Quotes about gun
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Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) Novelist

“I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

“Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.”

Ray Bradbury book Death Is a Lonely Business

Source: Death Is a Lonely Business

“Do you ever just want to take your car out onto the highway and gun the engine as fast
as you can and then close your eyes and see what happens?”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Cars

“If I had a shiny gun
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folks that cause me pains :)”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Pain, World, Speed

“Rene looked at Grendel. “What in the world is that?”
“That’s our mutant attack poodle,” I told her.
“Is he chewing on a gun?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

World

“A book is a loaded gun.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Part 1
Variant: A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.
Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Books

“Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

The Modern Traveller (1898)

“You don't go on "probably" when love and guns are in hand.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Love

“With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“Take the gun. Leave the cannoli.”

Mario Puzo (1920–1999) American Novelist

“Die human, DIE!! Die nasty polluting person!!!!' yelled Grover. I turned him so he faced me. He kept on clicking his plastic gun towards me as if I was part of the game.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Game, Parting, Personality

“I would rather have had someone shoot me in the head with a nail gun, repeatedly, than have to watch the two of them cuddling on the couch together all night. --Conrad”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Night

“Pop guns! And bicycles! Roller skates! Drums! Checkerboards! Tricycles! Popcorn! And plums!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, very nimbly,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimbley!”

Dr. Seuss book How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Source: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

“A gun is a liar's weapon”

Frank Miller (1957) American writer, artist, film director

“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Adventures of Sally

Source: The Adventures of Sally (1922)

Sport, Dependency

“She wants to learn how to handle a gun.

Well, I want George Clooney naked in my bed, but I haven't attempted kidnapping. Yet.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Witness

Learning

“Don't have to see," the pilot grunted. "knows the way."
"Funny name for an aircraft," Grace commented. "Is it after your wife?"
"My gun."
Grace stared at him. "You named your plane after a?"
"It was a very good gun.”

Gordon Korman book Vespers Rising

Source: Vespers Rising

Way

“A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded gun on your coffee table- There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Girl, Coffee, Thinking

“There was a time when you would have taken my heart with stake or gun. Now you have taken it with these delicate hands and the scent of your body."
- Jean-Claude”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

Time, Heart

“Great, they give blind kids guns," I said, trying to lessen his horror. "I don't even let Iggy have a gun. Usually.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

“Are you going to shoot me?' Vengeous sneered. 'I wouldn't be surprised. What would a thing like you know about honor? Only a heathen would bring a gun to a sword fight.'

And only a moron would bring a sword to a gunfight.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

Fight

“They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

“Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“It's like a banana farm for guns!”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“We had one gun, one werewolf, one poltergeist, one supercharged spell-caster, one not-so-supercharged spell-caster, and one perfectly useless necromancer, though Liz was quick to remind me that she needed me to relay her words. - Chloe”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“Your hands on a gun butt right now, isn't it? Afraid of me?”
“Just want to make sure I can take care of you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, in case you need Glock-to-mouth-resuscitation.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude.
Yeah, those are the words.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Idea, Time

“And so, pointing fingers become pointing guns, because nobody listens to fingers.”

Jeff Shaara Gods and Generals

Source: Gods and Generals

“If I ever do get married," Tariq said, "they'll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Guy, Wedding

“The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“This is what it always comes down to, I realized. There are the ones who believe, and the ones who don't, and caught in the space between them are guns.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

“Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“Now they've found me,
At last they've found me.
It's hard to run
From a starving family.
Now they've found me.
Well I won't run;
I'm tired of hearing
There goes a well-known gun.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Ballad of a Well-Known Gun
Song lyrics, Tumbleweed Connection (1970)

Family

“One element, however, tends to go flagrantly missing in even the most vivid conspiracy theories about the banking system, let alone in official accounts: that is, the role of military power. There's a reason why the wizard has such a strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him there is a man with a gun.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 364

