The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
John F. Kennedy
[I’m sure Kennedy had something else in mind but I’m thinking the freedom to own firearms. The inalienable right to keep and bear arms.–Joe]
The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.
The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the US Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them that obligation to extend that culture throughout the world.
Samuel P. Huntington
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
[Most people probably would find this book a bit dry but I find it, for the most part, fascinating. I’ve been listening to it (as an Audio Book) on my iPod as I travel back and forth to the Seattle area.–Joe]
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
Will Rogers
If you see a snake, just kill it – don’t appoint a committee on snakes.
Ross Perot
I believe that guns don’t kill people. Husbands that come home early do.
Larry the Cable Guy
Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again
I knew they shot my brother, and I thought they were gonna shoot me. I had a better chance with the police.
Nicholas Artry
(Attempted) robber of an Indianapolis jewelry store. His brother was killed by the owner (five shots from a .38) and an employee (one shot from a .44).
This came from the second posting on Wayne LaPierre’s new blog.
[This quote matches well from the results of Rossi and Wright’s survey described in their book Armed and Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms. In this book the researchers discovered that robbers are more afraid of being shot by a home owner than by being arrested and sent to prison by the police. Hence they avoid breaking into homes that might have guns.
I have the same complaints about Wayne’s blog that Say Uncle does.–Joe]
It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business.
R.U. Sirius
In How To Mutate and Take Over The World
[From a conversation and followup email from Kevin at The Smallest Minority.–Joe]
A firing rate of 15 to 20 percent among soldiers is like having a literacy rate of 15 to 20 percent among proofreaders. Once those in authority realized the existence and magnitude of the problem, it was only a matter of time until they solved it.
And thus, since World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological warfare — psychological warfare conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one’s own troops. Propaganda and various other crude forms of psychological enabling have always been present in warfare, but in the second half of this century psychology has had an impact as great as that of technology on the modern battlefield.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
From On Killing — The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill In War and Society
Page 251
The large brain, like large government, may not be able to do simple things in a simple way.
Donald O. Hebb
[And to extend this even further and more emphatically, government cannot do things that businesses and individuals can. Health care, the food supply, housing, and personal security being just a few obvious cases in point.–Joe]
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
The Liberal party has no direction. The real challenge for the next leader will obviously be to unite the party and give them some direction other than just to run with whatever the issue of the week is that they think they can make a cheap point out of.
Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
September 16, 2006
$1-billion didn’t prevent tragedy
[As near as I can tell the same applies to the Democrats in our country.–Joe]
Your claim that “they’re only for killing people” is imprecise. A gas chamber or electric chair is designed for killing people, and these devices obviously serve different functions than guns. To be precise, a high-capacity, military-type rifle or handgun is designed for conflict. When I need to protect myself and my freedom, I want the most reliable, most durable, highest-capacity weapon possible. The only thing hunting and target shooting have to do with freedom is that they’re good practice.
John Ross
http://www.john-ross.net/mistakes.htm
September 14, 2005
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Someone gets up one day and says, ‘I’m gonna kill all the girls.’ How do you legislate against that?
Katie True
Pennsylvania House Representative from Lancaster County
October 2, 2006
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Analysis: Gun control forces will be emboldened, face tall task
[The “tall task” is to train and arm the adults in the schools. The only solution which could improve the odds.–Joe]
DOS probably got your dog pregnant and left the milk out a couple times in college. Perhaps Windows 3.11 never paid you back for that $100 it was totally going to spend to get his car fixed but you later found out he spent on whiskey and hookers. Exchange server – I heard what it did, it was in all the papers.
Ry Jones
I understand you hate Microsoft
October 1, 2006
[Read the post. How apropos. As I told Barb this morning, “My phone turned into a pumpkin at midnight.”–Joe]
Giving a friend or neighbor a firearm doesn’t help them– it puts them in danger. And re-releasing a firearm into the community instead of destroying it is, as Shaw rightly realizes, asking for trouble.
‘Mike’ at GunGuys.com
September 29, 2006
Gun Owner Can’t Get Rid of an Unwanted Gun
[One could surmise from this nut case that the gun, a bolt action .22 rifle, was caught in a trap while on the prowl for a victim. He uses language that would be more appropriate for a live rattlesnake than an inanimate object made of metal and wood. Either ‘Mike’ has mental problems or he is actually on our side and is mocking the anti-gun bigots.–Joe]
The time is overdue for a reassessment of such laws. All they have done is create target-rich, no-risk environments for monsters who have no fear of encountering an armed teacher or administrator, or a legally-armed private citizen who might happen to be in the building.
This sort of thing didn’t happen before the advent of gun-free school zone laws. You never saw such an outrage in the days when high schools typically had rifle teams, and — particularly in the West — where it was common in the fall to find both teachers and students with hunting rifles or shotguns locked in their cars.
Alan Gottlieb
Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
CO. ATTACK PROVES FALLACY OF ‘GUN FREE SCHOOL ZONE’ LAWS, SAYS CCRKBA
September 28, 2006
Liberal gun-grabbing legislation is going to go down here… . And I’m going to continue to stand with some of my colleagues and reference those hundreds of thousands of Second Amendment supporters that want the gun-grabbing legislation to go down.
Daryl Metcalfe
Pennsylvania State Representative
September 27, 2006
Mostly, a miss on gun control
The Philadelphia Enquirer September 28, 2006
[This particular gun grabbing special event attracted a lot of attention outside the state as well as inside. It’s good to see the anti-gun bigots stopped.–Joe]
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.
Ross Perot
[I was thinking of Jeff Cooper when I selected this quote. He did both.–Joe]
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
[At no time in my memory has this been more clear than since September 11, 2001.–Joe]