From: bz269@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (James D. Del Vecchio)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
Date: 12 Nov 1992 11:04:12 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Distribution: inet
Reply-To: bz269@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (James D. Del Vecchio)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) says:

>>|> I understand that a ban on handguns would merely be a band-aid. That
>>|> doesn't change my preference.
>> I'm curious.  Why not?  

>Clearly you are a believer in the maxim that if a solution is not final
>and complete it is not worth implimenting at all. No sane person

Clearly?  Or maybe a believer in not implementing a "solution" that
has proven to only aggravate the problem whem implemented, again and
again.   Stricter gun control or bans has never been followed by a 
drop in violent crime, always instead an increase or no effect, exactly
the _opposite_ of the goal of such measures as you advocate.

>Yes and controlling peoples ability to commit violent acts is part of
>the solution- not all of it, part of it.
>Many of the guns used in crimes are stolen- stolen from all those law
>abiding citizens who never use them. And if there are more available to

Never use them?  Where did you get that?  They use them an estimated 650000-
to 1 million times each year  for defense & to prevent serious crimes, and
used countless daily millions of times for target and recreation.

>steal they are easier to steal.

>> If you simply don't like handguns, fine.  Don't own one.  
>I don't know about the original poster but I don't like them in your, or
>other peoples hands. Like you I feel that I am infinitely responsible
>and would never never misuse any gun I owned Unfortunately I do not
>have the same confidence in you, or others , and am willing to give up
>my utterly responsile freedom in order to help protect me from other's
>irresponsibility.

	That's funny because it fits so closely to the Ben Franklin
quote on the subject.

	(re: to the effect of "..those who would sacrifice liberty for 
security deserve neither."

>> If you feel that they are just too dangerous for people to own, consider the
>>  numbers - there are about 200 million handguns in the US, and about 12000 
>>  firearms homicides per year, and 1400 accidental firarms deaths.  That makes
>>  firearms safer than automobiles.  

> Uh, hardly. divide the number of deaths by the number of times they
>are used, not by the number. There are "billions" of molecules of cyanide
>in the universe. That does not make them any the less dangerous when
>used.	

Ok, assume the guns are used on average once per week (twice for some,
daily for other recreational shooters, seldom for others), that's 100
billion uses and 12000 homicides.  A miniscule fraction results using
your math.    Actualy, the only relevent homicides for such an equation
would be the _variable_ & _unlawful_ homicides that would be eliminated
by your ban.  This would be a very small subset of that 12000 indeed.

When you add back in all the extra knifing, clubbing, and other strongarm
non-gun murders that result from your ban, implementing a ban turns out to 
be very costly using "death math" like you do above.

Jim Del Vecchio
Newsgroups: sci.crypt