Loaded Gun Quotes

When you decide to be something, you can be it. That's what they don't tell you in the church. When I was your age, they would say we can become cops or criminals. Today, what I'm saying to you is this: when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference? ~ Frank Costello

You pull the trigger just for fun, forgetting I'm a loaded gun. So hate me for the things I've done, and not for what I've now become. ~ Motionless In White

In some ways, com­ing to terms with my­self and work­ing to­ward re­cov­ery has been like say­ing "I love you" to some­one but keep­ing a loaded gun hid­den in your back pocket, just in case that per­son pisses you off enough. ~ Kiera Van Gelder

A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded gun on your coffee table- There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about. ~ Garrison Keillor

It doesn't matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: when your child's footprints end at the river's edge, when the one you love has gone into the woods with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with the bad news in her mouth, then only the cliches are true, and you will repeat them, unashamed. Your life, too, will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction with breathtaking speed, and if you are really wise - and it's surprising and wondrous, Brother, how many people have this wisdom in then - you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms to you, If you are wise, whoever you are, you will let go, fall against the love, and be held. ~ Kate Braestrup

Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally "bright", did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. ~ Ray Bradbury

Rule number one that all girls must learn. If you're told to lie down on the floor during a robbery or to
step inside a waiting car during a kidnapping, you're not doing yourself any favors by cooperating. You're
essentially handing the bastards a loaded gun and giving them express permission to shoot you in the head. ~ J.A. Saare

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. ~ Ray Bradbury

More people have died at the end of a loaded gun than from an empty stomach. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Twelve magicians and two carnies have been shot dead doing the bullet catch. That's cool enough, but every night when we close our show with that trick and the loaded gun gets pointed in my face, it goes so far beyond cool. All I can think is 12 magicians, two carnies. ~ Penn Jillette

She wore his love like a loaded gun. ~ Atticus Poetry

Sam frowns at me, suddenly serious. "You know, I thought--for most of the first year we lived together--that you were going to kill me."

That makes me nearly spit out beer, I laugh so hard.

"No, look--living with you, it's like knowing there's a loaded gun on the other side of the room. You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat."

That only makes me laugh harder.

"Shut up," he says. "You might do normal stuff, but a leopard can drink milk or fall off things like a house cat. It's obvious you're not--not like the rest of us. I'll look over at you, and you'll be flexing your claws, or I don't know, eating a freshly killed antelope."

"Oh," I say. It's a ridiculous metaphor, but the hilarity has gone out of me. I thought I did a good job of fitting in--maybe not perfect, but not as bad as Sam makes it sound.

"It's like Audrey," he says, stabbing the air with a finger clearly well on his way to inebriated and full of determination to make me understand his theory. "You acted like she went out with you because you did this good job of being a nice guy."

"I am a nice guy."

I try to be.

Sam snorts. "She liked you because you scared her. And then you scared her too much. ~ Holly Black

Four flips the gun in this hand, presses the barrel to Peter's forehead, and clicks a bullet into place. Peter freezes with his lips parted, the yawn dead in his mouth. "Wake. Up," Four snaps. "You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it. ~ Veronica Roth

For the fee of $10,000, anyone could be escorted to a room, handed a loaded gun and offered another human to kill. The concept made me nauseous. But it also felt real, and rang bells with my more cynical side. ~ Eli Roth

The last shot wasn't bad," he said, dropping the subject of the duel. "However, the target is the twig, not the leaves. The end of the twig," he added.
"You must have missed the twig yourself," she pointed out, lifting the gun and aiming it carefully, "since it's still there."
"True, but it's shorter than it was when I started."
Elizabeth momentarily forgot what she was doing as she stared at him in disbelief and amazement. "Do you mean you've been clipping the end off it?"
"A bit at a time," he said, concentrating on her next shot.
She hit another leaf on the twig and handed the gun back to him.
"You're not bad," he complimented.
She was an outstanding shot, and his smile said he knew it as he handed her a freshly loaded gun. Elizabeth shook her head. "I'd rather see you try it."
"You doubt my word?"
"Let's merely say I'm a little skeptical."
Taking the gun, Ian raised it in a swift arc, and without pausing to aim, he fired. Two inches of twig spun away and fell to the ground. Elizabeth was so impressed she laughed aloud. "Do you know," she exclaimed with an admiring smile, "I didn't entirely believe until this moment that you really meant to shoot the tassel off Robert's boot!"
He sent her an amused glance as he reloaded and handed her the gun. "At the time I was sorely tempted to aim for something more vulnerable. ~ Judith McNaught