Money

“[Islamic terrorism] is different from all other forms of terrorism in at least three important respects. First, it rejects all the contemporary ideologies in their various forms; it sees itself as the total outsider with no option but to take control or to fall, gun in hand. It cannot even enter into talks with other terrorist movements which may, in some specific cases at least, share its tactical objectives. Considering itself as an expression of Islamic revival - which must, by definition, lead to the conquest of the entire globe by the True Faith - it bases all its actions on the dictum that the end justifies the means… The second characteristic that distinguishes the Islamic version from other forms of terrorism is that it is clearly conceived and conducted as a form of Holy War which can only end when total victory has been achieved. The term 'low-intensity warfare' has often been used to describe terrorism, but it applies more specifically to the Islamic kind, which does not seek negotiations, give-and-take, the securing of specific concessions or even the mere seizure of political power within a certain number of countries… The third specific characteristic of Islamic terrorism is that it forms the basis of a whole theory of both individual conduct and of state policy. To kill the enemies of Allah and to offer the infidels the choice between converting to Islam or being put to death is the duty of every individual believer as well as the supreme - if not the sole - task of the Islamic state.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Holy Terror: The inside story of Islamic terrorism (1987)

Death, War, Faith, Victory

“I may just add, that in addition to the hand-guns, I meet with other instruments of like kind mentioned in the reign of Elizabeth, namely, demy hags, or hag butts. They shot with these engines not only at butts and other dead marks, but also at birds and beasts, using sometimes bullets and sometimes half shots; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century the word artillery was used in a much more extensive sense, and comprehended long-bows, cross-bows, slur-bows, and stone-bows; also scorpions, rams, and catapults, which, the writer tells us, were formerly used; he then names the fire-arms as follows, cannons, basilisks, culverins, jakers, faulcons, minions, fowlers, chambers, harguebusses, calivers, petronils, pistols, and dags. "This," says he, "is the artillerie which is nowe in the most estimation, and they are divided into great ordinance, and into shot or guns," which proves that the use of fire-arms had then in great measure superseded the practice of archery.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 57
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Weapons

Bird, Sense, Dead

“The phone rang.
It was a thing that had been sitting here, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local outgoing calls, and when it was triggered it had the soft, muted sound of a silenced automatic. The first ring was a warning sound. The second time would be death calling.”

Mickey Spillane book Black Alley

Black Alley (1996)

Death, Silence, Time

“Most of the drivers, however, had the sense to stay put, fuming behind their blank windshields as they calculated the cost of repairs and repainting. Practically all of them were armed, but not one was stupid enough to pull a gun. It had been tried during a Trainite demonstration in San Francisco last month. A girl had been shot dead. Others, anonymous in whole-head masks and drab mock-homespun clothing, had dragged the killer from his car and used the same violent acid they applied to glass to write MURDERER on his flesh.
In any case, there was little future in rolling down a window to curse the demonstrators. Throats didn’t last long in the raw air.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “A ROOST FOR CHICKENS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Stupidity, Cars, Girl, Sense

“And there's kids playing guns in the streets
And one's pointing his tree branch at me
So I put my hands up I say
"Enough is enough,
If you walk away I walk away."”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

And he shot me dead.
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Tree, Dead

“Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. It was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens. It was a public service.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Sleeper (1973)

Help

“So it's a "truly remarkable achievement, is it? General Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going "according to plan, according to the British. So it's an achievement that the British still have not "liberated" Basra. It is "according to plan" that the Iraqis should be able to launch a scud missile from the Faw peninsula – supposedly under "British control" for more than a week. It is an achievement, truly remarkable of course, that the Americans lose an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant, spend four days trying to cross the river bridges at Nasiriyah and are then confronted by their first suicide bomber at Najaf.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles202.htm, April 1, 2003 2003

Suicide

“The Germans had thought they could replace light artillery with mortars, believing it unnecessary to furnish their troops with light guns and howitzers. The theory was wrong as they found out during the invasion.”

