🚀 go-pugleaf

I've been reading this threat with some astonishment for some time. So
please forgive me for cluttering games groups with that, I just couldn't
let the following post go unanswered (and it looks like it was so far,
though this isn't very much after it has been posted, I know).


Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic: 11-Dec-93 Re:
This is America under t.. by Gregg Woodcock@crchh75b. 
> Jason Merrill (ja...@cygnus.com) wrote:
> > >>>>> kris...@phakt.usc.edu (Taxi) writes:
>  
> > > Yeah, right.  Proliferation of  guns in this country is  by no means  the
> > > problem.  The problem  is that the damn  liberals keep speeding criminals
> > > out of jail faster than we can  get them there.   Don't blame law abiding
> > > gun owners for a criminal system that lets  60,000 violent criminals free
> > > a year.  Knives kill.  Why no  ban all sharpened  objects?  Get real, and
> > > stop putting the blame on the tool, rather than the user.

    (1)    Knives have a bit more uses than killing people. Like, eating
steaks, or other things that are too big to eat in one bite and too
resistant to decompose by other means. Guns only exist for either
enjoyment (target shooting, whatever) or crime. Nothing really necessary.

    (2)    To kill someone with a gun you can be 50m away, brace, and
just apply a few grams of pressure on the trigger. You can do that quite
often per minute. To kill someone with a knife you have to be in
hand-to-hand combat and hit the right place, most probably against
resistance. This is psychologically a lot more disturbing and physically
a lot harder to do.

    (3)    I'm from Germany. We have TIGHT gun control. We also don't
have a police that's outgunned with their 9mm pistols. It feels, and
statistically is, a LOT safer.

    (4)    Someone in this threat mentioned Switzerland. Two points: you
can't take this assault rifle to the street with you. Gun-in-closet is a
lot different from gun-on-street. And if you're planning on doing
anything criminal with this gun, you'd better find some ammunition
someplace, since yours has to be there at least when you're called for
maneurvres, which actually seems to happen in Switzerland. With gun
control actually TIGHTER than in Germany you'd have to go some way...
  
> > Let's  step back another  level.  The real   problem is societal conditions
> > that create  more criminals than  the  economy can afford jails  to  house.
>  
> Wrong!  Soceity doens't create criminals and neither does poverty
> (althogh it can predispose people to it).  There is only one thing
> that creates criminals and that is BAD PARENTS!!!

You forgot no parents. Let's just say there are a lot of factors, and
while there certainly is a statistically significant correlation
between, say, alcoholic parents and criminal kids, so there might be one
between below-poverty boundary parental wealth and criminal kids (I have
no hard data, but neither do you seem to). 
Note that the two are mutually reinforcing - a single parent working
day'n'night to get the kids through college or whatever certainly has a
hell of a lot less opportunity to be a good parent than one who doesn't
(says he, member of the German Liberal Party, mostly remembered for
demanding cuts in highest-bracket income taxes :) ). 
And this is just one example.
  
> > This is, unfortunately, an incredibly difficult problem  to solve.  Another
> > problem, though somewhat  tangential,   is mandatory sentencing  for  petty
> > offenses like possession of illegal drugs, which fills up the prison system
> > so that there is no room for violent criminals.  This one, however, is very
> > easy to solve.
>  
> Agreed.  This is indisputable.  Same goes for prostitution, etc.

Easy to solve? Please tell me you didn't mean that. For how long have
people tried to do that? Has anyone done it?
  
> > > It's the damn Bradys trying to shift the  attention from the real problem
> > > of crime that are causing the violence in this country.
>  
> > Ah, yes,  the Bradys, bleeding-heart liberals that  they are.  Can you give
> > me a real argument against the Brady bill specifically, rather than against
> > gun control in general?  If  you feel the need  to buy a gun,  why is it so
> > important that you be able to buy it RIGHT NOW?
>  
> Let's say some of those societally challenged individuals in your town
> decide to start a riot and the police are ordered to sit back and do
> nothing (as happened in LA).  The prepared citizens already have their
> guns but the smart ones that don't are going to rush the gun shops.
> What happens when everything sells out except handguns?  Would you
> like the blood of an innocent family on your hands in this situation
> if they then get killed.  

So you advocate basing gun policy on the assumption that large-scale
riots that the police, for whatever reason, can't control, are a regular
occasion? Damn, what has become of this country??

Besides, the logic is faulty. That smart family just goes to the next
police station. Or drives there. Or maybe just drives out of town. Or
close their doors and windows real tight and wait it out. But basically,
they can't stop the riot, so they have to wait for somebody else to do
it.

And then, in a country so loose with guns, guess who's going to be
running around with guns? The rioters. Maybe one reason why the police
can't control it. There was an incident a few years ago in Frankfurt
when police tried to dissolve a demonstration and one or two of them
were shot with a pistol wrestled from another policeman. Now, if as a
police commander, I have to EXPECT a sizable number of semi-automatic
weapons in that crowd, and are under some rules of engagement that don't
allow me to just mow down the lot, guess how active I'm going to be to
get this finished.
Likewise, home owners trying to defend themselves with a gun are setting
themselves up for going to death row for shooting innocent bystanders.
Or, if they can get away with it, then you have on your hands perhaps
the blood of an innocent but non-forseeing gun lover who happened to
have run out of ammunition (assuming it took him some shots into the air
to get a bunch of rioters away from his house) and tried to run through
this person's garden to the gun shop to get more...

