Nae Queen! Nae Laird! Nae Master! I willna' be fooled again!
W: 321.6
To-Do:
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| I've been on a scrapple kick lately. Time to knock that off. |
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| A box? A BOX! |
I had a dream that I can't recall a bit of now.
It drove me from a warm bed like it had become a cold and foreign land.
What are you hiding down there, ID, that disrupts my sleep and then flees the light? Maybe I don't really want to know.
Maybe, hell is all one's dreams come true.
W: 322.4
To-Do:
Why were the kids not important enough to be defended?
I promise you the police station has armed people to defend it.
The courthouses do too, so I guess lawyers and judges get protection.
Same with the capital building. Politicians are defended.
Safe bet every major bank has guards. Money is defended.
100% sure the governor's mansion has guards.
Hell, even the titty bars have someone guarding them.
Why don't the kids count as much as money or politicians or strippers?
W: 326.0
To-Do:
Herself worked from the office today, which left it quiet enough I could think. So, at this point, I'm 3000 4000 5000 words into this story...
****
“Do you know what a mechanic is? It's somebody who fixes other people's problems for them. That's not because they won't, but because they can't.
A mechanic is somebody who looks at problems and solutions and brings them together in the most efficient way possible.
That problem might be a motor that
won't work right. , a computer that's acting strange, or even a person who has
used up too much oxygen.”
****
In the Earth system, in the asteroid belt. It’s called a belt, but it’s more like a flimsy gauze nighty. The average distance between asteroids of any size is about a million kilometers. That meant asteroid mining was a tight proposition, and there were a thousand miners just surviving for everyone that hit it rich. Still, it was the wild frontier of the system and that attracted the people Earth society was squeezing out of existence.
These tales take place on Karin Main, the primary asteroid of the Karin group. Simply called ‘Main’, the place had been mined out decades ago, but that left behind a 3-kilometer wide by 4-kilometer long rock riddled with mining bores. It became a natural base for miners in the belt. Cap the bores and seal any cracks. Pump in an atmosphere. Install a couple of half-kilometer centrifuge wheels at either end and counter-rotate them to keep the gymnastics to a minimum. Power came from fusion reactors salvaged from wrecked ships. Nothing wasted, ever; That was the belter motto.
The population on Main shifted constantly, depending on where the orbit stood. Sometimes they were close enough to other habitations that people would travel easily between them (Easy on belter terms, where a two-week flight was considered going for a walk). On any given day Main might have two thousand permanent residents and another five hundred visitors.
The shop was on level one, adjacent to the primary docks. This made for a hike to housing, but it put the shop right next to their primary customers, belter’s ships. Everyone just called it ‘The Shop’ since it was the only place like it in the belt. It was the place you went to get things fixed. What things? All things. Art’s place mostly worked on ships and their systems, but Main was just a ship in a way, even if it was really big and not really mobile.
Art liked working odd hours and tailored his day to the coming and going of the herd. The Herd is what he called the people passing by his shop. Sure, the shop was open 24 hours a day, but if you wanted the man himself, it was a crap shoot. It’s not that he was anti-social, but he simply had no need for people most days.
****
“What’s in it for me?” were the words over the office counter. Being in the weightless zone, the counter was simply joined to one wall, and orienting to it was up to the people in the room. If a person came through the primary corridor hatch, they stood a 50/50 chance of seeing the counter and the sign as they were meant to be seen. If they came in wrong, they saw a smaller sign upside down on the counter front telling them to rotate 180 degrees.
‘What’s in it for me’ was Art’s favorite saying. He’d thoughts of having cards made, but even flimsies cost too much. With the sign, he merely waved at it when he wanted to make the point.
This is what Antonio Spargle saw when he entered the shop. Of course, he was one of those who had to rotate and orient correctly after ignoring the sign outside the door. Every compartment that had a designated up/down also had the sign, but some people just refused to understand that. It was one giveaway of a newbie from The Hole, which is what belters called Earth.
Spargle finally got himself straightened out and looked around the small office. Beside the counter, there was a computer workstation, a coffee machine, and a small refrigerator. He wondered why there were no chairs, but then recalled he was in the weightless section. Spargle pushed the call bell but failed to take advantage of the hand-hold next to it. As a result, he pushed off the bell switch and slowly tumbled across the office to end up against the far wall. He didn’t notice the small X on the wall made from mechanic’s tape.
A young man in technician coveralls came through the hatch from the shop itself. He fetched up against the counter in exactly the right place for his boot to hook the foot rail and stop him at the desktop. “I see you are on the mark today, old cob!” said the tech.
