Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—Hope Jahren @HopeJahren

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Every species on earth- past or present, from the single celled microbe to the biggest dinosaur, daisies, trees, people- must accomplish the same five things in order to persist: grow, reproduce, rebuild, store resources, and defend itself.

Hope Jahren @HopeJahren
April 2016
Lab Girl
[Via email from Stephan P. who wondered if Ms. Jaren is a firearms owner. I did a little research but I didn’t find any good hints.

See also Paul Koning’s repeated reminders that even mushroom “understand” self-defense:

This quote, which I presume is absolutely true, should be used to confront those who insist we should “just give them what they want” when someone demands our dignity and money or our life. We have a natural right to defend ourselves. To not use tools to do what is a natural right is to abandon our true nature—a tool using species doing what all species must do to persist, defend ourselves.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Kopel

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Germany in 1900 was one of the most tolerant places in the world for Jews; in any country, things can change a lot in a few decades.

…

Not every nation that adopts the latter policy ends up with genocide. Yet the historical record is clear that mass disarmament of citizens can be the gateway to millions of deaths by mass shooting.

David Kopel
November 9, 2017
Mass shootings in gun-free nations
[See also, Hitler’s Willing Executioners and Death by “Gun Control”: The Human Cost of Victim Disarmament.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Fogh

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Well the initiation process does require one to eat the still-beating heart of a hippie…

John Fogh
Professional Firearms Instructor
November 9, 2017
In response to the question, “Can a vegan join the NRA and how will they be viewed by other gun owners?”
[Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

John has also been quoted here before:

He also taught Barb how to fight with a knife.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John R. Lott

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I haven’t found a single case where gun control advocates’ fears were borne out by the facts.  In not one of these cases did a permit holder accidentally shoot a bystander, or a police officer accidentally harm a permit holder.

There are many more of these cases. Imagine how different the gun control debate would be if  some of these heroic permit holders got national coverage. But even the liquor store shooting in Conyers, Georgia couldn’t get national coverage, despite being caught on video.

The more you learn about these cases, the more you appreciate that mass public shooters have good reason to keep attacking gun-free zones.  These killers might be crazy, but they aren’t stupid.  They realize that the longer it takes for a good guy to arrive with a gun, the more people they can kill.

John R. Lott
November 12, 2017
Good guys with guns saving lives
[We need to eliminate “gun-free” zones and prosecute the perpetrators who created these killing fields.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Snyder

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Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you’re a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?

Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards page 19
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.

The first question is semi-serious. The second is, obviously, a rhetorical question but to answer it anyway, “None.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—SunuvaBeach

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I’m also tired of associating the mental illness of gun culture with some kind of “all American” regular folks.
They’re sick.

SunuvaBeach
October 27, 2017
Comment to Finding common ground on gun control
[This is what they think of you.

My guess is if SunuvaBeach had their way with us we would be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Progressives have a long history of doing that.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ramesh Ponnuru

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What motivates the passionate gun-controllers? If saving lives is the goal, then directing more police resources to high-crime areas might have a bigger impact than any push for gun control, as Robert VerBruggen discusses elsewhere in this issue. So might public attention to suicide among the elderly, as statistician Leah Libresco recently concluded in the Washington Post after reviewing the literature on gun policies.

Liberals pride themselves these days on their empiricism, yet policies such as these do not seem to excite their interest as much as a campaign against guns.

Ramesh Ponnuru
Senior Editor of National Review
November 6, 2017
Why Gun Control Loses
[So… what’s the real reason?

As I have rhetorically asked many times before:

It’s not about guns or safety. It’s about control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Scharfenberg

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If gun-control advocates really want to stanch the blood, there’s no way around it: They’ll have to persuade more people of the need to confiscate millions of those firearms…

David Scharfenberg
November 10, 2017
Hand over your weapons
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

In response to Mr. Scharfenberg, NO!

Your move David.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kurt Schlichter

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Liberals so desperately want us disarmed because they hate that we hold a veto over their Venezuelan dreams. But they also want us disarmed because they hate us, and they yearn to break us and humiliate us and make us give in. When you own a weapon and can defend yourself and your rights, you are a citizen. When you do not, you are a subject. Your dignity gnaws at them.

They want to convince you to submit, but that only happens if you allow it. Their tool is the narrative, but a proud American with courage and a rifle just shot their narrative dead. And that’s the real reason the gun grabbers are grieving.

Kurt Schlichter
November 9, 2017
Thoughts and Prayers for Anti-Gun Freaks Grieving Over Death of The Narrative
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Emily Miller @EmilyMiller

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The government passing more firearms laws is not going to “do something” other than infringe on a constitutional right. This is because no gun control law in the U.S. has been proven to reduce gun crime. I often debate gun control advocates and repeatedly ask them to tell me what law, at any level of government, has resulted in a reduction of gun crimes. They can never answer that question.

Emily Miller
November 7, 2017
How to Respond to Those Who Want to ‘Do Something’ After Texas Shooting
[It’s a variation of Just one question.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Heather Wilhelm

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In the wake of Sunday’s horrific Texas church shooting, America’s chattering classes promptly responded with silent, respectful, and somber reflection, holding off on divisive and caustic political debates for the day.

Unfortunately for all of us, that was over on Earth 2.

Heather Wilhelm
November 8, 2017
Gun Control and Magical Thinking
[She goes on to say:

Government bureaucracy often fails. It should be held accountable; it is not always our friend. To think otherwise, in fact, might be the ultimate in magical thinking.