> How about if somebody threatens to kill you
> and the police don't take it seriously but you KNOW this person is
> serious.  You can't exactly go walking around the street with a
> shotgun; you need a concealable handgun.

Then that someone gets a gun, with or without waiting period, scouts you
out a bit, waits for you somewhere, standing there innocently where no
one notices, possibily for five or six days if you take the usual
precautions (ie vary your itineraries, of which there is a finite
number), until you pass by, then calmly draws his gun, aims, and shoots
you down before you even think of reaching to draw yours.

Besides, if you ever were to take this into consideration, tomorrow the
allegedly biggest drug dealer in town could show up at the police
station and quite credibly claim he KNOWS this fellow (allegedly second
biggest drug dealer in town) is out there to get him, and could the
police please protect him or, failing that, allow him to buy a gun. You
can't legally and consistently refuse that...

Finally, re-reading your example, I can put it in a few words, "this
keeps you from committing a crime" - carrying a gun that you are legally
not allowed to have. A nice view of law this is - "I choose which I
obey."
  
> I have now given you 2 cases where the Brady bill can TERRIBLY hurt
> people.  Now I send the challenge back to you.  Give me ANY scenario
> where the Brady bill will stop ANY crime.

I don't see it. Not in your examples.

John D. Something Jr III has just been quit by his wife and got a layoff
notice. Yeah, one of those days, in fact the worst of 'em - though it
seems that neither of these events is totally out of whack in today's
USA. Maybe the doctor said his cholesterol is way too high and he has to
go on an expensive diet, too. So he goes to his bar and downs one light
- alcohol-free whatever after the other and talks himself into a rage.
He then decides to take that rage out on the world that so cruelly
mistreated him. So he goes to the next gun shop and not twenty minutes
later he has everything any madman ever wished to have short of a
sub-machine gun. And starts to use it.
A five day waiting period tends to be quite helpful in such "amuck run" cases.

Of course, you might now tell me if there's a five day waiting period
he's just going to break into his neighbour's closet and steal the
latter's .45. Which refutes the example but doesn't really prove the
point you're trying to make in general.    :)
  
> I have an idea.  Let's solve homelessness by making it illegal to
> sleep under bridges on Tuesdays.  What's that you say?  It won't make
> any difference?!?!  That's just because you are narrow-minded and
> can't think without bias like I can.  Besides what's wrong with this
> law?  Do you see how silly the argument is 

Umm, sorry, the comparison is a lot sillier if I may say so. It isn't
"buy no guns on Tuesdays", it's "wait five days until you can." So your
correct example would be "wait five days until you first sleep on a
bridge." Still stupid since you don't existentially need to have a gun
but do have to sleep somewhere. Besides, you can sleep on a bridge most
of the time regardless of what the law says on the subject. You can't
walk into a gun shop and buy a gun most of the time regardless of what
the law says. At least I should hope so!

> (it could be a law making
> it illegal to wear purple shoes in the dark; "what's wrong with that;
> who *needs* to wear purple shoes in the dark anyway").  

    ?????    

> The Brady bill
> is such bad law that the pundits are forced to use the argument
> "what's wrong with a 5 day waiting period" instead of trying to make
> the case for what's RIGHT about it.  

See above. It prevents people from buying a gun and starting to shoot
others before they at least have had some time to think about it.

> In fact, IT DOES NOTHING but
> inconvenince law abiding citizens.  You should never justify a law by
> asking what's wrong with it, only what's right.  We have TONS of bad
> laws on the book as it is (including the drug laws we both agree do
> more harm than good).
>  
> But for the most part, there isn't anything directly wrong with it
> other than the precident it sets (there have been plenty of other
> bad precidents in gun control).  Whe the federal income tax started,
> it was something like 1 percent and the poeple didn't put up a fight
> because "it's only 1 percent".  Now look at the mess we are in.  What
> you are really saying is , "When they start going door to door taking
> guns away then I'll be on your side."  THAT IS WAY TOO LATE!!!  Don't
> let the incompenant government get their foot in YOUR door!

I just wonder what the difference is. Either you assume that because
people didn't complain about 1% they won't complain when it goes above
ten, or wherever it starts really hurting a majority. Or you assume that
popular protest would stop the government from passing the Brady bill
when that same government would take guns away despite the uproar you
assume this would then generate. Either way, you're wrong. People stand
up for what they think is important, and government (gives the
impression that it) listens. I remember taxes having been a major
elections issue here, haven't they? Like in, "read my lips" ?
  
> I am sorry if I completly embarrassed you by making a shambles of your
> stance on this issue but since you are a liberal, I am sure you are
> used to it by now.

Now what do I say about that, other than that it really did get me writing...

Best regards

    -Markus.    <mk...@andrew.cmu.edu>

The above is my opinion. That doesn't say it is anyone else's. 
I claim copyright for my inventions. Especially the weird ones.