Spargle finally got pointed in the right direction and pushed off the wall, but just a bit too hard. He hit the counter chest first and managed to stop himself only by grabbing the hand bar he’d ignored before. It was not a graceful entrance to the negotiations he’d planned.
“I would like to see Art. We have business for him” said Spargle. The tech just stared at him for a few moments, and then slowly smiled in a way that didn’t involve the slightest particle of friendliness. It was more the smile of a shark pondering its next meal and hearing a splash in the water.
“I’m Kwan” the tech said. “Art is not here at this time. Is there something I can help you with?”
“I only talk to the boss. Have him com me when he gets in. It needs to be today.” Andrew said in what he called his ‘Management’ voice. Spargle had a number of voices he could call on, from his version of ‘nice’ all the way to what he thought of as ‘intimidating’. He numbered his voices and practiced them when no one was around. He was using his #3 voice on the technician.
Kwan stared at the obvious
newbie for a moment and then asked “Name and Com number?” which he noted on a
tablet as Spargle recited it. “Ship?”
asked Kwan, and Spargle replied without thinking “The Morning Dawn” before he
realized he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone that yet. Inwardly he kicked himself, which just made
him the latest in a long line of people who made kicking Spargle a hobby. His was just the kind of personality that
invited a good swift kick, even from himself.
****
W: 324.2
To-Do:
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| I think cartoons are incredibly important. Not only do they communicate concepts, but they chronicle our times. It's not by accident many history tomes employ cartoons of the day to explain what people were thinking. |
Definition of terrorism:
The unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism.
A terrorist method of governing or of resisting a government.
Intimidation or coercion by instilling fear:
Now, let's change just a couple of words:
The lawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or individuals, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
The state of fear and submission produced by the government.
A terrorizing method of governing or resisting freedom.
Intimidation or coercion by instilling fear
My point? Oh... no point at all. Just moving words around.
This double exposure was done in the darkroom. It combines my oldest son as a toddler with the Clearwater beach skyline.
He's in his thirties now and ghosted me this past Summer. I can only guess why, as he won't speak to me and only berates anyone else who tries.
I suppose I don't fit in his echo chamber. It's a very confined space, with no room for unapproved thoughts.
I can't look at this picture without tearing up a little. It is what it is.
WV signs a campus carry law into effect, allowing students to exercise their human right of self-defense. It's a long time coming, and a good step towards the light.
Of course the usual blood-dancing suspects predict blood in the (campus) streets, but their track record of being wrong is still unbroken.
I wonder if a campus carry law would be needed to overrule progressive deans if another law was in place. One that made university administration personally and financially responsible for any violent crime on campus if they choose to deny students their human right of self-defense.
W: 325.2
Rainy day. Good day to catch up on rest and such.
To-Do:
In London, JP Morgan unwrapped a really nasty gift. 54 tons of nickel in bonded storage turned out to be rocks. $1.3 million dollars.... POOF.
W: 324.2
To-Do:
Cutting the bamboo and carrying the branches out front cost me a 30-minute sit down and an unfriendly ECG report from the watch.
Meh. Chunking the chores.. chunking the chores.
In fact, they now have Prometheus's gift of fire.
I expect the war will continue and grow.
I miss 'Shame'.
Shame, the notion that one has done something they know is wrong and would rather other people not know what they did.
It was a great motivator, teaching people what not to do. If it was something you'd be ashamed of, then don't do it.
Well, shame is gone as an incentive. Our modern society tells us that everything is okay, in any place, at all times... as long as the tribe approves.
People who still understand and feel shame are at a great disadvantage when opposed to folks who never feel shame. The shameless can do anything, evil with abandon, as long as their tribe approves at that moment. Those who know shame, well their bag of tricks is smaller and limited by the concept of 'right' and 'wrong'.
W: 326.0 :-( Extra Lasix day I guess.
To-Do:
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| There's just something RIGHT about citizens fact-checking a lying politician without fear of official retribution. It's a good change from how it's been all these years. |
No, not planting it, but cooking with it.
The first effort will be to sprout some and use it in...?
I'm thinking some will go in the blender and we will find out what pancakes taste like with sprouted wheat as a base.
After that, bread. I'll chop it in the processor a bit first, and then work it into bread dough.
After I'm done playing around with sprouted wheat, I'll try using the wheat berries themselves in soups and stews, and maybe as a replacement for rice as a side dish.
