From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: Guns, and the necessity to trust our governement.
Keywords: guns and surrealism
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 16:30:29 GMT

In article <585@tls-cs.cert.fr> maillet@tls-cs.cert.fr (Luc Maillet) writes:
>In article <1992Aug20.064953.14368@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>
>|>      You may hate it, but the right is ours in the US.  I quote from our
>|>      second amendment "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall
>|>      not be infringed".
>
>  I was speaking (well, writing) about your right to kill. Self-defense CAN
>be appropriate in some cases, but too often does a weapon-owner loses his cool
>and just shoot at a shadow. When you discover that it's just a kid, well, he
>doesn't even have his eyes to cry anymore.
>  That's what I want to say: the decision of who may live and who may not is
>certainly not yours. If you take it, you are as much a criminal as the ones who
>are branded as such.

     Absolutely. One has no right to kill.  However, I was pointing out
     the fact that we, in this country, have the right to carry weapons
     to protect ourselves.  There is a difference between the two.

>|>      As far as an arms race in the streets goes.  It certainly can be
>|>      made no greater by me carrying an assault rifle.  After all, an RPG
>|>      or a mortar is probably too difficult to carry around, and nuclear
>|>      artellery could be rather hazardous to the user.
>
>  OK, kill one dealer, two dealers,perhaps three dealers. Next time, an
>self-made bomb will make your home look like a christmas tree. It's far easier
>to do that than to acquire heavy ordnance, and as far as terror is concerned,
>it is efficient too.

     Which is, of course, not any different at all from being shot by
     a .44.  A personal arms race is ridiculous since the personal
     weapons that we have right now are capable of killing people
     just as fast as larger weapons.  The reason that larger weapons are
     used by the military is that they have a need to kill larger
     numbers of people.  Larger weapons are also much more difficult
     to hide.

>|>      You also seem to have fundamental misunderstandings about the philosophy
>|>      underlying the US government.  It is certainly not to regulate social
>|>      interactions until it is 'safe' to carry guns.
>
>  It is NOT safe to carry guns. Just ask yourself what the purpose of a gun is.
>Then you have your answer.

     It is not 'safe' to drive cars, tens of thousands of people are killed
     by them annually.

>  A friend of mine once said to me that cars were more dangerous than guns
>because they killed more people. I'd rather be concerned with the (casuaties/
>global using time) ratio. And the most important difference is that the
>purpose of a car is to travel. The purpose of a gun is to kill, which brings
>us back to the first point of the article: you have no right to kill.

     However, the right to kill is not the point.  It is the right to 
     bear arms to defend yourself (against tyranny of many sorts).  Safety
     is not the consideration (though, of course, guns are perfectly safe
     with proper consideration and proper training).

>  A Lundi (See you next Monday),

     Certainment meilleure que 'bon' nuit.  A Lundi. 

                                        dale bass

-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926