Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Tue, 7 Apr 1992 13:17:22 -0700
From:         Andy Freeman <andy@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject:      Re: re : uzi on the street

>the purpose of guns is to kill things.  they also have the side effect of
>sometimes only wounding them.

No, that's not the purpose of guns.  Guns have a function, to propel a
projectile, and one can use them to accomplish a purpose, but the
designer doesn't pick the target or the circumstance.  (The designer
does have some effect on how effective a given gun will be on a given
target.  For example, the M-16 designer made decisions that made that
gun less likely to kill than previous military issue....)

>i have always been anti-gun, but that sentiment has been significantly
>strengthened by an incident that happened just before xmas last year.
>a hunter shot at a deer and missed. the shell blew a hole in the wall
>of my parents' house, travelled across the room, and blew another hole
>in the opposite wall on its way out of the house.  the second hole appeared
>about 2 or 3 inches away from my mom's head as she was bending forward to
>pick something up off the floor.  there were several results of this shooting:

Yet, if she'd been killed by a drunk driver, no one would have advocated
banning cars.  Guns do have a strange effect on people....

>1) my mother feels unsafe in her own house, since you can apparently shoot
>through walls nowadays

Shooting through walls has been possible since at least 1340.
(There's a reason that I suggested avoiding arguments based on the
technical properties of guns....)

>when the constitution was written, the "arms" that one would bear were
>significantly different from the ones that exist now.  i will support
>the constitutional right of americans to bear muskets or the occassional
>single-shot muzzle-loaded pistol, but i do not think that the "framers"
>of the constitution would have included this had they expected it to be
>extended to modern weaponry.

Really?  Guns that could be fired multiple times without reloading,
both in mass and selectively, were commonplace in the 1300s.  The
"modern" gas operated and recoil designs were described by Palmer in
the 1660s.  Puckle patented a machine gun in 1718.  Guns are low-tech
and our ancestors were not stupid.

If anything, modern guns are less lethal, even if you discount the
changes in medical technology.

BTW - Laser printers and modern presses are much further from 1790s
technology than modern guns.  Does that mean that their use is not
protected by the 1st amendment?  (If not, then perhaps a better
discussion of the relevance of technology is in order.)

>they needed people to have guns in order to
>fight wars since there was no standing militia.

No, there was no standing ARMY.  (There's a difference between a
militia and an army.  Moreover, "well regulated militia" is the
relevant term.)  Even if correct, the point is irrelevant.  The
institution of a standing army does not reduce the need for a well
regulated militia any more than a govt news service would reduces the
need for an independent press.

That first phrase has meaning; it restricts govt institutions for
"defense".  (There are important differences between militias and
armies.  One that I find appealing is that militias are fairly useless
for invasion while armies aren't, a difference that underlies the
National Guard's legal status as yet another unit of the US Army.)
The second also has meaning; a "well regulated militia" can not exist
if the RKBA is infringed.

>i can see no reason for anyone in our country to need to own an uzi.

Can you even describe the relevant and distinguishing properties of an
uzi?  How about distinguishing it from a common 9mm handgun?  How about
from a remington 7400 hunting rifle?

-andy
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