From what I have read, whole wheat berries are super healthy and nutritious, so all that remains is making it taste good.
As an instructor, I quickly learned the part analogy and stories play in learning. If something we are trying to learn can be realistically compared to something we already know, then we will assimilate the new information much more quickly.
In looking for a way to explain to myself the amplification of political strife in the last few decades, I hit upon the analogy of basic electricity.
Electricity works because of polarity and potential. Electrons want to move from one pole to the other. The higher the pressure to do that (voltage) the more they will move (amperage). Anything that stops or slows them is (resistance). The key to making electricity work for us is in building that 'potential', or in other words the difference between the poles.
That's what power plants do. They push, or charge, electrons into positive and negative states. These electrons really, REALLY, want to become neutral in charge, and will happily push their way through or around anything they can to do it. That pressure to move is what we know as electricity, and it's a powerful energy we harness for our profit.
Well, that's what social strife is. It's polarity. It's a powerful force separating people from each other, when they want they want nothing more than peace and prosperity without strife. Those who benefit from this polarity have every interest in seeing it continue.
Not just continue, though. When have we ever seen someone who was happy with what wealth and power they have, not wanting more? Well, when one wants more, one causes there to be more so they can have it. That's what power plants do... they make more potential for us to use. That's what politicians and power brokers do... they cause social polarity to happen through strife, hardship, and propaganda.
We can look at the local power plant and ask ourselves 'Who made this, and who profits from it?'. Well, we as a society made that, and we all have better lives because we have access to that power. It heats our homes, lights our lights, cooks our food, and connects our worlds.
We can look at political and social strife and ask ourselves 'Who made this, and who profits from it?'. Well, politicians and evil people make it, and they enjoy the profit of having it. It gives them the power to control, wealth to grasp, and people who listen to their lies.
The one thing we almost never want to see with electricity is for the electrons to come together atomically and become part of neutral atoms. They are happy to stay in that state, and there's no more 'polarity', or push to be harnessed for our personal gain.
The one thing politicians and evil people never want to see is us, the people, coming together in peace. It leaves them no polarity to play off of, and no power to hold over people.
Once we understand that electrical potential is power, we can look for who makes it, who controls it, and who it benefits.
Once we understand that social strife is power, we can look for who makes it, who controls it, and who it benefits.
Some comments on gun control…, via Jim Curtis
“I have a love interest in every one of my films – a gun.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”
– Clint Eastwood
“The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.”
– James Earl Jones
“There are hundreds of millions of gun owners in this country, and not one of them will have an accident today. The only misuse of guns comes in environments where there are drugs, alcohol, bad parents, and undisciplined children. Period.”
– Ted Nugent
“To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.”
– Ted Nugent
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
– Sigmund Freud
“An armed society is a polite society.”
– Robert Heinlein
“There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.”
– Charlton Heston
“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.”
– Johnny Depp
“But if someone has a gun and is trying to kill you … it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
– Dalai Lama
“A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders.”
– Larry Elder
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
– G. K. Chesterton
” … the right to defend one’s home and one’s person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.”
– Martin Luther King
“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”
– George Orwell
“In England, if you commit a crime, the police don’t have a gun and you don’t have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say ‘Stop, or I’ll say stop again.'”
– Robin Williams
“It’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.”
– Christian Slater
“A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“I will teach my children weapons and warfare, so they might teach their children science and law, so they might teach their children art and literature.”
– Unknown Greek
“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
– Pericles
“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
– Thucydides
“Though defensive violence will always be ‘a sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.”
– St. Augustine
“A free people ought to be armed.”
– George Washington
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.”
– George Washington
“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
– George Washington
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Thomas Jefferson (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria)
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“On every occasion [of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense.”
– John Adams:
“To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason
“I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians.”
– George Mason (father of the Bill of Rights and The Virginia Declaration of Rights)
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.”
– Noah Webster
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority … the Constitution was made to guard against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
– Noah Webster
“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster
“A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.”
– James Madison
“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms.”
– James Madison
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”
– James Madison
“The ultimate authority resides in the people alone.”
– James Madison
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
– William Pitt
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
– Richard Henry Lee
“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves … and include all men capable of bearing arms.”
– Richard Henry Lee
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.”
– Patrick Henry
“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
– St. George Tucker
“… arms … discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property…. Horrid mischief would ensue were (the law-abiding) deprived the use of them.”
– Thomas Paine
“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
– Samual Adams
“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story
“What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty …. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
– Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts
” … for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”
– Alexander Hamilton
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his house, his possessions are safe.”
