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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 |
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