Yup.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Kopel and Joseph Geenlee

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For decades researchers have found that many Americans do not understand how strict gun control laws already are. Some elected officials and journalists are similarly misinformed. Widespread ignorance about existing law makes things easier for anti-gun lobbyists who always insist that every notorious crime proves that we need more gun control laws.

David Kopel and Joseph Geenlee
November 8, 2017
What if there were serious gun controls?
[“Many”? How about “the vast majority”?

Other than that it’s a pretty decent opinion piece, but that is as you would expect from Kopel.

Anti-gun people prey on the ignorance of the public.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Frum

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Americans die from gunfire in proportions unparalleled in the civilized world because Americans own guns in proportions unparalleled in the civilized world. More guns mean more lethal accidents, more suicides, more everyday arguments escalated into murderous fusillades.

David Frum
October 6, 2017
The Rules of the Gun Debate–The rules for discussing firearms in the United States obscure the obvious solutions.
[If you are totally ignorant it’s a reasonable hypothesis. But if you have half a brain and do a little research you will discover it fails the reality test:

Frum is totally ignorant and/or doesn’t have half a brain, and/or is deliberately lying.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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It would be nice to think that with a pro-gun president and pro-gun majorities in Congress, statehouses, and governor’s mansions across the country, the battle to secure the Second Amendment is won. But as long as decent, law-abiding gun owners are blamed for the acts of deranged murderers, the battle can never end.

…

For us to think otherwise is to sow the seeds of our own undoing.

NRA-ILA
October 13, 2017
Gun Banners Unmasked: The Vengeful Face of the Anti-gun Agenda Emerges Once Again
[Eternal vigilance and all that.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Johnnie Langendorff

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He briefed me quickly on what had just happened and said he had to get him. So that’s what I did.

…

He just hurt so many people, he affected so many people’s lives, why wouldn’t you want to take him down?

Johnnie Langendorff
November 5, 2017
An unlikely hero describes gun battle and 95 mph chase with Texas shooting suspect
[The perpetrator (this loser will not be mentioned by name on this blog) in the Texas church shooting was engaged by a neighbor who got a bullet in through a gap in loser’s the body armor (he was wearing what has been described as a ballistic vest). The neighbor and Langendorff pursued the loser while keeping the police updated who arrived at the location where the loser drove off the road. The neighbor used the hood of Langendorff’s pickup for support of his rifle (and the engine compartment for cover) to keep the loser from getting away. The police arrived five to seven minutes later.

As is usual, when seconds matter the police are only minutes away. The bad guy was stopped by private citizens who did what was immediately needed and the police are investigating and writing reports.

The situation could have turned out better had someone engaged the loser with shots to the head and/or hips when he first entered the church. Texas law appears to allow churches to forbid firearms provided they give notice to church visitors. At this point I don’t know as to whether the church had given such notice.

I see some lessons to be learned here: 1) Carry a gun, and 2) Immediately confront evil. This is counter to the narrative of the anti-gun people who call people who do this “vigilantes” and insist such behavior is “best left to the authorities”. This is one more example of why anti-gun people are losing and are, in fact, aligning themselves with other criminal losers.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Saurus

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STOP THE SHOOTINGS. STOP REPUBLICANS

Saurus
November 5, 2017
Comment to At least 26 dead in South Texas church shooting, officials say
[One has to wonder what color the sky is in this person’s universe. Nearly all mass shooters are either Democrats or have no known political affiliation.

The most likely explanation for the comment is psychological projection.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lara Smith

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They hate us more than the NRA!

Lara Smith
Spokeswoman for the Liberal Gun Club regarding Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
November 4, 2017
The Loneliness of the Liberal Gun Lover
[Of course. Liberals with guns are considered traitors and/or apostates. Such people are always more hated and punished than the enemy.

Fortunately, Bloomberg and friends don’t yet have the kind of powers governments and authoritarian religions have to punish traitors and apostates. Let’s keep it that way.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Waldman

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I’d like to ban guns. Almost all of them, at least the ones in private hands.

…

We’d be much better off if we abandoned the absurd fetishism around guns that leaves us awash in so much blood and gore. America would simply be safer if we constructed our gun laws like one of our peer countries in Europe or Asia.

Paul Waldman
October 6, 2017
Ban guns
[Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Safer? Tell that to the people in the Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin in the early and mid 20th Century. Or the residents of Nanking who survived December 1937 and January of 1938. Or read Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One). And the more astute should only have to read one paragraph of Solzhenitsyn’s.

And once the safety argument has been completely destroyed lets “have a discussion” about the morality of denying people the best available tools to defend themselves and their families.

If they can’t be swayed I think one must conclude they regard all which we consider hazards of infringing the specific enumerate right to keep and bear arms as features, not bugs. Their first principles must include claiming the necessity of a ruling class with absolute power over the ignorant bitter clingers, or in more modern terminology “basket of deplorables”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bret Stephens

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I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder.

Bret Stephens
October 5, 2017
Repeal the Second Amendment
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Even if the Second Amendment were to be repealed, the Supreme Court has already said:

This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed…

So, the right would still exist even if Stephens could accomplish his desire. And as the repeal date approached you can be sure the preparation for what was to follow would make the previous world’s greatest gun salesmen record look pathetic.

And then Stephens would discover the, probably only, circumstances for which more guns means more murder as some foolish government types attempted to forcibly take those guns from their owners.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Wendell Phillips

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Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

Wendell Phillips
January 28, 1852
Speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
[The link about his speech has some interesting history about the frequent misattribution of the “eternal vigilance…” quote.

Also note they had the same problem with democrats then as we do today.—Joe]