– Luke 11:21
“Jesus said, ‘But now whoever has a purse or a bag, must take it and whoever does not have a sword must sell his cloak and buy one.'”
– Luke 22:36
“If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.”
– Exodus 22:2
“A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society? … The Scriptures tell us “righteousness exalteth a Nation.”
– Abigail Adams
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– John Adams
“The thing that separates the American Christian from every other person on earth is the fact that he would rather die on his feet, than live on his knees!”
– George Washington
“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
– Daniel Webster
“Though defensive violence will always be ‘a sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.”
– St. Augustine
“Without doubt one is allowed to resist against the unjust aggressor to one’s life, one’s goods or one’s physical integrity; sometimes, even ’til the aggressor’s death…. In fact, this act is aimed at preserving one’s life or one’s goods and to make the aggressor powerless. Thus, it is a good act, which is the right of the victim.”
– Thomas Aquinas
“When the law disallows both the means and moral authority to defend one’s self and property, crime and violence fill the void between common sense and the hoped for utopia.”
– JD Filkins
“Keeping and bearing arms is not only a fundamental right; it is a fundamental duty upon which all liberty and sovereignty is based.”
– Donald L. Cline
“A shoot-out is better than a massacre!”
– David M. Bennett
“It is a lesson of history that it is ethically, morally, and philosophically impossible to have too many personal weapons, whether they be edged, impact or projectile.”
– David W. Loeffler
“Nothing puts the dignity in personal dignity (or the freedom in personal freedom) like the self in self-rule.”
– John Longenecker
“No law ever prevented a crime.”
– Anonymous
“Those gun control activists advocating exchanging a liberty for safety should recall that the safest place on earth is solitary confinement at Leavenworth.”
– Rand T. Lennox
“The gun control extremist has at least two things in common with the Islamic extremist. He has a willingness to die for his fundamental beliefs. And he has the sanctimony to demand that others go with him.”
– Dr. Mike Adams
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
– Daniel Webster
“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”
– Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
“The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.”
– Sam Cohen (inventor of the neutron bomb)
“The tragic history of civilian disarmament cries a warning against any systematic attempts to render innocent citizens ill-equipped to defend themselves from tyrant terrorists, despots or oppressive majorities,”
– Daniel Schmutter
“If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business.”
– David Prosser (Wisconsin Supreme Court justice)
“As a card-carrying member of the liberal media, producing this piece was an eye opening experience. I have to admit that I saw guns as inherently evil, violence begets violence, and so on. I have learned, however, that in trained hands, just the presence of a gun can be a real “man stopper.” I am sorry that women have had to resort to this, but wishing it wasn’t so won’t make it any safer out there.”
– Jill Fieldstein (CBS producer, Street Stories: Women and Guns)
“If you’ve got to resist, you’re chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah.”
– Dr. Arthur Kellerman (famous gun grabber)
“If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying — that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 — establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.”
– Senator Orrin Hatch
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. … the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”
– Sen. Hubert Humphrey
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
– John F. Kennedy
“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia,’ ‘the security of the nation,’ and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms,’ our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy… The Second Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”
– John F. Kennedy
“Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.”
– Attorney General John Ashcroft
“There’s no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them.”
– Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky
“The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world… The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot!”
– President Theodore Roosevelt
“The ruling class doesn’t care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake.”
– Sen. Malcolm Wallop
“One of the arguments that had been made against gun control was that an armed citizenry was the final bulwark against tyranny. My response had been that untrained, lightly-armed non-soldiers couldn’t prevail against a modern army. I had concluded that the qualitative difference in firepower was such that all of the previous rules of guerilla war no longer applied. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan demonstrated that wasn’t true. Repelling an armed invasion is not something that American citizens are likely to face, but the possibility of a despotic government coming to power is not wholly unthinkable. One of the sequelae of Vietnam was the rise of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of perhaps a million Cambodian citizens. Those citizens, like the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey, were unarmed and thus utterly and completely defenseless against police and paramilitary. An armed minority was able to kill and terrorize unarmed victims with total impunity.”
– Paul Hagar
“Make good scouts of yourselves, become good rifle shots so that if it becomes necessary that you defend your families and your country that you can do it.”
– Lord Baden-Powell, Scouting For Boys
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and passed on … or we will spend our sunset years telling our children’s children what it was like in the United States when men were free.”
– Ronald Reagan
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
– General Douglas MacArthur
“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
“Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.”
– Unknown