Leonid Govorov (1897–1955) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders and Its Battles" - Page 82 - by Walter Kerr - History - 2005

Light

“As soon as one of the anti-American presidents is elected, one of us goes in and says, “Hey, congratulations Mr. President. Now that you are president, I just want to tell you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your family. It’s several million dollars in this pocket, if you play the game our way. If you decide not to, over in this pocket, I’ve got a gun with a bullet with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your campaign promises and throw us out. Sell our oil companies your oil real cheap, or vote with us at the next UN vote, or send troops in support of ours to some place in the world such as Iraq”, and in that way, we have managed to build a world empire with very few people actually knowing that we have done this.”

John Perkins (1945) American author

Zeitgeist Addendum (2008)

People, World, Family, Way

“We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man.
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand.
We got department stores
And toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
For the ozone layer.
Got a man of the people,
Says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
Got roads to drive.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Rockin' in the Free World
Song lyrics, Freedom (1989)

People, Hope, Light, Box

“One of the hardest things I do as FBI Director is call the chiefs and sheriffs in departments around the nation when officers have been killed in the line of duty. I call to express my sorrow and offer the FBI’s help. Officers like Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, two of NYPD’s finest who were gunned down by a madman who thought his ambush would avenge the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I make far too many calls. And, there are far too many names of fallen officers on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and far too many names etched there each year.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Death, Law, Memory, Help

“Designed originally as a third-rate of sixty-four guns, she had been cut down to her present seize by the removal of most of her upper deck and corresponding armament. But her forty twenty-four pounders remained, with an additional four eighteen-pounders for bow and stern-chasers.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 4 "Royal Command"

“To accept the principal that "all power proceeds from the barrel of a gun" is to accept a society which will be dominated by those with the biggest guns.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Speech delivered at Luther College, Regina, Saskatchewan, March 16, 1973.

“Rumors that Moscow is helping me must be due to the fact that while I was Chief of Police of the Town of Sakhalin-Ula I used to dine twice a year with the Soviet officials. I can swear that no foreigners have given or are giving me guns, munitions, supplies or money! I want the League of Nations to fulfill its duty. I want it to force the Japanese to withdraw from Northern Manchuria. If I am forced to abandon Tsitsihar I intend to retire into the back country.”

Ma Zhanshan (1885–1950) Chinese politician

[CHINA-JAPAN: Hero Ma, TIME, 23 November 1931, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742656-2,00.html]

Money, Help, Country

“People never stop to think about these basic facts when they watch wars and cop shows on the television. People take too much for granted. Each time a gun is fired the whole history of engineering comes into play. Of politics, too: war, assassination, revolution, terror. Guns aren't just history's props and agents: they're history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of the past.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 11.

War, People, History, Thinking

“A gun, no matter how rare, a dog, no matter how brilliant, cannot mean fulfillment without keenness in the man. It takes the sportsman’s edge honed fine, an “eye,” a sense of what is good, the ear for what is right – the heart. There is something about the wilderness, something in the blood that draws nourishment from the game.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Dogs, Game, Sense, Heart

“Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad? I have kids! What do you think? "Yeah, I don't want them to have any kind of a -- I want things to corrode to the point where we're all living in huts." […] [I] "like things to go a little wrong" like birdshot to the face of a guy that would survive, not "like things to go wrong" till it's like Mad Max, every-man-for-himself-let's-all-ride-around-and-machine-guns, which seems to be the way that it's”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

going
Responding to King's suggestion that as a political comedian Stewart would "want things to be bad" because that would provide him with the most fodder for jokes

Way, Guy, Thinking, Madness

“As soon as we started looking at them, we saw the most remarkable situation. My first thought was, "Great guns! Something's gone wrong with the apparatus!" But then we got later North American tapes and everything seemed normal again.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On the first results from Explorer I, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“[I]f a politician won't trust you, why should you trust him? If he's a man — and you're not — what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If "he" happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she's eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn't want you to have?
On the other hand — or the other party — should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?
Makes voting simpler, doesn't it? You don't have to study every issue — health care, international trade — all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?" (3 August 1999).

