From: Blair.Haworth@launchpad.unc.edu (Blair Haworth)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: More Gun Control
Date: 24 Jan 93 14:40:40 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service

In article <1jrrl6INNlh6@titan.ucs.umass.edu> jennyg@titan.ucs.umass.edu (Well Paid in Name Only) writes:
>In article <1993Jan23.150327.17644@samba.oit.unc.edu> Blair.Haworth@launchpad.unc.edu (Blair Haworth) writes:

>>A lot (arguably almost all, but let's be charitable) of these 1400, or
>>rather, the people who incurred the 1400 [accidental] deaths, can be
>>categorized as idiots; isn't it kind of likely that they'd've still rung
>>up a pretty good score without the help of ordnance? 

>Yup, but if they had been wielding, say, paintbrushes or keyboards instead
>of guns, the only harm done would be bad art or Dalhousian posts.

Mmmmmmmmaybe.  But consider the people who perpetrate these accidents.  As
I said above, they're menaces with any of the myriad amenities of modern
life, especially in combination with chaotizing factors like children and
whiskey.  They're perfectly capable of getting the paintbrushes lodged in
their noses, and the keyboards in their colons - which may explain the bad
art and the Dal'posts, for all I know.  Firearms are just another
way for them to ease themselves out, and by no means the most common. 

Unfortunately, they also take other folks out, but that's an acceptable
risk when you consider that the alternatives are either giving up your
best means of self defense and/or hiring enough cops to make up for it. 
Cops who, being sworn to enforce _all_ the laws, may be checking out
_everyone's_ recreational habits a bit more closely than young white
middle-class Americans are accustomed to, while they're in the
neighborhood looking after our safety.  I find that a disgusting
prospect, and hell, I'm too busy living the cowed-grad-student lifestyle to
have anything worth hiding.

>Having spent a great deal of time in California with big burly men who own
>firearms (and a couple of skinny emaciated men who own firearms) I've
>actually discussed this topic quite a bit.  The immediate assumption made
>when I say that I think it should be difficult for people to get guns is
>that I think that this will somehow keep weapons from the hands of criminals
>or psychopaths.  Of course not.  So far we have no good method of distinguish-
>ing criminals and psychopaths from normal folk.  At least, not the really
>dangerous ones. [...]

>Idiots, however, are a different question all together.  Idiots can be
>spotted fairly easily.  And people who are not idiots per se, but have
>large pockets of idiocy within them, can have it explained to them before
>they try to use a gun. [sage advice from Banta elided...]

>So I say, make people prove they ain't idjits, and make sure they get training
>from big men with lots of testosterone before setting 'em loose with weapons.

I agree in theory, but remember that there's no one to do this but the
gummint, and the track record of the DMV is such that I'm not too sanguine
about the gummint's ability to spot BDI's on a mass quantitative basis. 
And as a fellow grad student, you must surely know people who if you were
to look at their files, you'd categorize them as genii, but who in real
life are a waste of opposable thumbs.  Idiocy is like Justice Stevens(?)'
comment on pornography:  "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

Although, now that I think about it (speaking *harrumph* as a
just-turned-pro military historian) the history of conscript armies
suggests that if you've got the testostroid-guys training apparatus, the
idiocy may be irrelevant.  My wife, an Alto-American (we called them
"hillbillies" before becoming sensitized to their distinctive culture and
contributions to American society) got firearms classes _'a la_ Drivers'
Ed. in her public high school - maybe that's the way to go...

>My new roomie has a friend JoSH who says we should make education illegal,
>and make guns & drugs mandatory - but have the government supply them.
>This may be the most effective form of drug/gun control suggested to date.

Yow! "Guns and drugs for the people": a political slogan for the 90's, if
not for all time.  But considering the quality of the gov't-supplied
ingredients in my school lunches, I'd be afraid I'd get a bottle of
generic cough syrup and an Iver Johnson break-open .410 as my benefit. 

Although they'd try to take the credit if I won a Nobel Prize,

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80