Re: Gun Errancy

Jason and Heather (steiners@primenet.com)
Wed, 14 May 1997 00:16:57 -0700

Robert Squires writes:
> TILL writes:
> >
> > Fellows, let's not get started on the gun issue, PLEASE. I am a
> > firm advocate of gun control and the adoption of a sensible
> > government attitude toward guns as Canada has, where deaths from
> > gun wounds each year can usually be counted on both hands as
> > compared to the thousands just south of the Canadian border. If
> > this subject continues to come up on the list, I will bite my
> > tongue off trying to resist getting into the thick of it.
>
> Sorry for bringing it up. You're right I should choose another forum.
> Would like to know more about the Canadian laws though...

Don't bother. It's not Canada's gun laws that cause the difference.
Canada was a peaceful nation long before their gun control laws were
instituted. The real difference lies in their drug laws, and in the
fact that it does not have a legacy of slavery and discrimination.
Canada does not have the war on drugs that the U.S. does. It also
does not have the same underclass. Combine a bunch of people who have
little hope of making an honest living with a very lucrative market
in illicit substances, and you have a formula for disaster.

More laws will not get rid of the poor. More laws will not get rid
of the drug trade, although they might make it even more profitable,
just as Prohibition made the alcohol trade a lot more profitable.
More laws against guns will simply create _another_ black market for
criminals to exploit! If they can import tons of cocaine into the
country, they can do the same with guns. They wouldn't even have to
smuggle them. Anyone with rudimentary tools and a metalshop class
under their belt has everything necessary to build a Sten gun or MAC-
10 submachinegun. Guns are low tech.

Sorry for going on about this, but as an honest gun owner who's fired
thousands of rounds of ammunition without hurting anyone, I resent the
suggestion that I should be punished for someone else's sin.

For more information on the history and effects of gun controls in the
U.S. and other countries, including some telling statistical data,
I recommend the book "The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy" by
David B. Kopel. It was named Book of the Year by the American Society
of Criminology's Division of International Criminology, and is
available from amazon.com.

jason

-- 
 "The man who marries a modern woman marries a woman who expects to vote 
like a man, smoke like a man, have her hair cut like a man, and go without
        restrictions and without chaperones and obey nobody."
BOBBED HAIR - John R. Rice, 1941         http://www.primenet.com/~steiners/