Women, Hate, Health, Feeling

“The guns spell money's ultimate reason
In letters of lead on the spring hillside.
But the boy lying dead under the olive trees
Was too young and too silly
To have been notable to their important eye.
He was a better target for a kiss.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)

Money, Spring, Boy, Lying

“It's ridiculous to talk about a revolution without a few words on guns. If you haven't been in the army or done some hunting, you probably have a built in fear against guns that can only be overcome by familiarizing yourself with them.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Steal This Book (1971)

Fear

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“John Lofton: Do you think abortion is murder?
Ron Paul: Yes, but we have in our state laws, which enforce the law against murder, there are degrees. You have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree murder. I think somebody who takes a pill the day after probably isn't committing quite the horrible murder when you see somebody lying on the floor and somebody takes a gun and puts it to their head. I don't equate those…
John Lofton: What do you think ought to be the penalty for the abortionist and for the person who gets the abortion?
Ron Paul: I really don't have the wisdom to know exactly what it should be… The girl who goes and gets an abortion, she's a participant in it, I don't think she deserves the death penalty… But there are some abortionists that it wouldn't be very hard to give them a pretty harsh punishment, because, you know, nothing annoys me more than the fact that an abortionist can make money killing a live viable fetus, in the 3rd trimester, and they think nothing about it, and they make a living doing this. Any yet, one minute after birth, that same mother, who might throw the child away, rightfully is called to task, and actually charged with murder. So that inconsistency has to be resolved.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The American View, August 25, 2007 http://theamericanview.com/index.php?id=898 2000s, 2006-2009

Death, Wisdom, Money, Law

“I have grown up with guns all my life, but people who like assault weapons they should join the United States Army, we have them.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

CNN Crossfire, Interveiw with General Wesley Clark http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0306/25/cf.00.html, (Aired June 25, 2003).

Life, People

“If you can just convince the dope people that the gun people are right and the gun people that the dope people are right, we could actually live in a lot more freedom.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Glenn Beck program on CNN (2 November 2006) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/02/gb.01.html 2000s

People, Freedom

“And if lust and depair
Are two bullets in the same gun
Well we've been playing Russian Roulette for far too long”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Breck Road Lover
Lyrics and poetry

“MR BROWN You know that the policy in Iraq cannot succeed. Democracy cannot be exported with a gun. You can be the Great Leader and the Great Peacemaker”

Chris Eubank (1966) British former professional boxer

Eubanks new message to the new Prime Minster http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6679611.stm

Democracy

“The whole of Germany is an armed camp…The industries of Germany are mobilised for war to an extent to which ours were not mobilised even a year after the Great War had begun. The whole population is being trained from childhood up to war. A mighty army is coming into being. Many submarines are already exercising in the Baltics. Great cannon, tanks, machine guns and poison gas are fast accumulating. The Germans are even able to be great exporters of munitions as well as to develop their own enormous magazines. The German air force is developing at a great speed, and in spite of ruthless loss of life. We have no speedy prospect of equalling the German air force or of overtaking Germany in the air, whatever we do in the near future.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1935/oct/24/international-situation in the House of Commons (24 October 1935) The 1930s

Life, War, Exercises, Loss

“Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Sun, Cry

“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.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18248547/site/newsweek/
Gun Control

Law, Business, Night

“There is not something fundamentally different about the American DNA that causes us to have a level of gun violence that is 20 times that of other first-world nations…. It happens here because we choose to allow it to happen. We have a celebratory culture of guns, and the loosest firearms laws in the world.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

"Meet the Senator Who Filibustered for 15 Hours on Gun Control" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-senator-who-filibustered-for-15-hours-on-gun-control-20160620, RollingStone.com, 20 June 2016.

