At 09:22 PM 4/8/00 -0700, Mr. Lorrey wrote:
>I have an idea of my own; those who wish to buy guns who prove themselves
too dense to lock them up when kids are in the house forfeit their right to
keep and bear. We are losing twelve kids a day...That's waaay too many
(4380 per year) when simple precautions by responsible adults (including
the denial of gun possession to the irresponsible adults) could drastically
reduce this number.
But punishing such irresponsibles (including taking away their guns) before
the fact, is clearly impossible without some kind of universal licensing
and/or registration of weapons, plus a significant branch of law
enforcement devoted to finding violators. And, according to many opponents
of gun-control, such as L. Neil Smith, this makes it much easier for a
government to disarm its citizens, and a disarmed citizenry is an important
(if not *the* most important) factor in the rise of totalitarianism. Since
totalitarian regimes have and do cause many more deaths than 4380 per year
(especially if you include the casualties of war, poverty, and
technological stagnation), and since the freest countries have periods of
near-totalitarian behavior (Vietnam draft, War on Drugs), these are the
questions you should answer:
1) What better counterthreat do we have against Bill Clinton, Janet Reno,
Barry McCaffrey, et al., than our own lethal force, our own privacy, and
that of those around us? What better way to decrease the chance of Hitler
happening here?
2) Since we claim to have a very long-term perspective, what relative
weights should we assign to a)some thousands of deaths projected for next
year, most of which occur in specific settings easily avoidable by you and
me, and b)some millions of deaths projected 10 or 30 years in the future,
and much less avoidable by you and me?
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Ellis Wyatt
http://www.foothill.net/~wyattoil
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The Beyond outside us is indeed swept away, and the
great undertaking of the Enlightenment complete;
but the Beyond *inside* us has become a new heaven
and calls us to renewed heaven-storming.
--Max Stirner
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