🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov12.070004.1556@netcom.com> gurgle@netcom.com (Pete Gontier) writes:
>amirza@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Anmar Caves) writes:
>It might be that the U.S. is already too screwed up with weird
>judeo-Xian guilt/hate for a ban on handguns to result in anything but
>pandemonium. See? I'm a reasonable guy. I'm willing to fall back
>to the position: "In any *reasonable* society, this would work..."
>Like, perhaps, the majority of other western societies.

Try again.  By that definition of "reasonable", there are no
reasonable society because the proposed measures haven't
provided those benefits....

>>History has also proven
>>that the first steps in oppressing a populace is to disarm them.
>
>Oh, that's alarmist talk. There are plenty of other countries
>with a ban on handguns of which one wouldn't say the population
>is being oppressed. There are plenty of countries of which you
>*would* say it. But you certainly can't claim any causal
>relation.

That's not the relevant measure.  The hypothesis is tested by
the existence of an oppressed country where the populace was
NOT disarmed.

The question isn't whether gun-banning necessarily leads to
oppression, but whether oppression can happen absent gun-banning.

>>...and it would not achieve the desired effect. Even then so,
>>about 5% of adults will carry a gun no matter if it's legal or not.
>
>Remember, we're talking about kids finding Daddy's gun, here.

Talk about it all you want, but it still isn't a significant problem.

>5% sounds to me like a lot less than the present percentage,

Which demonstrates that Gontier doesn't know much about the
present percentage.  Moreover, it demonstrates that he doesn't
understand how many criminals there are.  If 5% of the population
carries, at least 80% of the people carrying aren't criminals.

Carry restrictions don't stop criminals.  Since no social benefit
comes from prohibiting carry by "the rest of us"....

>the terms to which I'm so valiantly trying to limit the discussion,
>that's a Good Thing.

Why should we limit our discussions to Gontier's delusions and exclude
reality?

-andy
--
UUCP:    {arpa gateways, sun, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!cs.stanford.edu!andy
ARPA:    andy@cs.stanford.edu