Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection - children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren't nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless.
Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.
The most frustrated and most stymied it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings.
For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.
We have to enforce the laws we've already got, make sure that we're keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don't belong on our streets. And so what I'm trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally.
We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.
No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None. Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.
Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.
Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.