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