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Subject: 
Re: New Web Page
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Mon, 17 May 1999 17:48:45 GMT
Viewed: 
785 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
James Brown wrote:
I know my logic is a bit faulty (it's late, and I'm tired), but the fact
remains that you need a firearm for protection, and I need a baseball bat.
An invasion of your home would likely involve a fatality, an invasion of
mine would likely not.

It doesn't bother me much when the fatality is the invader. What DOES

But the odds are as much in favor of the fatality being mine as anyone elses.
If I'm involved in a violent crime, I would simply rather the chance of a
fatality was slim or none.

bother me in your (contrived (1)) scenario is all the little old ladies
clubbed to death with baseball bats because they can't swing a big stick
as well as a 6'2" 240 pound criminal.

Hm.  I'm sorry, but the number of little old ladies who get beaten to death
around here is right around the zero mark.  The numbers don't support your
conclusion.  And my scenario isn't contrived, it matches my experience.

You need a firearm for protection too, you just don't know it. Guns are

I refute that.  Protection from what?  Of all my friends and family, I know no
one who has ever been in a situation where a firearm would have simplified
matters instead of complicating them.  If firearms had been involved when my
brother's home was broken into, odds are he would have been shot long before
the thieves, since he didn't know they were there, and they heard him coming
in.  As it is, they just ran with what they could carry.

an equalizer. They let the oppressed, downtrodden, weaker masses compete
on an even footing with thugs, whether muscular amateurs or jackbooted
professionals.

<shrug>  Until the thugs get something bigger.  Escalation is not the solution
to violent crime.  That's like treating a disease with a good old-fashioned
bloodletting.

1 - contrived because of this homily: "When guns are outlawed, only
outlaws will have guns". Trite but irrefutable until someone invents a
magic wand to erase the very knowledge of them from our collective mind.
Gun control reduces the number of guns among the honest. That's it.

Gun control locally has served to reduce the total number of guns, period.
There are a lot of people here who have rifles or shotguns, but handguns, and
other easily concealed firearms are quite rare, regardless of wether it is
outlaws who posess them or not, and firearms are not commonly involved in
criminal activity.

Review Prohibition or the failed Drug War if you still don't grasp this
simple concept.

Your analogy fails.  Gin I can make in my bathtub, (most) drugs I can
grow/make in my basment.  I can't machine a .44 in my garage.

If you want people not to use a particular tool, change society so that
the tool doesn't add value, because you CANNOT legislate the tool out of
existance.

I never claimed you could.  I was contrasting (one of) Mike's stated reasons
for owning a firearm with my personal experience in an area where guns are
less common.

James
http://www.shades-of-night.com/lego/



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: New Web Page
 
(...) It doesn't bother me much when the fatality is the invader. What DOES bother me in your (contrived (1)) scenario is all the little old ladies clubbed to death with baseball bats because they can't swing a big stick as well as a 6'2" 240 pound (...) (25 years ago, 17-May-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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