If liberals can seize our guns because they are dangerous, we have no chance of holding on to our cars and our homes. The total number of accidental fatalities (the majority of which are hunting accidents) of all types of firearms is infinitesimal compared to the number of fatalities from car and home accidents. More children die from playing with cigarette lighters than from playing with loaded guns. ~ Paul Craig Roberts

Who taught you to shoot?" he asked when she was standing beside him.
"Our coachman."
"Better the coachman than your brother," Ian mocked, handing her the loaded gun. "The target's that bare twig over there - the one with the leaf hanging off the middle of it."
Elizabeth flinched at his sarcastic reference to his duel with Robert. "I'm truly sorry about that duel," she said, then she concentrated all her attention for the moment on the small twig.
Propping his shoulder against the tree trunk, Ian watched with amusement as she grasped the heavy gun in both her hands and raised it, biting her lip in concentration. "Your brother was a very poor shot," he remarked.
She fired, nicking the leaf at its stem.
"I'm not," she said with a jaunty sidewise smile. And then, because the duel was finally out in the open and he seemed to want to joke about it, she tried to follow suit: "If I'd been there, I daresay I would have - "
His brows lifted. "Waited for the call to fire, I hope? ~ Judith McNaught

However he said before I came:
To him who brought you up relate
How you have broken honor's ties,
And say,- his prompt response I wait!'

'Distressed am I to bear your words;
And humbled low I am by fate.
For honor's sake I must revenge
The wrong done Batu and his mate.'

Then slowly on one upraised knee
He placed with care his loaded gun;
Ten aimed at Sapar-beg whom he
Had reared, and loved more than a son

'O Sapar-beg,' he gravely said,
'Unworthy even for death are you.
'Tis I who am unfit to live
For bringing up a man like you'

A sudden flash… a bursting shot…
A bullet pierce through temples gray…
And on the ground in wreaths of smoke
Haji-Iusub lifeless lay. ~ Akaki Tsereteli

God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can't be outfoght
It can't be outdone
It can't out matched
It can't be outrun
No ~ Linkin Park

The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly ~ Andre Breton

A nice girl should never go anywhere without a loaded gun and a big knife." ~ Sarah Agnes Prine ~ Nancy E. Turner

It's like if someone had a loaded gun in your face. I don't know how else to describe how it felt to try to talk to my father. Even on a good day. If someone always has a loaded gun in your face, you weigh every word before you say it. You only dare say it if it might save you. But you're never sure, so there's this tendency to freeze. Say nothing at all. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

Of course, when you shut off your brain from rational analysis, any book is dangerous. Taking literally ancient parables from thousands of years ago is much more dangerous than playing with a loaded gun. Ancient scrawls, written by different authors in different centuries with different agendas
yeah, let's get mad literal about that.
The literalness problem is compounded in religion by the circular logic of not being allowed to question anything, or else you're lacking faith. ~ Bill Maher

A charmed life is so rare that for every one such life there are millions of wretched lives. Some know that their baby will be among the unfortunate. Nobody knows, however, that their baby will be one of the allegedly lucky few. Great suffering could await any person that is brought into existence. Even the most privileged people could give birth to a child that will suffer unbearably, be raped, assaulted, or be murdered brutally. The optimist surely bears the burden of justifying this procreational Russian roulette. Given that there are no real advantages over never existing for those who are brought into existence, it is hard to see how the significant risk of serious harm could be justified. If we count not only the unusually severe harms that anybody could endure, but also the quite routine ones of ordinary human life, then we find that matters are still worse for cheery procreators. It shows that they play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun - aimed, of course, not at their own heads, but at those of their future offspring. ~ David Benatar

I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator ~ Chuck Barris

I wonder if we're truly subverting anything, or if we're just playing with a loaded gun. ~ Toure

A few drinks and the world was hers -
she wore her whiskey like a loaded gun. ~ Atticus Poetry

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - In Corners - till a Day The Owner passed - identified - And carried Me away - ~ Emily Dickinson

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door ... Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ~ Ray Bradbury

Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Marton interacted, thus transforming a seventeen-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Remember: In poetry, each word is like a loaded gun; very heavy, and full of intent ~ Amber Drappier

I used to sit and cry and hold a loaded gun up to my head but I chose a slower way of being dead ~ Raegan Butcher

It's like I have a loaded gun in my mouth and I like the taste of metal ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

