Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> I swore a mighty oath that I'd never get into this sorta thing, but...
>
> At 09:12 PM 6/04/00 -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> >They don't mention that if the registered owner isn't
> >home and his wife gets attacked by a rapist/robber/murderer, she has no
> >hope of defending herself or the kids.
>
> Mike, you can't imagine how wildly weird this sort of thing sounds in Oz.
> How pathologically dangerous the society must have become to permit a
> rational man like yourself to regard such fears as natural and attitudes as
> righteous.
Keep in mind Damien, that of the 15,000 people who were killed last year
here with guns, most were criminals caught in the act. Killing a
predatory animal is nothing more than taking out the trash.
>
> >So you buy your wife a gun, fine.
>
> This is weird too. `You' are as likely to be a woman as a man, if we're
> talking adults. And in Australia, wives tend to buy their own stuff.
True.
>
> >Your kids [...] either weapon, neither of which they can use.
>
> I should bloody well hope not!
My older brothers' best friend, who was the son of my grandfathers best
freind, (the pediatrician who birthed myself and my brothers), was
executed in his parents home at age 14 along with his father and mother
by a biker gang in 1978. He was pretty well trained by his father in use
of firearms, and the only reason he wasn't able to save himself and his
parents that night was because the .45 semiauto he used when the gange
broke into the house misfired on the first round. I was 9 at the time.
Since then I have become quite proficient in the use of any and all
firearms, as are most all members of my family. We have all been taught
the safe and responsible use of firearms, about respect for the
technology, and respect for the Constitution.
This crime occured in Massachusetts, the state that loved to brag that
it had the most 'progressive' and 'modern' gun control laws in the
country, that these laws 'protected' the citizens of our fair and
democratic commonwealth, and that the modern police organizations of the
state were there to provide that protection, that people didn't need to
defend themselves. This was a year when Massachusetts' crime rate was in
the top 5 for the entire country, and ws that way for at least a decade
and a half after that time...
>
> An especially worrying aspect of this (dominant?) American mind-set became
> apparent to us in Oz a few weeks back, when we learned that the NRA were
> TV-broadcasting ads that straight-out lied through their teeth about the
> allegedly vile consequences of gun buy-back laws here.
>
> The claims were that we'd gone to the dogs, people were cowering from an
> increasing assault by armed crims, blah blah. In fact, official crime data
> showed that things had *improved* in all the salient parameters, as one
> would expect.
Find independent data. The data shows that your violent crime is up. You
actually think your government is going to tell you the truth now that
it has gotten your guns away from you?
>
> The NRA falsified their statistics in the most blatant fashion. The
> conservative Aussie govt was so outraged that they threatened to take legal
> action against the NRA, a step I found astonishing for a right-wing
> government. I don't know if news of all this reached the States, or just
> the paid lies.
I'm surprised that commie conspirer- Ted Turner, has not made hay of
this in an effort to embarrass the NRA, unless of course the charges of
your government and media are likely to disproven. Turner has already
been embarrassed himself once with a poorly placed internal memo....
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:07 MDT