Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site mit-vax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!mit-vax!csdf
From: csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Handgun control (again)
Message-ID: <343@mit-vax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 16:42:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-vax.343
Posted: Tue Jul  9 16:42:35 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 04:26:30 EDT
References: <484@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <> <493@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Reply-To: csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 35
Summary: 

In article <2615@topaz.ARPA> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>a) the use of guns (specifically handguns) in crime is a tiny percentage
>  (~0.01%) of all handgun use in the US.  The current black market is
>  many times the volume needed to support criminal use.

Maybe where you live.

>e) All the above aside, it is quite feasible for anyone who can fix a car
>  to make a respectable autopistol in a common machine shop in a day,
>  or in the basement in a week, using materials found in any hardware store.
>  A zip gun, useless for defense but just the thing for murder, can be
>  made by a technological illiterate like Mr. Forsythe in an hour.
>--JoSH

Very good JoSH. I was never naive enough to think that we would be
totally safe from terrorists and mobsters. Still, how many street punks
conduct holdups with uzi's or zip guns. I won't keep you in suspense:
not a drop in the bucket. While the sawed-off shotgun has been known to
be popular, everyone I know who has been mugged (a great deal more than
~0.01% of my friends) has been mugged at pistol-point. Transmit some
more statistics, JoSH. Maybe, if I hear them enough I'll stop believing
my own experience and that of my aquaintances. 

My only possible response at this point is that I realize handguns, and
guns in general, are so much a part of this country that most people
couldn't imagine a world without them. Japan has some of the stricktest
gun control laws in the world and the lowest murder-by-firearms rate to
go with it. Perhaps JoSH can fly over and start a black market.

-- 
Charles Forsythe
CSDF@MIT-VAX
"The Church of Fred has yet to come under attack.
    No one knows about it."
        -Rev. Wang Zeep