Michael D. Barnes Quotations

But there are 90 million gun owners in the United States. Only 3.5 million want the insurance and magazines and the various things you get for joining the NRA.

We support seven different contact channels because we know these are somewhat generational -- some people are phone-centric and others are PC-centric. We allow you to support all of those on a single network-hosted platform.

Reservoirs aren't supposed to stay full. Through April, we were bulging at the core. And then along come the middle of May, and it started drying up. We're right where we should be.

Our mission is to carry on the Amistad story and its legacy. We have been to 80 ports to remind people of what happened and to battle racism.

Most droughts, you go 200 miles and people are in a flood situation. It's a shame. When we're dry, somebody else is wet. When we're wet, somebody's dry. I don't know, maybe it's God's way.

We stayed open later this year than last year because of it. So business has been doing a little bit better. It's not as drastic as you might think maybe but you had to stay open late and put in much more hours.

We're trying to publicize this one and make people realize that the gun industry can clean up its act and can operate in a way that can reduce the likelihood of guns killing police officers and other innocent people.

Who's paying the million bucks? The insurance company. We've been trying for years to get the insurance industry to say to the gun industry, We won't insure you unless you have policies that will reduce the likelihood of guns falling into the wrong hands easily.

We've got activists all across the country like the members of the Million Mom March organization, some of their leaders are here tonight. We're phone banking congressional offices and pursuing editorial boards.

Spectators who witnessed that concert, ... still recount his fearless attitude, innate stage charisma and striking technique -- balancing on toes, slapping the floor with the sides of his shoes, releasing cascades of musical sounds while powering off the boards with both legs kicking.

This is a tragic capitulation to the special interest gun lobby.

This guy is a natural. He was born to be a great government executive. He makes things happen.

(According to those who drove the slave ship), if we lose 25 to 50 percent of 'cargo,' we could make money.

It is yet another example of how much power a small group could wield behind closed doors.

I had a new idea on the way to this meeting this morning, but that doesn't mean we should put it in the platform.

Every place in the country you should get a license that shows you know how to safely store it, keep it away from your children or grandchildren. You should have to license it so the police can trace it if it's used in a crime. [On keeping guns]

But there are 90 million gun owners in the United States. Only 3.5 million want the insurance and magazines and the various things you get for joining the NRA.

If today is your typical day in America, 80 of our fellow citizens will die from gunfire. In the last two weeks, more Americans have died from gunfire here at home in the United States than in the entire war in Iraq since it started.

The fight for sanity in our gun safety laws is not by any means over. In many ways it's just beginning.

We should have a system of licensing and registration, we should treat firearms the same way that automobiles are treated so that people have to pass a safety test.

The vast majority of Americans agree with us. We're doing everything that we can. We're advertising, right now we're on television with an advertisement running in the Washington area. We've got newspaper ads.

There should be a background check every time a firearm is transferred. You shouldn't be able to go to a gun show and buy guns without a background check. There are Internet gun sales, classified ads in the newspapers - and you can buy guns without background checks.

It's a tragedy, but with your support and your help we will wage this fight and we're going to win it.

Let me share some facts with you about the law in most of our country. California is in many ways a little different from the rest of the world, and California has better gun laws than many states, although California's need to be improved.

Should we have background checks, waiting periods? To drive a car you have to pass a test that shows you know how to drive your car safely, you should have to do the same thing with guns.

They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they're not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it's not causing the mayhem we see in our streets routinely here.

If you are a gun manufacturer, the product you make is not subject to safety regulation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Toy guns are subject to safety regulation; water pistols are, but not real guns.

The gun dealer is not only paying these two police officers, but more importantly, the gun dealer has said he will never again sell more than one gun to a customer. This is exactly what we're trying to get the gun industry across the country to do.