This is also interesting. The quote is perennially flung around in debates about gun control, which obviously wasn’t foremost on Franklin’s mind (“gun what? What the hell is… aw, piss off, I’m writing maxims!”) but if the author is correct about the historical context, it’s been even more hilariously misapplied than I thought. It’s like adopting “give me liberty or give me death” as a motto for legalizing assisted suicide.
Hey Vinyl, that’s for vetting my quote. Glad to know Ben said that and I can quote with confidence. How about this one?
“Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t.” — Ben Franklin
In fact I have a whole list of quotes that I would like your input on. DrumBum too.
Ben Franklin also said, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
We have some of the hardest working gun loving mother fuckers ever in these threads.
It appears nowhere in the collected papers of Benjamin Franklin by the The American Philosophical Society and Yale University.
Necessary but not sufficient. Its like saying that automobiles are the cause of drunk driving accidents.
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They focus is on long guns (and a small subset of long guns at that) because they lost the battle on handguns a long time ago. The vanguard gun control group in the country (the Brady Campaign) used to be called Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), originally the National Council to Control Handguns (NCCH), and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV). Brady Campaign - Wikipedia An outfit that called for the banning of handguns its name just can’t get a hearing on the gun control issue.
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There is also a right to self defense and handguns fit that role pretty well.
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You wouldn’t get very far trying to ban handguns, people have been trying unsuccessfully for decades and it never got off the ground politically speaking.
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There isn’t any proof either way but the evidence we have is this:
700 accidental deaths from guns (all guns, not just handguns) every year.
Depending on who you ask, there are between 55,000 (on the low end) defensive gun uses and 2.5 million million defensive gun uses every year (the credible range seems to be between 100,000 and 370,000). There is no telling how many of those incidents prevented a death but its a big enough number that you can’t just wave it away based on accidental gun deaths.
Agreed. If you can see the logic of banning assault weapons, all it will take is another Columbine or Virginia Tech where no assault weapons were used to see the logic of banning handguns or shotguns.
Before you know it the right to bear arms will become the right to own bolt action hunting rifles that you can use between September and January assuming there isn’t a government shutdown in progress.
Before they’re rechristened “sniper rifles” and banned. 
And it seems to be attributed to a number of people internet-wise, including Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Helen Rice and Don Baldwin. There’s a Snopes forum thread on it but no definitive answer to the true source.
After some addition searching, it looks like Benjamin Franklin did indeed writethis phrase in his quest obtain funds to arm the Indians in their battle against the French.
So Kable was correct, I was in error, and I learned something new.
A Phoenix woman was accidentally shot dead after a gun wedged in her boyfriend’s pants went off as they hugged, police said.
If that’s the price she had to pay for her boyfriend’s liberty, so be it. She did not die in vain. America is freer for her sacrifice. I hope her boyfriend impressed that on her as she lay dying.
I don’t know why I feel like I need to keep doing this, but under gun laws I’d support wholeheartedly, that guy would be on the hook for murder one. (negligent storage/handling accidents = intent to commit crime).
That’s a little harsh, but negligent manslaughter certainly.
Another law-abiding citizen.
And another dead victim of one.
I’m sorry, it’s not harsh at all. I am wholeheartedly in favor of the second amendment, BUT with big, important, and inherently dangerous rights come (inherently) similarly sized duties of care. The right to bear arms MUST include an duty to utilize, carry, and train with those arms in a safe and sane manner.
Once again, we do not impose this sort of standard on poison or explosives. So yeah, its harsh. Negligence rarely ever=intent. Negligence/=intent with explosives or poison, why would it with guns? Special pleading perhaps? You realize that murder one means the death penalty in some states, right?
With that said, who the fuck still uses Mexican carry? Nylon holsters cost as little as $5 and you can get a reasonably good one for $20.
Because gun owners have demonstrated they are less capable of safely storing guns than the owners of explosives and poison.
More to the point, perhaps, it’s generally already illegal to possess or incorrectly store explosives beyond a certain minimal level. Poisons, similarly, are festooned with warnings and the more dangerous form factors and types are perpetually either heavily regulated, banned, or facing bans.
If society can’t mandate that you have a proper holster and gun safe and inspect same, society damn well ought to be able to severely punish you for acting like a tard with a phenomenally deadly piece of technology.
It still doesn’t justify converting negligence into intent. The death penalty is a damn near unprecedented penalty for negligence that you want to place on gun owners.
And I’d like to see a cite that on a per capita basis, people that handle explosives have a lower accidental death rate than people who own guns.
You want to have rules about storage, thats fine. Understanding the constitutional constraints on storage requirements that restrict immediate accessibility, go ahead and tell me what you think would pass constitutional muster.
You cannot punish someone (criminally) for failing to do something that you cannot mandate, can you? I can’t think of any cases where we criminally punish somseone for doing something they are allowed to to even if an accident occurs. So if you can’t mandate a holster, then you can’t execute him for failing to have one even if that failure results in an accidental death.
To clarify, it has never been my position that irresponsible gun owners should be charged with murder. I think the they should be subject to prosecution and punishment, which may or may not include prison.