Top 48 Handguns Quotes & Sayings

As Americans, we have a long history with firearms. We also have a government built on compromise, so here is the compromise I propose: Ban assault rifles and handguns for everyone except police and military personnel. These weapons are made to kill humans and should be strictly limited. At the same time, allow responsible citizens to own rifles and shotguns. Rifles are for hunting big-game animals, shotguns are for hunting birds; non-automatic versions of these weapons should be available for those with an interest in hunting or target shooting.

Thousands of children are killed by handguns in the United States each year. What is that about? What are we doing? We accept that? And we accept the presence of these weapons that are in silos and on submarines and airplanes? If any madman gets hold of them - and certainly there are madmen out there who will figure out how to get hold of them, they always have - what are we even making such things for?

America's the great conundrum and the great dream and the great fascination: the new land, the new world, the new temple, the new city, and the great mess. The most handguns, bombs, weaponry, violence, the cop of the world etcetera. All the contradictions. Mediocrity versus something like indigenous jazz, one of the most evolved sophisticated musical forms on the planet.

I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of people - law-abiding citizens use if for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets.

My guess [is] . . . that the great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment. . . . I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles and shotguns, and now I think we're prepared to get rid of the damned things entirely - the handguns, the semis and the automatics.

If President Obama had his way, the United States would be just like Britain and Australia, where handguns were confiscated and remain banned with little to show for it. Thankfully, the Second Amendment and the American people will not stand for it.

In my opinion, the only people who should have handguns are the police.

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead... What I believe is, if he [Belcher] didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today... Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.

Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners, indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem.

There is no meaningful or persuasive constitutional distinction between semiautomatic handguns and semiautomatic rifles.

The NRA is right...handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns.

One tenet of the National Rifle Association's faith has always been that handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. For once, the NRA is right and America's leading handgun control organization is wrong. Criminals don't buy guns in gun stores. That's why they're criminals. But it isn't criminals who are killing most of the 20,000 to 22,000 people who die from handguns each year. We are.

If people want to own a rifle or something like that for hunting purposes only, I tend to agree with that. But semi-automatic weapons and handguns, that's just unreal. I mean, what good are handguns?

Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.

We would just go out and line up a bunch of cans and shoot with rifles, handguns and at times, submachine guns... When I was a kid it was a controlled atmosphere, we weren't shooting at humans... we were shooting at cans and bottles mostly. I will most certainly take my kids out for target practice.

...It is statistically irrefutable that those American cities with stringent "gun control" (e.g. N.Y.C., D.C., Chicago, L.A.) have higher crime rates. It is also irrefutable that those 31 states which have made conceal carry of handguns easy for law-abiding citizens have correspondingly enjoyed significant drops in their crime rates.

Common sense should tell us that there is no reason for civilians to have access to easily concealable handguns with the capability to shoot through body armor.

After a week of back and forth, and forth and back over firearms, it's good to see a consensus developing on this common-sense amendment to keep handguns away from children.

Handguns are a public health issue.

There is something about a Luger that separates it from all other handguns, and Luger devotees and Luger society members speak of it in romantic terms that must sound plain nuts to those who consider themselves level-headed.

I have a smoke grenade in my room," I said. "What?" Megan asked. "How?" "I grew up working at a munitions plant," I said. "We mostly made rifles and handguns, but we worked with other factories. I got to pick up the occasional goody from the QC reject pile." "A smoke grenade is a goody?" Cody asked. I frowned. What did he mean? Of course it was. Who wouldn't want a smoke grenade when offered one?

I think we can provide common-sense approaches to the issue of illegal guns that are ending up on the streets. We can make sure that criminals don't have guns in their hands. We can make certain that those who are mentally deranged are not getting a hold of handguns. We can trace guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers that may be selling to straw purchasers and dumping them on the streets.

Only the police should have handguns.

The children are our future. And that is why, ultimately, we're screwed unless we do something about it. If you haven't noticed, the children who are our future are good-looking, but they aren't all that bright. As dense as they might be, they will eventually notice that adults have spent all the money, spread disease, and turned the planet into a smoky, filthy ball of death. We're raising an entire generation of dumb, pissed-off kids who know where the handguns are kept. This is not a good recipe for a happy future.

Handguns are a public-health problem.

I think we should have a very, very heavy tax on handguns and on bullets.

The major political battles about guns in our society concern handguns and assault weapons, not long arms like hunting rifles.

... immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act ... [which] would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns.

Fear, physical pain, and death are just part of the price Americans pay for the easy access of handguns. It is estimated that the total costs to Americans of gun violence (the vast majority of which involves handguns) is measured in tens of billions of dollars.3 In comparison, the wholesale value of the 1.3 million handguns manufactured in America in 1998 totaled only $370 million.

I shortly will introduce legislation banning the sale, manufacture or possession of handguns (with exceptions for law enforcement and licensed target clubs)... . It is time to act. We cannot go on like this. Ban them!

New Jersey has decided that fewer handguns legally carried in public means less crime. It is obvious that the justifiable need requirement functions as a rationing system designed to limit the number of handguns carried in New Jersey.

You can't tell what's aboard a container ship. We carried every kind of cargo, all of it on view: a police car, penicillin, Johnnie Walker Red, toilets, handguns, lumber, Ping-Pong balls, and IBM data cards.

Because we allow handguns. When you know someone in the crowd might be packing a rod, it can't help but rush your timing.

England, where no one has guns: 14 deaths. United States...23,000 deaths from handguns. But - there's no connection.

There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. The only way to control handguns use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.

Ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenaged boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety, they exacerbate our flaws. tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation, rather than avoiding it.

Multiple studies, including from the Justice Department, have shown that the guns used in homicides, including the killing of police officers, overwhelmingly tend to be small-caliber handguns. Moreover, gun ownership has increased over the past 20 years — the same period in which both the violent crime rate and the killing of police officers have been in decline.

I've been teaching full-time for 41 years at small colleges, and I can't imagine what it would mean for me or my colleagues to be armed with handguns or rifles instead of books and a thorough knowledge of our chosen disciplines.

You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.

We would like to see, in the future, what we will probably call needs-based licensing of all weapons. ...Where it would make it much more difficult for anybody to be able to purchase handguns.

Semi-automatic rifles, like semi-automatic handguns, have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting, and other lawful uses.

I want saner gun laws. I think all these automatic weapons should be banned, big clips and handguns should be banned. As far as I'm concerned, shotguns and hunting weapons are all that we should allow in America.

To end the crisis [of gun violence], we have to regulate -or, in the case of handguns and assault weapons, completely ban -the product. We are far past the [point] where registration, licensing, safety training, background checks, or waiting periods will have much effect on firearms violence.

Judge Laurence Silberman explains the origins of his ruling against the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. He explains, 'It wasn't a right to bear arms granted by the Constitution, it was a right that was protected by the Constitution.'

Leaving aside handguns and hunting weapons, what's the justification for possessing an AR-15-style weapon?

Because war and preparations for war have acquired legitimacy, and because of the tremendous proliferation of arms through production and export, so that they are now available more or less to all and sundry, right down to handguns and stilettos, the cult of violence has by now so permeated relations between people that we are compelled to witness as well an increase in everyday violence.

We have to start with a ban on the manufacturing and import of handguns. From there we register the guns which are currently owned, and follow that with additional bans and acquisitions of handguns and rifles with no sporting purpose.

If a bill to ban handguns came to the house floor, I would vote for it.