Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—Chuck Schumer

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We’re not interested in curtailing the rights of gun owners…

Chuck Schumer
U.S. Senator from New York
March 16, 2011
Mayor Bloomberg scolds nation for not standing up to gun lobby
[I choked when I read that even though I wasn’t drinking anything.

To get a better idea of Schumer’s interest you need a little background. Here is a good example:

We’re here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true!. We’re going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We’re going to beat guns into submission!

U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer
November 30, 1993
NBC Nightly News

I’m reminded of how you can tell when a politician is lying—his lips are moving.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Joshua Horwitz

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Now that there is proven resolve to keep military-style weapons off of America’s streets, we hope Congress and the President will get behind a truly effective assault weapons ban – one that includes ‘copycat’ weapons just as deadly as those already banned.

Joshua Horwitz
March 2, 2004
Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
CSGV Claims Victory in Defeating Gun Immunity Bill
[As is typical with anti-gun people, their claims are usually worthless. The “Gun Immunity Bill” later passed and the “assault weapon” ban expired a few months later.

Also I would like to point out that the AWB was created and passed on the basis of “menacing looks”. Then they turned around and wanted to ban guns that matched the “assault weapons” in terms of “deadliness”.

So anything with a menacing look should be banned. And then 10 years later anything that is the functional equivalent of something that looks menacing should be banned as well.

Does that mean Michelle Obama should be banned because she is the functional equivalent of Hillary Clinton 15 years ago?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barack Obama

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Now, like the majority of Americans, I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. And the courts have settled that as the law of the land. In this country, we have a strong tradition of gun ownership that’s handed from generation to generation. Hunting and shooting are part of our national heritage. And, in fact, my administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners – it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.

The fact is, almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible. They’re our friends and neighbors. They buy their guns legally and use them safely, whether for hunting or target shooting, collection or protection. And that’s something that gun-safety advocates need to accept.

Barack Obama
March 13, 2011
We must seek agreement on gun reforms
[All the gun safety advocates that I know (most are NRA firearms safety instructors) do accept this. It’s the anti-gun activists that don’t accept it.

Other than that minor point I don’t have anything to disagree with in those two paragraphs. He could have suggested grief counseling for Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center supporters but my read of the tone is that he wouldn’t have really meant it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ayn Rand

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Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

Ayn Rand
[A friend of mine once compared government aid to candy that causes cancer. It tastes sweet and is almost irresistible but eventually it will kill you.

Some lessons are taught over and over with only a few ever really grasping it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barron Barnett

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This agency needs to be put down like a rabid dog and it’s behavior and rate of growth reminds me of some other agencies in the early 1990s.  The only difference  is they haven’t shot a woman holding a baby or burned a bunch of people to death. Instead they are giving people extra unnecessary dose of radiation at the point of the gun, claiming necessity, but in reality it’s pointless.

Barron Barnett
March 13, 2011
TSA Body Scanners Giving 10x Dose
[With the clarification that it is the agency and not the people that need to be put down I’m in complete agreement with this.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Milton Friedman

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Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Milton Friedman
[It is predicted the Federal budget deficit will reach $1.65 trillion this year with a $14.1 trillion debt and about $2.1 trillion in income. Yet the House cannot reach agreement on spending cuts. The House Republicans want to only cut $60 billion in spending and the Democrats only want to cut spending $6.5 billion. If you were to scale this down into numbers people might be able to relate to it would look like the following.

If your family income were $50,000 then:

  • Family debt is $335,700
  • Family deficit is $39,300 (spending is $89,300/year)
  • The head of household wants to cut $1,430 in yearly spending
  • The spouse wants to cut $154.80 in yearly spending

The children should cut up the credit cards and sell everything that isn’t the bare minimum needed for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and communication. If the debt still isn’t being paid down they should consider selling their parents organs.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Charles Krauthammer

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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.

Charles Krauthammer
April 5, 1996
Disarm the Citizenry. But not yet
Originally in The Washington Post on April 5. The above link is in the Seattle Times from April 8, 1996.
[Via email from Ry who said, “Lots of qotd material here”. This was like saying, “Nukes make lots of dust.”

