Jay Stranahan wrote in
:

Beyond TV, my understanding of US gun law stems entirely from the NG.

No wonder you're all worked up. Go to Google and type in 'Centers For
Disease Control' and 'FBI' and go look at the data, instead of fencing
with anonymous strangers on Usenet and watching reruns of Miami Vice.

I think my point was valid, and certainly not half-cocked. That
statement was in reply to the suggestion that, as is the right of any
US citizen, a criminal can legally carry a weapon.

Convicted felons cannot even possess a single cartridge;that's good enough
for 5 years under Federal law.
(which has not been used much until recently.)
And states are stiffening their penalties for possession of a
firearm,ammo,or use of a firearm by a felon in the commission of a crime.



Oh for Christ's sake.... (rolls eyes). That's not true. Felons cannot
legally own firearms (not that that prevents them. They're *felons*.
Duh). At least not in the great state of California, and I seriously
doubt they can *anywhere.* You are speaking from prejudice and your
prejudice is based on ignorance, and if it annoys you for me to point
it out and call it by its proper name, I'm not completely sorry.
Because you've said a couple of things below that I find seriously
offensive.

It's the flagrant willingness to kill,

No, it's a total willingness to defend onesself in one's home.

Using the best tool for the job,a gun.No other weapon or item can be used
by the wide spectrum of peoples,and gives the -lowest- risks to
oneself.(and makes the risks to the criminal MUCH higher,as it should be.)

You
used to have the same ethos in your own society. You have successfully
argued yourself out of it, and only time will tell whether this was
any sort of an improvement.

coupled with such a low regard for
the gravity of murder, that really gets me.

Killing a person is NOT always -murder-. There's that attempt at
emotionalizing the issue again.

Prejudice again, and this one angers me. If I defend myself with
lethal force, it's only because I wish to avoid dying in my own living
room. I have no desire to harm any human being. No normal man does. I
am not dehumanizing the violent intrusive asshole who might
hypothetically barge his way into my house at night. I simply want to
not be at his mercy. He's certainly not there to do me any favors. The
reason he might be armed is not because of any Yankee gun kul-chore,
but because criminals, by de facto goddam definition, DO NOT OBSERVE
THE LAW. This is true in London as well as Redding (CA, population
78,000). Why would any reasonable individual place himself at the
mercy of lawless, violent men?

Because of a false sense of security;the thought that it cannot happen to
them.

What's the rate of hot burglaries in Britain? What's happened to your
rates of violent crime, gun crime, since you chopped every
legally-owned handgun on your island into scrap? They've gone up
severalfold. Why? Because the lawless took heart at the way their
prospective victims were disarming themselves? No... no, that's the
standard macho NRA line, and I don't buy it. I think it's because
you've hit a rough demographic and economic patch, and banning legally
owned weapons -- predictably -- didn't make any dent in it. You
treated a symptom. The disease rages merrily onwards.

despit
our guns and drugs and widespread poverty and petty sleazy
white-trash meannesses that Shasta County is *still* safer than
Merrie Olde England.

Controversial.

What's controversial about the facts? Unless you find them so
counterintuitive to your prejudices that you discard them out of hand.

You can say what you please in reply, but I see I'm not doing any good
by bouncing the marbles of statistical fact off the sidewalk of your
prejudice. So I'll stop.




--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net