"J. Goard" wrote:
>
> At 09:22 PM 4/8/00 -0700, Mr. Lorrey wrote:
No, I most certainly did not. Please get your citations straight.
>
> >I have an idea of my own; those who wish to buy guns who prove themselves
> too dense to lock them up when kids are in the house forfeit their right to
> keep and bear. We are losing twelve kids a day...That's waaay too many
> (4380 per year) when simple precautions by responsible adults (including
> the denial of gun possession to the irresponsible adults) could drastically
> reduce this number.
>
> But punishing such irresponsibles (including taking away their guns) before
> the fact, is clearly impossible without some kind of universal licensing
> and/or registration of weapons, plus a significant branch of law
> enforcement devoted to finding violators. And, according to many opponents
> of gun-control, such as L. Neil Smith, this makes it much easier for a
> government to disarm its citizens, and a disarmed citizenry is an important
> (if not *the* most important) factor in the rise of totalitarianism. Since
> totalitarian regimes have and do cause many more deaths than 4380 per year
> (especially if you include the casualties of war, poverty, and
> technological stagnation), and since the freest countries have periods of
> near-totalitarian behavior (Vietnam draft, War on Drugs), these are the
> questions you should answer:
>
> 1) What better counterthreat do we have against Bill Clinton, Janet Reno,
> Barry McCaffrey, et al., than our own lethal force, our own privacy, and
> that of those around us? What better way to decrease the chance of Hitler
> happening here?
>
> 2) Since we claim to have a very long-term perspective, what relative
> weights should we assign to a)some thousands of deaths projected for next
> year, most of which occur in specific settings easily avoidable by you and
> me, and b)some millions of deaths projected 10 or 30 years in the future,
> and much less avoidable by you and me?
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