🚀 go-pugleaf

walteastman@iname.com wrote:
 >The recent and tragic schoolyard massacre in Arkansas makes one
 >wonder where the kids could have got the idea. Could they, by chance,
 >have been reading Libertarian rants on the Internet?

Why do you think kids killing kids is a Libertarian wet dream?

I don't know L.Neil Smith or the Libertarians, but you seem to have missed
the point of his posting.

That is, the good guys have guns.  Instead of just the bad guys.

So exactly what is it you are unhappy about?  Don't you want the victims to
be able to protect themselves?  Or that he advocates that victims should
have rights?

You are apparently referring to the Jonesboro incident, where 5 unarmed good
guys were killed and 10 more injured.  In that case, only the bad guys had
guns.

Do you remember a similar incident in Pearl, Mississippi back in October?
Do you remember how it was ended?  It ended when it did because the good
guys had a gun.  An assistant principle went to his car and got a loaded
firearm and stopped the bad guy.  Sadly, two people were killed before he
got back to the scene, but in the 4 1/2 minutes he had control of the bad
guy, no more harm was done.  Maybe if he, or another responsible teacher
had been carrying on their person, less harm would have been done.

And if everybody including the bad guys knew that some of the teachers
were carrying, perhaps the bad guys would have been a little less eager to
draw down on a bunch of innocents.  But how does this work in real life?

I just read about a study of multiple victim public shootings ( WSJ,
03/27/98, Page A14 , by John R.Lott, University of Chicago) ( like
Jonesboro and Pearl).

It talks about states that have enacted concealed (carry of a firearm)
laws.  It states that "When states passed them during the nineteen years
we studied, the number of multiple victim public shootings declined by
84%....  Higher arrest rates and increased use of the death penalty
slightly reduced the incidence of these events, but the effects were never
statistically significant."

Wouldn't you agree that if it saves even one life, it is worth having a
law that enables the good guys to carry?

So, I've provided a little appetizer of supporting data.  What have you got?

David Post    post@fc.hp.com       These opinions are mine and mine alone.