World, Law, Time

“In regard to…action in the South Atlantic, we all desire to join in the tribute paid to the gallantry of our sailors. It is one of the almost inevitable conditions of sea warfare that so much of the fighting is done between adversaries of very different strengths, and the way in which our ships, despite their smaller gun-power, tackled and stuck to this very powerful enemy vessel and forced her to take refuge, is worthy of the highest traditions of the British Navy.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1939/dec/14/the-war#S5CV0355P0_19391214_HOC_265 in the House of Commons (14 December 1939) after the Battle of the River Plate where the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee was forced to harbour by the Royal Navy Leader of the Opposition

Way, Fight, Sea

“The quickest way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Excerpt from address given to the National Rifle Association in Dallas, Texas — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-the-quickest-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-pence-says-at-nra-convention (May 4, 2018) Vice President of the United States (2017-Present)

Way, Guy

“When, I was just a baby,
My mama told me, son
Always be a good boy,
Don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin'
I hang my head and cry.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Folsom Prison Blues
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar (1957)

Boy, Baby, Cry

“I'm gonna tell all you fascists, you may be surprised
People all over this world are getting organized
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose

Race hatred cannot stop us, this one thing I know
Poll tax and Jim Crow and greed have got to go
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose

...

People of every color marching side by side
Marching across these fields where a million fascists died
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose

...

I'm going into this battle, take my union gun
Gonna end this world of slavery before this war is won
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

All You Fascists (1944) https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/All_You_Fascists.htm

War, People, World, Color

“Linden Arden stole the highlights
With one hand tied behind his back.
Loved the morning sun and whiskey
Ran like water in his veins.
Loved to go to church on Sunday,
Even though he was a drinkin' man.
When the boys came to San Francisco,
They were looking for his life.
But he found out where they were drinking,
Met them face to face outside.
Cleaved their heads off with a hatchet,
Lord, he was a drinkin' man.
And when somebody tried to get above him,
He just took the law into his own hands.
Linden Arden stole the highlights,
And they put his fingers through the glass.
He had heard all those stories many, many times before,
And he did not care, nor know, to ask.
And he loved the little children like they were his very own.
You say 'Someday, he may get lonely,
Now he's livin', livin' with a gun.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Linden Arden Stole the Highlights
Song lyrics, Veedon Fleece (1974)

Love, Life, Children, Law

“When I was in hospital I found I could hardly read or writ. In these circumstances I began to write poems. I found that poetry was the only kind of writing in which I could express my thoughts. One night I dreamed I was lying on the bank of a canal, under machine gun fire. The next morning I wrote it out, Carentan O Caretan, and as I wrote I realized it was not a dream, but the memory of my first time under fire”

Louis Simpson (1923–2012) Jamaican poet

The Poetry of War 1939-45 ed. Ian Hamilton, London 1965
Carentan O Carentan, 1948

Dreams, Lying, Memory, Time

“How will the cessation of war purchases of planes, guns, tanks, and ships … affect the national level of employment? How many new jobs will be created by the consumers’demand for an additional one million of passenger cars, how many of these jobs can be expected to be located in the automobile industry itself, and how many in other industries such as Steel and the Chemicals, the Coal and the Petroleum industries? How much additional freight traffic and revenue can the American railroads expect to derive from every billion dollars worth spent on post-war housing construction?”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 141: as cited in: Frits Bos, " Three centuries of macro-economic statistics http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35391/1/Three_centuries_macroeconomic_statistics.pdf." (2011).

War, Cars, Housing

“Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

God, Color, Christ

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 About

Life, People, School, Family

“In the last Parliament, [the Liberal Party] enacted comprehensive gun control…”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

“I own guns. I think they're a good tool to have out in the country, and I should be able to protect my home and my family.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

51:46–51:54 "Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on Punk, Politics, & Why He Dumped the Dems" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPRH2uK9w

Family, Home, Thinking, Country

“A French politician without a mistress is like a sheriff without a gun—people think he has no firepower.”