Revenge in the hands of your enemies is a loaded gun. You can beg them for mercy, wave the white flag of surrender, but the only true elixir for the vitriol they bestow is a measure of hatred dispensed of your own. ~ Addison Moore

A lot of people refer to power as shooting a loaded gun. When you have to shoot the gun, you've lost the power. Other people's knowledge of your gun should be enough. ~ Irving Azoff

The problem with becoming too immersed in what people like to call magic is thinking it is superior to everything and learning only contempt for something as simple as a loaded gun. ~ Megan Derr

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. ~ Ray Bradbury

Give a man with a death wish a bottle of whisky and a loaded gun, you get a dead body. Give a martyr a quote from scripture and a pocket full of
prayers and you get a room full of corpses. ~ Kevis Hendrickson

A book is a loaded gun. ~ Ray Bradbury

Cultural Marxism, now called "Political Correctness" is a loaded gun that one puts to their own head. The narrative illusion normalizes the abnormal and is an elitist weapon over minions for citizen vs. citizen policing for establishment control. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Center For Cyber Influence Operations Studies

When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide. ~ Byron Katie

No," Foyle roared. "Let them hear this. Let them hear everything."

"You're insane, man. You've handed a loaded gun to children."

"Stop treating them like children and they'll stop behaving like children. Who the hell are you to play monitor?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Stop treating them like children. Explain the loaded gun to them. Bring it all out into the open." Foyle laughed savagely. "I've ended the last star-chamber conference in the world. I've blown that last secret wide open. No more secrets from now on.... No more telling the children what's best for them to know.... Let 'em all grow up. It's about time."

"Christ, he is insane."

"Am I? I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and the dying. The common man's been whipped and led long enough by driven men like us.... Compulsive men... Tiger men who can't help lashing the world before them. We're all tigers, the three of us, but who the hell are we to make decisions for the world just because we're compulsive? Let the world make its own choice between life and death. Why should we be saddled with the responsibility?"

"We're not saddled," Y'ang-Yeovil said quietly. "We're driven. We're forced to seize responsibility that the average man shirks."

"Then let him stop shirking it. Let him stop tossing his duty and guilt onto the shoulders of the first freak who comes along grabbing at it. Are we to be scapegoa ~ Alfred Bester

Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead, wear your hear matted, long, and ostentatious, but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God? ~ Kabir

She still remembers the effect a certain book can have on people at the right time in their lives. A book, at its most mundane,can be a loaded gun. At its most powerful, it can split the trunk of a tree, mend a broken heart, heal the sick, and topple a corrupt government. ~ Don Borchert

If words are the power of life and death, you just pointed a loaded gun at your head. ~ Gena Showalter

Just because a cop smiles at you when he asks for your license and registration doesn't change the fact that he's carrying a loaded gun. ~ JoAnn Bassett

Should have made you a bet, because, hey, guess what, got a loaded gun in my underwear so it tuns out I was right. Not that I can complain. Had some good years. My life, in a nutshell: 0-8 yrs. happy, no reason; 9-19 happy, wrong reasons; 20-33 unhappy for all the right reasons, 34 to present moment, unhappy, looking for a reason. ~ Charles Yu

Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet. ~ Terence McKenna

In every corridor Parwana would see men's eyes snapping to attention when Masooma passed by. She saw their efforts to behave matter-of-factly, but their gazes lingered, helpless to tear away. If Masooma glanced in their direction, they looked idiotically privileged. They imagined they had shared a moment with her. She interrupted conversations midsentence, smokers mid-drag. She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups. Some days it was all too much for Masooma, as if she was almost ashamed, and she told Parwana she wanted to stay inside all day, wanted not to be looked at. On those days, Parwana thought it was as though, somewhere deep inside, her sister understood dimly that her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head. Most days, however, the attention seemed to please her. Most days, she relished her power to derail a man's thoughts with a single fleeting but strategic smile, to make tongues falter over words. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Aunt Birdie laughed. "That's my Sophie." "What the . . ." Travis picked up the shotgun and ejected both shells. "Aunt Birdie, you brought a loaded gun over here with that baby?" "She'll be six years old in a few weeks. And there ain't a way in hell I can kill a man with an unloaded gun. I don't have the strength to beat him to death with the butt," Aunt Birdie fussed. "Lord!" He rolled his eyes upward. "You probably can't kill him with an ~ Carolyn Brown

