Don Kates famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

...Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents.
-- Don Kates

#Gun #Law #People
The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty...
-- Don Kates

#Philosophical #Gun #Self
A handgun ban is not realistically enforceable. Confiscating guns would require house-to-house searches and alienate the very individuals whose compliance is essential to the success of any regulation. If gun ownership were prohibited, organized crime would step in to provide the firearms that will continue to be procured with criminal intent.
-- Don Kates

#Gun #House #Steps
A half century ago Herbert Wechsler could justify the legal right of deadly force self-defense in terms of the "universal judgment that there is no social interest in preserving the lives of the aggressors at the cost of those of their victims." That is not a universal judgment today.
-- Don Kates

#Life #Self #Defense
Children younger than 5 are twice as likely to die from ingesting household poisons than by gunfire - So the question for the Legislature should be: Is a parent criminally responsible for leaving an unlocked container of bleach below the sink?
-- Don Kates

#Children #Gun #Parent
The 'militia' was the entire adult male citizenry, who were not simply allowed to keep their own arms, but affirmatively required to do so.
-- Don Kates

#Adults #Males #Arms
Ironically, the only gun control in 19th century England was the policy forbidding police to have arms while on duty.
-- Don Kates

#Gun #Police #Arms

The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.
Our constitution, in short, is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.
Law that shocks equity is reason's murderer.
There is no justice in following unjust laws.
Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.
How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.
This sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being - der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity - a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.
Once a leader delegates, he should show utmost confidence in the people he has entrusted.
Major sports are major parts of society. It's not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society.

Don Kates famous quotes

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