - Adolf Hitler
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes." - Cesare Beccaria
"To my mind, it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death." - Jeff Cooper
"When the strong man, fully armed, guards his own mansion, his goods are safe." - Jesus Christ, Luke 11:21
"Ask any young person what they know about the NRA and they'll say that it's a group of people who go around shooting things." - Unknown
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined..." - George Washington
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms." - Richard Henry Lee
"A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie." - Vladimir Lenin
"Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory." - Ronald Reagan
"Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer." - Unknown
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves." - Joseph Stalin
"To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm ... is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms." - People vs. Zerillo
"A man with a gun is a citizen, a man without a gun is a subject." - Unknown
"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal." - Janet Reno
"I believe in gun control. If there's a gun around, I want to be controlling it." - Clint Eastwood
"Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars." - Unknown
"I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense." - Ronald Reagan
"One man with a gun can control 100 without one." - Vladimir Lenin
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." - The Dalai Lama
"We don't need tougher gun laws. We need to better enforce the ones we have." - Charlie Daniels
"It's not the bullet that kills you, it's the hole." - Unknown
"Gun control is not just about guns, it's about control. Period." - Unknown
"It's the Indian, not the arrow." - Unknown
"If guns kill people, then spoons make people fat." - Unknown
"To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form." - Roy Innis
"You cannot invade mainland America. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass." - Isoroku Yamamoto
"The background check system is broken." - Marc Morial
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - George Orwell
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education about guns." - Unknown
"Banning guns is an idea whose time has come." - Joe Biden
"Gun control is a job-safety program for criminals." - John R. Lott
"Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns." - Benjamin Franklin
"The only reason for disarming a man is to force him to do something that you couldn’t force him to do if he was armed." - Unknown
"Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership? Because it's the only alternative to the present insanity." - Nicholas D. Kristof
"I believe every American has Second Amendment rights, the ability to hunt is part of our culture." - Barack Obama
"Criminals obey gun laws in the same manner politicians follow their oaths of office." - Unknown
"Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day." - Gary Kleck
"Guns are not our enemy." - Nancy Reagan
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." - Jeff Cooper
"A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders." - Larry Elder
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave." - James Burgh
"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation." - Orrin Hatch
"Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what's happening, the second allows us to do something about it!" - Andrew Ford
"Guns are tools, the way they're used reflects the society they're apart of. If you don't like guns, blame it on society, not the tool." - Unknown
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." - Sigmund Freud
"I am not against guns. I'm against gun violence." - Martin O'Malley
"A gun-free zone is, 'Come and get me.'" - Ted Nugent
"The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post 'Thou shalt not steal,' 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' and 'Thou shalt not lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment." - George Carlin
"The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It ensures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is the servant and not the master of the governed." - Ronald Reagan
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms." - Adolf Hitler
"Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding." - Unknown
"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy." - Edward Abbey
"I don’t believe people should be able to own guns." - Barack Obama
"The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." - A.E. van Vogt
"The right to have a gun is a result of the social contract, which conferred rights on individuals while extracting an obligation on the part of individuals to not abuse those rights." - John O. McGinnis
"We need much stricter gun control, and eventually should bar the ownership of handguns, except in a few cases." - Michael Dukakis
"The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed." - Jeff Snyder
"By calling attention to a well-regulated militia for the security of the Nation, and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy." - John F. Kennedy
"The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." - Wayne LaPierre
"You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you favor mammoth government, but you're personally opposed to it." - Reagan
"Armed and unarmed citizens alike also would have a hard time living with the resulting increase in crime." - John R. Lott
"I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three." - Elayne Boosler
"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery." - Thomas Jefferson
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes." - Cesare Beccaria
"The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats." - Sam Colt
"Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates." - Lowell Duckett
"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed." - Judge Kozinski
"If you want to conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens." - Adolf Hitler
"The rifle itself has no moral stature since it has no will of its own." - Jeff Cooper
"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." - Unknown
Navigating the complex realm of gun rights and regulations, it becomes evident that perspectives vary greatly. "Quotes about gun control" illustrates this diversity of thought, from staunch advocates to fervent opponents. As society grapples with the issue, these quotes serve as a mirror, reflecting the multifaceted nature of the debate and reminding us that the journey to consensus is paved with passion and conviction.