To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. ~ Richard Dawkins

In an age of religious violence like ours, people care much less about what you believe, and much more about whether you will kill for what you believe. So if you haven't figured out what you're going to do with passages like Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15 and Psalms 137:9, you still have some important work to do.3 If you haven't grappled with these passages and others like them, your Bible is like a loaded gun and your theology is like a license to kill. You have to find a way to disarm your faith as a potential instrument of hate and convert it into an instrument of love.4 You have to convert Christianity from a warrior religion to a reconciling religion. Otherwise, your neighbors around this seminary will tolerate you the way they might tolerate a chemical plant that could at any moment blow up and kill them all. ~ Brian McLaren

Christianity, we might say, is driving around with a loaded gun in its glove compartment, and that loaded gun is its violent image of God. It's driving around with a license to kill, and that license is its Bible, read uncritically. Along with its loaded gun and license to kill, it's driving around with a sense of entitlement derived from a set of beliefs with a long, ugly, and largely unacknowledged history. ~ Brian McLaren

I pulled the loaded gun out of my coat, most people were the worst for wear with the drink, although I was well known and easily recognised with the big scar down my face. Well, didn't I go and let both barrels off at the streetlight, it exploded into pieces and the front of the pub went into darkness. ~ Stephen Richards

Great artists are like loaded guns. They are dangerous in anybody's hands. ~ Peter M. Brant

Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man. Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. ~ Ray Bradbury

A moth goes into a podiatrist's office, and the podiatrist's office says, "What seems to be the problem, moth?"

The moth says "What's the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I don't even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don't know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that's on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don't know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn't such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I'm a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I'm not feeling good. And so the doctor says, "Moth, man, you're troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on ~ Norm Macdonald

Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye. ~ Billy Collins

But the Anderson thing isn't over yet. And as I've said before - this, my friends, is war. I'm talking DEFCON-one, gloves-off, I'll-knock-you-down-even-if-you-are-a-girl war. You wouldn't give a bullet to a sniper who's got his gun aimed at your forehead, would you? ~ Emma Chase

Do you think there'll be someone in the Xanti who'll remember your mother?"
Finn blew on the embers. "I don't know. We may not find the Xanti," he warned her.
Maia shrugged. "It doesn't matter. But if we do, will they accept me? I don't have any Indian blood."
"If they don't, we won't stay. I wouldn't let anything happen to you. I've got my gun."
"I'm not scared," said Maia. And she wasn't. She'd been scared of the nastiness of the twins and of being shut up in the Carters' bungalow, but she wasn't scared of traveling through unknown lands with a boy hardly older than she was herself. She thought perhaps she wouldn't be scared of anything ever again if she was with Finn. ~ Eva Ibbotson

For a gun-toting nation, Americans are surprisingly passive. ~ John Lydon

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets ... when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through. ~ Charles Bukowski

You don't go to a gun fight with a knife. And you don't have a sit down with a bratva underboss and not have protection. ~ V. Theia

At the sound of her uncle's voice coming from the back door, Jay threw Violet off his lap.
Violet giggled as she hit the cushions on the back of the couch.
"What are you doing?" she complained. "It's just Uncle Stephen."
Jay sat up. "I know, but ever since the Homecoming Dance, I feel like he's always watching us. I just don't want him to think we're doing anything we shouldn't be."
The Homecoming Dance. It had been almost three months since that night, but the memories still made Violet shudder.
Not a day went by that she wasn't grateful Jay was still alive. Grateful the bullet from the killer's gun had only grazed his shoulder, despite the fact that the man-one of her uncle's own officers-had been aiming directly for Jay's heart.
If her uncle hadn't shown up at the dance when he did, firing the fatal shot that took the killer down, neither she nor Jay would have made it out of there alive.
Jay had always liked her uncle before then, but now it was something closer to worship. ~ Angie Frazier

Something in my patience snaps.. 'I'd really rather die than eat your food food and hear you call me 'love'... He holds my gaze for a few infinitely long seconds before he pulls a gun out of jis jacket pocket, He fires. ~ Tahereh Mafi

On his deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open ~ Ralph Ellison

I tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track and they shot my horse with the opening gun. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

Lord Salisbury's basic educational philosophy was that higher authority could, at best, have only a marginal effect; real desire to learn had to come from within. "N. has been very hard put to it for something to do," he wrote of a son who had been left alone with him for a few days at Hatfield. "Having tried all the weapons in the gun-cupboard in succession - some in the riding room and some, he tells me, in his own room - and having failed to blow his fingers off, he has been driven to reading Sydney Smith's Essays and studying Hogarth's pictures." Lady Salisbury did not share her husband's detached approach. "He may be able to govern the country," she said, "but he is quite unfit to be left in charge of his children. ~ Robert K. Massie