This was part of the overreaching the anti-gun people did in the mid and late 1990s. They were on a roll in September 1994 and thought they were unstoppable and openly announced their intentions. They thought there were no obstacles. They thought at most there were just speed bumps causing them to slow down on their way to total domination. And they were wrong.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matt Taibbi

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I’m beginning to think that pushing for gun control is a good idea, if only because there’s nothing else that will nauseate and terrify Tea Partiers more. To me, the right-wing fascination with guns is such an obviously Freudian phenomenon that it’s almost embarrassing; real and very justified fears of creeping political impotence, idiotically and self-defeatingly expressed in passionate defense of their right to shoot themselves in tragic domestic accidents. Going after Republicans’ gun rights has always seemed to me needlessly provocative and cruel, sort of like removing the tinfoil helmet your local schizophrenic thinks is protecting him from space rays.


But now the paranoia has now gone so far, it’s just too tempting not to tweak. There’s got to be some way to pursue a new gun-control law that would maximally freak out this growing population of people who literally sleep with their guns at night.


How about a new law requiring all registered handgun owners to wear white Kevlar Clockwork Orange-style jockstraps? Or how about a new campaign – and this one I actually like – in which all of us who do not have guns voluntarily send in letters to the ATF, cheerfully informing them of our unarmed status (“Dear Government Agent: In case you were keeping a database of such information…”).


Matt Taibbi
March 10, 2011
Time For Gun Control — If Only to Tweak the Tea Party
[I wonder what Taibbi would think of laws requiring journalist to be licensed and registered?


Gun owners need to know what these people think of them and Taibbi comes through. Not only is Taibbi adhering to Markley’s law he is willingly exposing his bigotry.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bill O’Connor

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A golf course is the willful and deliberate misuse of a perfectly good rifle range.

Bill O’Connor
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 3, No. 6
25 April 1995
[This came to mind because of a comment I saw at Roberta’s place.

That is the way I see it too. I’m a probably reminded of this far more frequently than most because there is golf course close enough to my hidden underground bunker that I could land spit wads into it if I went topside.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Handgun Control Inc.

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Handgun Control is pleased to announce its participation in FreedomChannel.com, a new nonpartisan political internet website. FreedomChannel.com, which launches on November 8, features the first-ever video-on-demand issue statements from presidential candidates and representatives of advocacy groups.

Handgun Control President Bob Walker is featured in the FreedomChannel.com’s “Views-on-the-News” video-on-demand program, speaking about the need for common-sense measures to reduce gun violence in this country.

Handgun Control Inc.
November 4, 1999
HANDGUN CONTROL PARTICIPATES IN LAUNCH OF NEW POLITICAL INTERNET SITE, FREEDOMCHANNEL.COM
[With Handgun Control, now The Brady Campaign, being featured on “Freedom Channel” it is no surprise FreedomChannel.com no longer exists. They either had crap for brains attempting to associate freedom with an anti-freedom organization or it collapsed from the weight of the irony.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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The Violence Policy Center (VPC) today released The Endgame, a report detailing three areas that must be reformed within the gun industry in order for a settlement of lawsuits filed by major cities against the industry to have any significant effect in reducing firearms violence. Public statements by some involved in ongoing talks with the gun industry indicate a growing desire to quickly reach a settlement.


…


A meaningful settlement must include:



  1. Restrictions on Gun Industry Products

    • Stop innovating for lethality, i.e., developing products, especially handguns, for a combination of high caliber and concealability.
    • Close the loopholes by which assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines, supposedly already banned, continue to flow onto the market.
    • Agree to recall products with safety related defects causing death or serious injury to consumers, as well as develop a system to identify and remedy these defects.

  2. Reform How Guns Are Distributed

    • Accept independent standards to weed out those distributors and retailers engaging in illegal or negligent sales. For example, manufacturers should include in their agreements with wholesalers provisions prohibiting sales to “kitchen-table” gun dealers, who operate out of their homes, and dealers who sell at gun shows. Also, a system for spotting dealers who sell a disproportionate number of crime guns is needed.