Stephen Clarke book A Year in the Merde

On French Politician
A Year in the Merde (2005)

People, Thinking

“I must say, in my non-strategic… ‘cuz I’m under attack all the time, if you see it on Twitter. The [unclear] call me gay, it’s just, they’re vicious, there are death threats, and everything. And so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. [laughter] I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo, we are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?”

Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012) American writer and publisher

Speaking to a Massachusetts tea party group http://www.mediaite.com/online/andrew-breitbart-to-tea-partiers-we-outnumber-liberals-and-we-have-the-guns/ (September 16, 2011)

Death, War, People, Game

““I Critic am. Critics follow Festival for many lifetimes. We come to Criticize. First want I to know, am I Criticizing sapients? Or is just puppet show on cave wall of reality? Zombies or zimboes? Shadows of mind? Amusements for Eschaton?
A shiver ran up and down Burya’s spine. “I think I’m sapient,” he said cautiously. “Of course, I’d say that even if I wasn’t, wouldn’t I? Your question is unanswerable. So why ask it?”
Sister Seventh leaned forward. “None of your people ask anything,” she hissed. “Food, yes. Guns, yes. Wisdom? No. Am beginning think you not aware of selves, ask nothing.””

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

Wisdom, People, Food, Question

“People used to make records, as in the record of an event, the event of people playing music in a room, and now everything's cross-marketing, its about sunglasses and shoes, or guns and drugs that you choose.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Fuel
Song lyrics

People, Music, Shoe

“I've rode o'er hot, dry deserts
And over mountains tall
I believed in the bad land sayin'
"A good gun never falls"”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

"Strongest of Oak" (1965)

Mountain

“Never mind what you were doing, Olaf said. You're fired!
You can't fire me! Esme growled. I quit!
Well, you can leave by mutual agreement, Olaf grumbled and then with another succinct Ha! he lifted the harpoon gun and pointed it at Dewey Denouement.”

Daniel Handler book The Penultimate Peril

The Penultimate Peril (2005)

“It confirms my idea that you also need more liberal gun laws. Guns lead to a polite society, as we like to say in the United States. And I think that all of western Canada would agree with me.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"U of O Speech Cancelled" in The Ottawa Citizen (24 March 2010) http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/speech+cancelled/2718883/story.html. 2010

Law, Idea, Thinking

“Here's what we shouldn't do. We shouldn't import failed criminal justice policies from the United States. Mega prisons and mandatory minimums have failed in the United States, we've got to learn from the failure of the American criminal justice policy. Get tough on guns, invest in crime prevention and invest in victim services”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

English Language Leaders' Debate, April 12, 2011, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110413/main-election-110413/20110413?s_name=election2011

Justice, Failure, Learning

“The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"Love and Marriage"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

Fools

“You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

The Rush Limbaugh Show
2013-01-16
Radio, quoted in * 2013-01-18
Rush Limbaugh: 'You Know How to Stop Abortion? Require That Each One Occur With a Gun'
Conor
Friedersdorf
The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/rush-limbaugh-you-know-how-to-stop-abortion-require-that-each-one-occur-with-a-gun/267279/

“We're in Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

After experiencing vandalism directed at her congressional office in 2010 — The Guardian, US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot as six die in Arizona massacre, Ben Quinn and Paul Gallagher, January 9, 2011, Guardian News and Media Limited, 2010-01-10 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/08/gabrielle-giffords-shot-tucson-arizona,

People, Way

“Quality grouse shooting cannot be evaluated by numbers any more than diamonds can be measured by the pound. It is not a process but a reflection – a reflection in the gunner from the dog he shoots over and the gun he carries, and above all a feedback from the grouse. When these things happen well, looking back at end of day is to be as content as it is given a man to feel. It has been my past, it is my life and my hereafter, like these mountains endless in their splendor.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Life, Dogs, Feeling, Mountain