The NRA is an outdated special interest group. The Association's membership does not have the best interests of our students or the safety of our schools in mind. Its' influence must be diminished and ultimately destroyed. The NRA has our fallen friends' blood on its hands. ~ Mark M. Bello

Asher was a vampire. How much more dangerous could he be with a gun? But I couldn't do it. "Let me test my understanding. Is Asher going to ride in the car with us to the meeting?"
I must to give you directions," Asher said.
Then lean against the Jeep." He frowned at me in an amused, condescending sort of way.
Excuse me?"
I don't care if you're the second coming of the Antichrist, you can't sit behind me in my own car until I know you're not carrying a weapon." Asher smiled briliantly at both of us, flashing fang.
... I could rip you into pieces with my bare hands, and you're worried I have a gun?" He chuckled, a low, skin-prickling sound. "That is so very cute. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you're most at risk. ~ Barry Eisler

Don't have to see," the pilot grunted. "Olga knows the way."
"Funny name for an aircraft," Grace commented. "Is it after your wife?"
"My gun."
Grace stared at him. "You named your plane after a gun?"
"It was a very good gun. ~ Gordon Korman

The situation with Jordan was starting to seem too real for his comfort. This normally would be the point when he, sensing a possible attachment, would back away from the situation. But with her, he was trapped. Consequently, all he could do was carry on as usual, being that guy who didn't let things become real, who was always handy with a quip but didn't have feelings deeper than that.

Because he didn't. Undercover agents didn't allow themselves to become attached to a case or anyone involved with it.

He wasn't complaining - he'd signed on for this. He'd worked hard to get where he was, and being the best undercover agent in the Chicago field office was a major accomplishment. It was his specialty, the thing that differentiated him from the other agents in the office. Without that distinction, he'd be just another guy with a badge, a gun, and cool facial scruff. Hell, he'd be Pallas.

That alone was more than enough motivation to get his head back in the game. ~ Julie James

When you reach that competing point, when you reach that time when the gun is about to go off, everyone's level is pretty much the same. The one thing that's going to separate you from everybody else is how you deal with those pressures, how you stay relaxed. ~ Apolo Ohno

If you drive down there," I said, "he'll just escape the other way. That's what he's counting on. You have to walk down there, point your gun at him, and yell at him in that charming way you have. ~ Jennifer Echols

When, on your dangerous mission gone,
You underrate our foes as dunces,
Be wary, not of sudden gun,
But of your partner at the dances. ~ Stanley Kunitz

You're a trigger finger dug into the starting gun,
the smack as it fires, the tense stroke of hooves
pressing into a fresh track. You're the curiosity
of a flashbulb nibbling air, tricky camera lens
grabbing a mane as it quivers back. I'm a rising
overture of thighs. I'm dirt exploding midair
- sand fireworks. I'm the impulse to grab hold:
the jockey's knees clenching as he rocks above
the heaving saddle. You're the bit I can't keep
from tasting, and I, the clench of jaws, willing
to split in two for the shiver of collision, tooth
on tooth. Darling, you're a wager: the whole wad
riding on one last leap, but then you're abrupt:
an ankle's vomity pop. And I'm the entire crowd
grunting to its feet. You're one blossoming
moment of unstoppable collapse: the bracing
limbs, the beveling slide, the shriek of submission
to gravity, a hard landing. From the stands, I'm
a hush: hand to mouth. I'm needles of heat, a gut
sinking over a lost life savings. You're someone
else's carnation wreath, red as a bitemark necklace. ~ Saara Myrene Raappana

I miss the good old days when Daimons were warriors and combat trained. The ones I found tonight knew nothing about fighting, and I'm sick of the whole 'my gun will solve all' mentality. (Wulf) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Never revive a guy who had just pulled a gun on you. ~ Lee Child

More Americans, and I have my own anecdotes of people that have a friend that never would've had a gun, thought about, and now is thinking about it. ~ Chuck Todd

No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before. ~ Colin Greenwood

If we replaced all of our guns with chicken sandwiches it would end all war immediately. ~ Thom Yorke

I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns. ~ Howard Metzenbaum

We haven't met ... I'm Kori Daniels. If you don't get that gun out of my face, I'm gonna take it, then I'm gonna break your jaw so I can unhinge it and shove your pistol down your throat. That way the bullet goes through the long way. ~ Rachel Vincent

A gun in your hand makes a fool out of you. A gun in your hand makes a target out of me. ~ Henry Rollins

(On WWI:)

A man of importance had been shot at a place I could not pronounce in Swahili or in English, and, because of this shooting, whole countries were at war. It seemed a laborious method of retribution, but that was the way it was being done. ...

