Thoughts on Gun Control

What we should know about this controversial topic:

You can always count on the left to run with the ‘we need more gun control’ mantra whenever some tragedy occurs. Before proceeding, let me point out one glaring exception to this: I do not recall one single leftist demanding gun control following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July of 2024. Just sayin’.

But it is the normal default go-to position, as if depriving peaceful citizens of firearms while allowing criminals and terrorists to have them will somehow make us all safer. So of course this is Albanese’s main “solution” to what happened in Bondi a week ago.

Thankfully many important thinkers, analysts and commentators have the mental and moral sense to know this is NOT a solution to what ails us, but instead will simply make matters much worse. What follows are a number of key quotes on this issue.

I will break this into two main sections: what the American Founding Fathers said – especially about the Second Amendment – and what more recent thinkers have said. Their words are worth seriously considering:

The Founding Fathers

“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.” George Washington, 1790

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. … If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.” Alexander Hamilton

“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?” Patrick Henry

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.” Noah Webster

“The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.” Thomas Jefferson

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” Thomas Jefferson

“Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.” Thomas Jefferson

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” George Mason

“The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people.” Fisher Ames

More recent remarks

“The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale developments with armed security guards – and who want to keep other people from having guns to defend themselves. But what about lower-income people living in high-crime, inner city neighborhoods? Should such people be kept unarmed and helpless, so that limousine liberals can ‘make a statement’ by adding to the thousands of gun laws already on the books?” Thomas Sowell

“The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available. If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive. Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates. Washington, D.C., is a classic example, but just one among many. When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. For the country as a whole, hand gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.” Thomas Sowell

“When it was legal to buy a shotgun in London in the middle of the 20th century, there were very few armed robberies there. But, after British gun control zealots managed over the years to disarm virtually the entire law-abiding population, armed robberies became literally a hundred times more common. And murder rates rose. One can cherry-pick the factual studies, or cite some studies that have subsequently been discredited, but the great bulk of the studies show that gun control laws do not in fact control guns. On net balance, they do not save lives but cost lives. Gun control laws allow some people to vent their emotions, politicians to grandstand and self-righteous people to ‘make a statement’ – but all at the cost of other people’s lives.” Thomas Sowell

“You won’t get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There’s only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up and if you don’t actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time…It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal experience.” Ronald Reagan

“And by the way, the Constitution does not say Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution says ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’.” Ronald Reagan

“It isn’t brave to stand up for gun control in a building surrounded by armed guards. It’s simply elitist.” Katie Pavlich

“You know why there’s a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.” Rush Limbaugh

“(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.” Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School

“There are 5 million plus members of the NRA – 0 of them have committed a mass shooting.” Ryan Fournier

“Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon – so long as there is no answer to it – gives claws to the weak.” George Orwell

“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

“Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.” Robert Anson Heinlein

“During waves of terror attacks, Israel’s national police chief will call on all concealed-handgun permit holders to make sure they carry firearms at all times, and Israelis have many examples where concealed permit holders have saved lives.” John R. Lott

“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.” Clint Eastwood

“As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.” Jeff Snyder

“The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control.” Ann Coulter

“This battle for ‘common-sense’ gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and reason. All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more meaningless, if not harmful, ‘gun control’ legislation. Good news – if you’re a crook.” Larry Elder

“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.” Gary Kleck

“If you believe in the right to life, then you must believe in the right to have the means to defend that life.” Charley Reese

“When only cops have guns, it’s called a ‘police state’.” Claire Wolfe

“I do not carry a pistol so I can impose my will on someone else. I carry a pistol so someone else cannot impose their will on me!” Lynn Givens

“It’s often been said, ‘Violence never solved anything.’ The simple truth is that when you are slammed up against the wall and the knife is at your throat, when a circle of teenagers is kicking you as you curl into a ball on the sidewalk, or when the man walks into your office building or school with a pair of guns and starts shooting, only violence, or the reasonable threat of violence, is going to save your life. In the extreme moment, only force can stop force.” Rory Miller

“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” Mohandas Gandhi

“Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate.” Ted Nugent

“In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the ‘collective’ right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of ‘the people” to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.” Stephen P. Halbrook

Let’s strip the emotion out of this debate and deal only in facts. Not slogans. Not fear. Not feel-good politics. Facts.

Gun buy-back schemes are sold to the public as a silver bullet: remove guns, reduce violence. It sounds neat. It sounds moral. It sounds responsible.

It also doesn’t work the way people are told it does.

Here’s why — and this is the part no politician wants to argue in public.

 

1. Buy-Backs Only Disarm the Compliant…

This is the most uncomfortable truth of all.

Gun buy-backs do not target criminals.

They target law-abiding owners — the very people who already follow licensing, storage, and background checks.

Criminals do not line up at police stations to surrender illegal firearms. They don’t suddenly develop a civic conscience because a cheque is offered….

 

7. No Buy-Back Has Ever Eliminated Criminal Gun Use…

Not one. Anywhere.

There is no country on earth where…

• Gun buy-backs ended armed crime
• Criminal access disappeared
• Organised violence ceased

The claim is always “reduction,” never “elimination.”

And even reductions are hotly debated once long-term data is examined.

If a policy cannot achieve its stated goal — only appear to — it’s not a solution. It’s theatre.

 

8. It Erodes Trust Between Citizens and the State…

When governments.

• Change classifications overnight
• Criminalise previously legal ownership
• Compensate selectively
• Shift goalposts repeatedly

They send a clear message.

‘Compliance today does not protect you tomorrow.”

That destroys cooperation, not danger.

Once trust is gone, regulation becomes enforcement by fear — and that always ends badly.

The Brutal Conclusion!

Gun buy-backs do not stop criminals.

They do not dismantle gangs.

They do not prevent organised violence.

They disarm…

• Farmers
• Sport shooters
• Rural workers
• Collectors
• Law-abiding citizens

While criminals watch, untouched.

If governments were serious about safety, they would.

• Attack illegal importation
• Target repeat violent offenders
• Fund intelligence-led policing
• Break organised crime logistics
• Address root causes of violence

But those solutions are hard.

Buy-backs are easy, visible, and politically marketable.

This isn’t about safety.

It’s about control, optics, and headlines. Gray “Bushy” Murphy

[2010 words]