--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "uns_tressor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "shempmcgurk" <shempmcgurk@> > wrote: > > > > Discuss amongst yourselves. > > There is a perverse logic here. But it is perverse. > We in England are defeated by Americans' love > of guns. The danger of the Apaches galloping > over the horizon is relatively low nowadays, I > am told. > > There must be conditions that would get even those > in the soutern states to lobby to ban guns.
"Banning guns" is a specious argument, one that has no meaning whatsoever. At last count, there were almost as many guns in America as there are people. If you impose restrictions on the legal sale of new guns, what happens to the old ones? The reaction of even the strongest, most patriotic Bush supporter in America to a State or Federal official showing up at his door and demanding his guns would be to shoot him. And, given the history of what has happened when almost *anything* was declared illegal in America, how long after a gun sale ban would it take before an enormous underground economy developed to sell guns illegally? IMO, the absolute *stupidity* of dealing with issues like this latest school shooting by calling for "tougher gun laws" is exposed by the Fairfield Ledger editorial that Bob posted. It would be *just* as effective as dealing with a society's desire to take consciousness- altering drugs by making thim illegal; we all know how well *that* has worked in America, don't we? The problem is not the guns per se. The problem is a population that is so insane that it uses those guns to kill each other on a regular basis. The Swiss have a percentage of handgun ownership about half of the US percentage, but a handgun murder rate (adjusted by population) less than one fifth of the US rate. If what you want to do is cut down on the number of deaths as a result of guns, one could make a stronger case for achieving that by banning *Americans* than by banning guns. Then again, given Americans' propensity to kill each other, there is probably no need for that law, either. Give them enough guns and enough time, and the problem will resolve itself.