  3. Changes in Marketing Practices

    • Immediately cease marketing campaigns aimed at children, as well as fear-based marketing strategies, such as using predictions of Y2K social collapse to drive up gun sales. Also, the industry should stop making misleading and unwarranted self-defense claims in their advertising.

Violence Policy Center
December 21, 1999
New VPC Report Lays Out Minimal Terms for Settlement of Litigation Against Gun Industry
[In 1999 they still had fair amount of power. Probably not as much as they thought they had but still they had inflicted a fair amount of damage in the recent past and wanted to get another whack in before Clinton left office. The problem was that they overreached and struck out. We won that fight as a result of their grasping for something beyond their reach.


This was the same problem the Brady Campaign had with initiative 676 in Washington State in 1997. The local Washington Ceasefire anti-gun organization wanted to put a much more limited and realizable initiative on the ballot. But the Brady Campaign said they would provide support only if was made much broader. They bit off more than they could chew and lost 29% to 71%.


I remember the concealed carry fights of 15+ years ago. There were a lot of people that wanted “Vermont Carry” rather than licensing. It was believed there was no path to “Vermont Carry” once we had “Shall Issue” carry. It was believed that we were giving up too much by allowing the government to license a right. That we now appear to be on a roll to “Constitutional Carry” in many states proves that fear was unfounded. We are winning because we were willing to accept what we could get rather than what we believed was due to us.


There is something I learned in chess a long time ago which holds true in the gun games I play and it’s true in politics as well . It’s more important to not lose than it is win. Let the other guy take the chances and you win when they screw up.—Joe]

Quote of the day—rfkolbe

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Handguns are a menace to society and whenever sanity returns to our courts, we will ban them.

rfkolbe
March 6, 2011
Comment to Gun rights groups to test political strength–Concealed carry debate picks up steam with testimony before Illinois House committee this week
[Do not think for a second that our opponents merely want “reasonable regulation”. For them “common sense” is a code phrase with a very clear meaning.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Melissa Me

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The “gun nuts” don’t think anything is going to happen really. They haven’t thought about anything. They are just wackos and conspiracy theorists who need a cause to latch onto. They need a justification for their paranoia. It’s like a religion to them.

Melissa Me
March 5, 2011
Comment to What do American gun nuts think will happen if the government takes the guns away?
[I think the more correct answer to the question is that there would soon be a new government in town.

But getting back to Melissa Me’s answer. I think I’m okay with her position. Religion is protected under the First Amendment. So that means she thinks the specific enumerated right to keep and bear gun is doubly protected by the Bill of Rights. I think I can live with that regardless of what her personal opinion of me is.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Elbert Hubbard

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So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

Elbert Hubbard
[This is an appealing notion. And I’m pretty sure it is subscribed to by a large number of people. However I think it is exceedingly naïve. Examples are not the sole guide to future behavior.—Joe]

Quote of the day—SUNIL DHAKAR

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dear fraind i want make a bomb plese give me a rule of make bomb plese give me a ans

SUNIL DHAKAR
February 23, 2011
Via email to my Boomershoot address.
[I was unable to come up with anything snarky to say in reply. I could not find words that I thought he would understand beyond a simple “No.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle @ UltiMAK

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As the communists have been saying; never let a good crisis go to waste. It follows logically then that they should never waste the opportunity to manufacture a good crisis. It’s just good policy. It’s what you do if you want to keep the funding coming in.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
March 2, 2011
In a comment here.
[The manufacturing of crises not limited to communists. The “War on Drugs” was created by a conservative hero. History is filled with them by Fascists, the Green Party and probably nearly every political party.

I always marvel at the number of people that seem to think all solutions involve “doing something”. I suspect it is in our genetic code. The witch doctor has to dance before it will rain and a virgin has to be sacrificed to prevent the volcano from exploding, right?

