Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules;
the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless.

Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat.

Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.
— Robert Anson Heinlein, Letter to Alice Dalgliesh, the editor who was censoring his manuscript for Red Planet, regarding gun control registration and control