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From: chas@ihuxe.UUCP (Charles Lambert)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Lethal danger - my retirement speech. (unabridged)
Message-ID: <1193@ihuxe.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Jul-85 23:15:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxe.1193
Posted: Tue Jul  2 23:15:24 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 09:21:26 EDT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 101

Let me answer some of my more coherent antagonists.


> Oh c'mon! Let's not get back into the old abused argument that if one
> person abuses a priviledge, then everyone should lose it.

Some figures:

1980 Handgun Deaths
-------------------
	Great Britain		8
	Sweden			21
	West Germany		42
	Japan			48
	Canada			52
	Isreal			58
	United States	    10,728

"One person" abusing a privilege??  Looks like a whole lot of abuse to me.
And who's talking about privilege? I am, that's who. Privileges are controlled
as gun ownership ought to be - and damned strictly at that. To what purpose is
gun ownership an unchallengeable right? In a cohesive and just society you are
not entitled to rights which make you a threat to the lives of others. You
don't get to use a car if you haven't proved you're fit to drive it safely.

> This has been said a hundred times, and I'll say it again. Outlawing
> guns is not going to put them out of reach. There are too many. If
> you're anti-gun, your battle was lost 30 years ago!

Bullshit. Do you imagine that the habits and laws of the world suddenly became
carved in stone, 30 years ago?  You may as well tell those States where the
legal drinking age was 18 that they couldn't raise it to 21.


>   You have no way of
> knowing if an attacker is going to attempt to kill you or not,

Then you have no way of justifying their execution.


> The burglar prowling in your house: is that your silverware in his hand, or
> a gun?
> ...  There are people out there who would
> think nothing of blowing you or me away for some drug money

Oh, look: I'm not arguing this case for the sake of making robbery a less
hazardous profession.  I'm arguing it because I want to see life in the USA
become a less randomly-hazardous pastime. You seem to be under the impression
that there is a classifiable "ordinary citizen" who can be relied on to keep
his gun safely under the pillow until the bogey-men come around.

Well they don't.

They shoot other people at stop lights because they're pissed off
with rush-hour; they kill their "nearest and dearest" (your words) in stupid
family arguments because they're either too drunk or too lacking in brain-
power to find another resolution; they shoot shadowy figures in the night,
only to discover a (now dead) returning lover;  they get manically pissed-off
about a job-loss and, because this satisfyingly sudden instrument of
retribution is right there, a welter of death descends on some innocent
community.  The list of senseless carnage which would either not have been
possible or would have been easily averted, had the perpetrator not owned a
gun, is endless.

> One more thing, I don't own a gun, I just don't think that you can say that
> I shouldn't.

Nor do I, arbitrarily. Nowhere in my previous postings does the word "ban"
appear. I advocate control. Red tape that makes it such a pain to acquire a
gun, and then to keep it and buy ammunition for it (collectors would not be
allowed that privilege), that only the devoted enthusiast will have the
facilities and the patience to do it. Yes, yes, of course I know that a gun
enthusiast could be an unpredictable killer just as likely as anyone else but
there'll be a damnsight fewer of them. If anyone doubts that such controls can
be enacted, they can ask me (by e-mail) for a set of proposals that are based
on an already-working system of gun control.

Finally, let me deal with one more "stock argument", or "load of tripe" as
I prefer to call it.

"If you outlaw guns, only outlaws have guns."

Passing over the obvious rejoinder that the law enforcers also have guns (in
this country), this argument completely ignores the effect of supply and 
attrition.  The supply of guns for illegal purposes begins with the supply
of guns for legal purposes.  Illegally-owned guns are removed from circulation
every day by the police. They can only be replaced from the pool of legally
owned guns.  Gun control would reduce that pool, would make all the guns in
that pool more visible (or more easily observed as missing) and thus
drastically reduce the supply of illegal guns. Assuming that the police
don't start patting miscreants on the head and sending them home with their
illegal guns, this means that the number of weapons in the hands of criminals
is will steadily decrease to a much lower figure.

The ownership of guns in this country is a grossly and tragically abused
privilege. It must be stringently controlled.

------------------------------------------
Charlie Lambert @ the Death Star, IL.

"Violence is the last resort of a bankrupt intellect."