🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <21230@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (James Wilbur Lewis) writes:
>-Oh?  When?  "When it's kill or be killed."  That means someone else is
>-trying to kill you ... unnecessarily.  Screw that.
>
>Sorry, no can parse. Wanna run that one by me again?  I'm worried about
>the possibility (not farfetched, given that I live in Oakland) that some 
>subhuman armed with a pipe wrench or a baseball bat might break into my
>apartment intending to cave my head in, and all you can say is "Screw that"?  
>Nothing short of lethal force is going to do me a damned bit of good in
>that situation!

Are you claiming that it's necessary for that "subhuman" to kill you?  Horse
shit.

I've lived in some of Oakland's more exciting neighborhoods for about 20% of
my life, fellah, places where screams are the music of the night; I've had
my place broken into more than once.  Your assumption that everyone who
favors gun control lives in "safe" suburban neighborhoods (where I live now,
incidentally -- and my home's been broken into *there,* too -- which gives
us a clear idea how much contact with the reality of the suburbs you have)
is ignorant.  Your categorization of "subhumans" in Oakland is an inch short
of racist.

>Or c) England has a much lower violent crime rate *across the board*,
>due to major sociological differences between Britain and the USA.
>The USA crime statistics include areas where *millions* of people
>live in overcrowded, economically depressed areas like Harlem, East
>Oakland, the Tenderloin, etc...how many British people live in
>comparable areas?  A fair comparison would be to look at Britain
>versus North Dakota, Alaska, or some other sparsely-populated
>state, which closely approximates the economic and population density 
>distribution of Britain.  But then the comparison is not nearly as
>spectacular, so I'm not at all surprised that gun control advocates
>haven't made it...

Okay, look up the statistics on gun-related deaths in North Dakota.  But
I doubt you'll have the guts to post 'em.  I won't -- because you won't
believe me unless you look them up for yoursesf.

You also show remarkable ignorance of the social realities of England in
the 1980s.  England has been in tremendous economic depression for quite
some time, now, and is the home of a such charming national pastimes as
terrace riots and paki-bashing.  London is a much larger city than Oakland,
or even San Francisco, and has its share of economically-motivated crimes
-- which is to say nothing of depressed industrial cities such as Manchester
and Liverpool.

Shot yourself in the foot there, buddy.  Ignorance will out.

>-"A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State,
>-the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

>Please explain how the first clause of that amendment places ANY restrictions
>on what constitute valid reasons to exercise the right to bear arms.  

I didn't say it placed restrictions.  Read my lips.  Look at the rest of the
bill of rights; no reason is given for freedom of press, or speech, or assembly,
or the dozen or so other rights elaborated there.  But the second amendment
begins with a specific reason for its existence -- almost as if the founding
fathers were embarrassed by it, and felt a need to make an excuse.

In constitutional law, as anyone but the veriest bozo knows, "original intent"
of the founding fathers is considered of tremendous importance.  The FF's
actually considered it worthwhile to make their "intent" more explicit for
the second amendment than in any other case -- to ignore this would be to
undermine the basis of American democracy.

Of course, you don't want that, do you?

>And while you're at it, you might take a crack at explaining how your
>gun-control agenda is consistent with the Constitutional mandate that
>"the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED".

Very simply.  It's completely consistent with the above interpretation
which, as I pointed out, is not the interpretation of gun-control fanatics,
but a Supreme Court of the 1920s.

>Your characterization of people who want to keep guns for home defense
>as "paranoids" is absurd, given the fact that SOME of us are not so 
>fortunate as to live in neighborhoods free of violent crime.

My characterization of people who want to keep guns for home defense is
based on living in such neighborhoods for several years and observing the
people around me.  About a dozen people known to me within a block of my
home kept guns; two of them in less than one year used them to shoot someone
who was *not* breaking into their house.

Most homocides with guns are not committed by housebreakers, or by people
defending their homes, but by people who, in a moment of fury or depression,
picked up the gun they kept to defend their homes and murdered their spouse,
parent, lover, offspring, or next door neighbor.  Keeping a gun in your home
doesn't protect you from that sort of homocide; it makes you vulnerable to
it.

But the hate mail I've received from my first note on this subject -- including
at least one death threat (another was so garbled I'm not sure) is my real
argument for calling gun-owners paranoid.  This argument is not new, and any
sane person should be able to read either side without loss of temper.  But
in the two days since that article was posted, I have received:
	1 definite death threat
	1 possible death threat
	3 articles calling me various unprintable names

It makes me glad my address ain't in the phone book...

>Yeah, and for some people, posting to Usenet is a substitute for masturbation.
>It looks like you're shootin' blanks, bub!  Not only do you have a painfully 
>obvious case of WEAPON ENVY, but you show all the symptoms of *brain* envy! 

Weapon envy?  What paralogical process led you to such a conclusion?  I could
go down to my local gun shop and pick up a piece tomorrow if I were so inclined.

And why should I envy the brain of a man incapable of grasping something so
obvious?

Pax,

Roach