From: davidst@microsoft.com (David Steckler)
Subject: Re: Protest Vote '92  (Was: Don't waste your vote on Bush or Clinton)
Date: 09 Oct 92 15:24:35 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <43850@ogicse.ogi.edu> kimf@ogicse.ogi.edu (Kim Flowers) writes:
>It has been pointed out to me (and I freely admit my ignorance in the
>area) that many 3rd World countries are manufacturing their own
>firearms, thus my argument that if "civilized" countries stopped
>manufacturing firearms the world would be a whole lot safer loses a lot
>of its validity.
>
>
>Of course, if guns are available, then the criminals are much more
>likely to have them than you, and aren't likely to be as discriminating
>in how they use them. From society's viewpoint, it would be better to
>restrict both you and the thugs to clubs and knives, since they would
>only be able to kill you and your family at a time, whereas with
>firearms they are quite likely to kill you and your family and many
>more people in the local neighborhood, with little or no effort.

Two minor points: you're assuming that we could restrict thug's access to
firearms and I don't think this is a valid assumption (as I pointed out in
my previous posts). Also, I've got to disagree with your statement about
how many people can be killed by thugs armed with various weapons. If my
neighbors and I were only armed with kitchen knives, then yes, a criminal
with a firearm could wreak all sorts of havok before the police show up. But
if I (and my neighbors) are also armed, he isn't going to do nearly as much
damage before his luck runs out. As I pointed out in my previous post, 
restricting access to firearms only restricts those who choose to abide by
the law (my neighbors and I, for example).  

I certainly am not ideologically opposed to gun control. If I thought that
it would have an overall positive effect on society, then I would support it
completely. I would gladly give up my right to own a firearm if I thought that
was in society's best interest. But we've seen time and time again that gun
control laws are only enforceble on those who choose to abide by society's 
laws. If a criminal wants a gun, he can get one easily and even shutting down
the manufacturing bases in the US isn't going to do a thing as other countries
will just step in and fill the void (as I pointed out in my previous post).

>
>With clubs and knives, they're restricted through physical limits on
>how many people they can hurt at a time.  Your chance of running away
>is a lot better too.
>

You're assuming that we can keep guns out of criminal's hands again. I'm
not arguing with your reasoning, I'm arguing with your axioms.

>Of course, society's best interests often do not coincide to the best
>interests of the individuals in the society.

True. We need to try and find a balance. Theoreticall, _my_ best interests 
would be served by owning a bazooka in addition to firearms. But I think the
scales don't balance out if we allowed people to own weapons of mass 
destruction (ie, we've gone too far towards protecting the individual at 
society as a whole's expense). 

>
>In addition, if firearms are available, criminals no longer have to be
>strong, skilled or numerous to be able to commit crimes successfully (I
>guess firearms kind of lower the minimimum ability requirement to be a
>criminal :). This opens up the potential to be a criminal to a lot of
>people who wouldn't have had the guts or the ability to be a criminal
>otherwise.

Firearms are available. And will be, no matter what our laws say. (BTW,
have you ever fired a gun? It takes quite a bit of skill to do it even
remotely well)

>
>I can't really argue against the totalitarian government problem,
>except to note that the ability to bear arms doesn't seem to have
>helped much against totalitarianism enforced by bureaucracy. Nobody to
>shoot, I guess :). 

Agreed. the 2nd amendment _has_ kept (to a great degree, at least) our
government from ever going totally off the deep end. But nothing is perfect:
it hasn't protected us from creeping government invasion into our private lives
so I guess we'll have to rely on the other amendments for that.


>The United States is unique in its philosophy that
>the citizens should be allowed to bear arms in case the government goes
>bad.

But the US is also one of the oldest surviving democracies in the world.
It must be doing _something_ right. It is my opinion that the RKBA is one of 
those things.

I don't know the reason, but Switzerland supposedly requires all households
to keep fully (not semi, but fully) automatic weapons. It might be to thwart
external instead of internal agression. They do have a rediculously low
crime rate over there (I don't know if there's a correlation between everyone
owning guns (machine-guns, at that) and a low crime rate, but they certainly
don't show any correlation between firearm access and a high crime rate).

	...Dave 

	...Dave