A messenger came to the farm with a story to tell. It was not a story that meant much as stories went in those days. It was about how the war progressed in German East Africa and about a tall young man who was killed in it. ... It was an ordinary story, but Kibii and I, who knew him well, thought there was no story like it, or one as sad, and we think so now.

The young man tied his shuka on his shoulder one day and took his shield and his spear and went to war. He thought war was made of spears and shields and courage, and he brought them all.

But they gave him a gun, so he left the spear and the shield behind him and took the courage, and went where they sent him because they said this was his duty and he believed in duty. ...

He took the gun and held it the way they had told him to hold it, and walked where they told him to walk, smiling a little and looking for another man to fight.

He was shot and killed by the other man, who also believed in duty, and he was buried where he fell. It was so simple and so unimportant.

But of course it meant something to Kibii and me, because the tall young man was Kibii's father and my most special friend. Arab Maina ~ Beryl Markham

THEY'D CHANGE THE AXIS OF THE EARTH!

There are fortunes to be made in polar real estate! Just change the climate of both poles, warm them up, give them mild winters and pleasant summers, and watch the boom! At the same time, cool off the tropics, clear out the jungles, and there's billions more in it!

That was the scheme of the famous Gun Club, the same space engineers who had fired the shot "From the Earth to the Moon." The story of how they planned to change the face of the Earth itself is a Jules Verne classic long out of print that's a delight to read and a real adventure in logical super-science. ~ Jules Verne

Shooting is very challenging because 10 metre air rifle you have different rules, short gun you have different rules. ~ Gagan Narang

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up ~ Paddy Chayefsky

We don't need bombs and guns to destroy, to bring peace - just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world. ~ Mother Teresa

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking. ~ Thomas Sowell

There was a story going around about the Special Olympics. For the hundred-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line and, at the sound of the gun, they took off. But one little boy didn't get very far. He stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard the boy crying. They slowed down, turned around, and ran back to him--every one of them ran back to him. The little boy got up, and he and the rest of the runners linked their arms together and joyfully walked to the finish line.
They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in the stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long time. And you know why? Because deep down we know that what matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too, even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then. ~ Fred Rogers

For a guy who's been shot down more than once, I'm pretty gun-shy. But for you, I would have tried a million times. I've got a hell of a crush on you, Sara Foster. ~ Devney Perry

The ban on assault weapons has decreased gun violence in Baltimore not one iota. That's because few, if any, of the shootings were done with assault weapons. ~ Gregory Kane

Advancement and promotion in Mystic Masonry is not dependent on favor; it cannot be given till it has been earned and the candidate has stored in himself the power to rise, any more than a pistol can be fired till it has been loaded. ~ Max Heindel

He's a murdering chud," Zil was yelling.
"What do you want to do? Lynch him?" Astrid demanded.
That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what "lynch" meant. But Zil quickly recovered.
"I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry."
"I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!" Hunter shouted.
"You're a lying mutant freak!"
"They think they can do anything they want," another voice shouted.
Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, "We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals."
"They already did it!" Zil cried. "It's the freaks acting all special and like their farts don't stink."
That earned a laugh.
"And now they're starting to kill us," Zil cried.
Angry cheers.
Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Give me that thing."
"No way," Hank said. But he didn't seem too certain.
"You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone's face off?" Edilio held his hand out. "Give it to me, man."
Zil rounded on Edilio. "You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He's got powers, man, and that's okay, but the normals can't have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?"
"Man, give it a rest, huh?" Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary tha ~ Michael Grant

I just keep thinking about Thor. You never knew him. Big guy, like you. Good hearted. Not bright, but he'd give you the goddamned shirt off his back if you asked him. And he killed himself. He put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off in Philadelphia in 1932. ~ Neil Gaiman

Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. ~ Gouverneur Morris

You were lucky about that gun. All the people we know have been playing with it, wiping prints off and putting them on. I even put a set on myself just to be fashionable. ~ Raymond Chandler

Keep guns out of inner cities-but also problem of morality. ~ Barack Obama