I think Libertarians could legitimately claim any number of crises exist but nearly everyone ignores them even if it is true. Probably because the solutions are to defund action rather than to fund action. Solutions that involve not “doing something” instead of more “doing something” don’t resonate with the majority of people. At some level our politicians/witch-doctors know this and always continue dancing and sacrificing virgins.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Los Angles Times

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Giving federal agents a tool to trace guns isn’t going to solve the problem of violence at the border, but it may help identify those who are supplying brutal drug gangs like the one that killed a U.S. immigration agent and injured another one this month in Mexico. As modest as the ATF’s plan is, it’s far better than what Congress is offering: the continued flow of instruments of death across a dangerous border.

Los Angles Time
February 28, 2011
Editorial: Tracking the gun-runners
[The “layers of editorial oversight” in this paragraph is a vacuous as deep space and the irony packed into this approaches the density of a neutron star.

If Congress wanted to do something about those that continue the “flow of instruments of death” which ended up being used to kill the U.S. immigrations agent I would be all for it. Congress disbanding the ATF and turning the agents responsible for this over to prosecutors would suit me just fine.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Diane Dimond

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Truth be told, I’d like to see all guns — from small handguns and Glocks to rifles and semi-automatic types — melted down and used for scrap.

Tra-la-lah! Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world that found no need for guns at all?

Diane Dimond
February 27, 2011
Will guns make college campuses safer?
[Truth be told, when she puts her feelings put aside she appears to be reluctantly on our side. She realizes that her feelings are not realistic. She appears to be very conflicted about it but realizes that the utopian ideal of no need for guns isn’t achievable.

I found myself spending quite a bit of time pondering her last sentence I quoted above. It’s a big leap to imagine that type of world where there was “no need for guns at all”. But yeah. I think she is right. If there was no need for guns at all the world would be a better place. No violent crime to be defended against, no wars to fight, you could hunt wild game with bow and arrow or easily trap them. I wonder if we were to admit to the vehement anti-gunners their utopian world sounds nice to us too but utopia isn’t an option. We are realists and if they had a plan by which their utopia was achievable we would work towards that goal with them and then when we reach utopia we would give up our guns. Would they accept the deal, put the gun restrictions aside and work on their utopia? Or do they believe the guns have to go first before their utopia can be achieved? I’m betting it is the latter but I think it would be an interesting conversation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rep. Hal Wick

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Do I or the other co-sponsors believe that the state of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance.

Rep. Hal Wick
State Representative in South Dakota
Arizona shooting has little effect on national gun debate
[I’m not familiar with the constitution or laws of South Dakota but if they require you to have liability insurance before you can drive your car on their roads then it would seem to me they could require you to have road flares, a fire extinguisher, and a gun in your car before you can use their roads. That does not necessarily expand to all South Dakota citizens but it sure would cover a lot of them. And it would amuse me greatly that before Joan Peterson, Brady Campaign board member living next door in Minnesota, could visit she would have to have a gun in the vehicle.

The health care requirement the Feds are attempting would appear to be something completely different. Driving on public roads is a privilege granted by the state, mere existence is not.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sarah Brady

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We are here today to tell you about an industry whose secrecy, opportunism, cynicism and disdain for consumer protection make it the next logical target for reform in America. That industry has hidden behind its mouthpieces and lobbyists for years and years. That industry, although it contains some respectable and responsible companies, also has chief executives who boast about marketing tools of mass murder.

Sarah Brady
Symposium moderator and Chair of Handgun Control, Inc. and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.
October 8, 1997
GUN INDUSTRY EXPERTS PREDICT FAR-REACHING REFORMS; POINT TO TOBACCO AND OTHER INDUSTRIES AS PRECEDENT
[It appears the “mass murder” sound-bite has been around for quite a while. It’s not quite “weapon of mass destruction” like some people recently started saying but it’s close.

I thought this was an appropriate QOTD since I received my T-Shirt yesterday. If it’s not too cold (it got down to -7F last night but it has now warmed up to a balmy 12F) to show it off I’ll wear it to the Steel Challenge match tomorrow.—Joe]