MARK TWAIN: Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right—it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same, don’t you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring hings that have ever been created by man. You don’t have to take any pains at all with them; you don’t have to have a rest, you don’t have to have any sights on the gun, you don’t have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it make one shudder.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT: The man who would handle firearms lightly is a man of small sense; the firearm is an instrument that demands respect. In hunting or in defense, the gun requires steadiness of hand, clearness of eye, and sobriety of mind. Only the man who can govern himself may hope to govern the instrument. The careless handling of a gun leads often to loss of life, sometimes to a loss of character, for the coward who fears responsibility or the boaster who courts it indiscriminately alike bring shame upon themselves and danger to others. There is, indeed, a certain glory in the mastery of the weapon — but it is glory tempered by prudence. The same rifle that secures food in the forest may also bring destruction to the heedless or the ignorant; the same revolver that ensures a man’s safety may, in foolish hands, destroy a home. It is the mark of a man’s education, both moral and practical, that he understands this dual nature.
THOMAS JEFFERSON: No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and their having the will and means to resist the operations of a standing army, are a powerful check upon the enterprises of ambition.
SQUEAKY FROMME: There is a gun pointed, and whether it goes off is up to you all.
GERALD FORD: The record of gun control…does not show that the registration of a gun, handgun, or the registration of the gun owner…has in any way…decreased the crime rate or the use of that gun in the committing of a crime. … What we have to do … is to make it very, very difficult for a person who uses a gun in the commission of a crime to stay out of jail. I don’t believe in the registration of handguns or the registration of the handgun owner. Another major threat to every American’s person and property is the criminal carrying a handgun. The way to cut down on the criminal use of guns is not to take guns away from the law‑abiding citizen, but to impose mandatory sentences for crimes in which a gun is used.
JOHN WILKES BOOTH (and Virginia State Motto): Sic semper tyrannis!