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This year Australia begins to treat swords like guns. Taxation,
registration, storage mandates, et al. And so it begins.
Apparently, their politicians don't know how effective a Cross pen can be
as a killing instrument (if the killer doesn't mind the goo) or they've never
compared an eight-inch Hackels chef's knife to a Marine K-Bar (they are
functionally identical). Or, even worse, they do know but they are
waiting for the proper moment to introduce further repressive regulations
[historically this is not a far-fetched possibility].
Individual murders were a part of the human experience long before guns or
swords and will not be reduced nor eliminated (in the long run) by banning this
technology or that. Knives and blunt objects are already the weapon in
about 40% of aggrivated assaults and murders.
So long as the anti-violence movement focuses on instruments and not
on violent actors, they are doomed to failure and the rest of us will be
victimized by every increasing (but never successful) repressive measures.
Their conduct reminds me of the Abraham Lincoln anecdote about the man who
complained that he had cut this board three times and it was ... still too
short.
As James D. Wright says "Benevolence and malevolence inhere in the motives
and behaviors of people, not in the technology the possess. Any [sword] is
neither more nor less than a chunk of machined metal that can be put to a
variety of purposes,... . We can only call this 'good' when the [human
actor's purpose] is appropriate and 'evil' when it is not; the [sword] itself in
immaterial to this judgment." [Society, Mar/Apr 1995, 67].
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Professor Joseph Olson Hamline University School of Law tel. (651) 523-2142 St. Paul, Minnesota 55104-1284 fax. (651) 523-2236 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |
