🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1dp5mpINNfat@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:
} > If you simply don't like handguns, fine.  Don't own one.  
} 
} I don't know about the original poster but I don't like them in your, or
} other peoples hands. Like you I feel that I am infinitely responsible
} and would never never misuse any gun I owned Unfortunately I do not
} have the same confidence in you, or others , and am willing to give up
} my utterly responsile freedom in order to help protect me from other's
} irresponsibility.

I don't accept that.  I could not care less, if you want to give up your
*own* freedom, but I have a huge problem with your denying them to others
just because of your own fears.

Besides, such a ban does not give you the protection you seek.  For
instance, Washington D.C. denies the freedom of law-abiding citizens to
obtain handguns legally.  Yet, its murder rate is the highest in the
country (~80/100,000).  Compare that to, say, Colorado Springs Colorado
where a resident of that city can walk into any gun shop and purchase
any gun that's there, and walk out with it -- no waiting period, no FOID
card, no registration, nothing.  Yet the murder rate there is ~4/100,000.

} > If you feel that they are just too dangerous for people to own, consider the
} >  numbers - there are about 200 million handguns in the US, and about 12000 
} >  firearms homicides per year, and 1400 accidental firarms deaths.  That makes
} >  firearms safer than automobiles.  
} > 
}  Uh, hardly. divide the number of deaths by the number of times they
} are used, not by the number.

Ah, then the danger really isn't the firearms themselves, but rather in
*how they are used*.

--
David Olson   dlo@druwa.ATT.COM
"Keep in mind that I am speaking from Cambridge Massachusetts, which is
 about as far out as you can get."  Robert Reich, economic advisor to
 Bill Clinton, on "This Week with David Brinkley" 11/08/92