Re: Re Look out! long hair gun loon!

Damien R. Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Sat, 20 Dec 1997 18:19:16 -0800 (PST)


On Dec 20, 7:06pm, Wayne Hayes wrote:

> and 95%. So, my argument is complete: the per-capita murder rate
> in the US is between 10 and 50 times higher than in other developed
> nations, and the slack can almost entirely be taken up by firearms.

But you didn't look at the relative murder rates using other weapons.
Suppose we kill with knives 10 times as much as the British do? Then
Americans would kill each other more often period, regardless of weapon.
Which is what I've often heard.

And could handguns be kept out of the hands of those doing most of the
killing? We can't keep drugs out of prisons, let along the country.
True, we probably manage to keep guns out of prison. I doubt that our
criminals could be disarmed, though.

> However, if you think that there's no price, in the form of blood on
> the streets and in homes, for allowing citizens to be armed, you are
> misguided, for the facts are clearly against you. "The price of

Again, you assume that our extra arms are responsible for our extra
violence. There are other differences between the US and the other
industrialized nations. Size, long term racial problems, possibly how
we've treated our cities. Are you sure they're insignificant?

-xx- ROU Random Identity X-)

"Some would sooner die than think. In fact, they often do." -- B. Russell