From: wreck@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com (R. Cage)
Subject: Re: FREE 1-YEAR NRA... enough allready!!
Summary: Ah, a know-it-all teenager... no wonder he's so dense.
Organization: Boye, Dewey, Cheetham and Howe, Atty's.
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 21:44:35 GMT

In <cthong.713580354@sfu.ca> cthong@fraser.sfu.ca (Christopher Thong) writes:
>trafficking drugs is hardly a VICTIMLESS crime if you look at all the 
>people it affects. many start out as willing experimenters, but end
>up as unwilling dependants. then there are the victims of drug related 
>incidents (driving under the influence- to killing for a few dollars to
>get a high.)

Driving under the influence, indeed.

While ten thousand or so are killed in the USA each year in
murders and non-negligent homicides, over 40,000 die every year
in automobile accidents, about half of which are alcohol related.

Yet you are silent about the trafficing of beer, wine and spirits.

350,000 people die prematurely in the USA from the effects of
smoking tobacco, both directly and passively.

Yet you are silent about the trafficing of cigarettes.

You can't be from around here.  The only people who grow up
on this continent and don't know these things are too stupid
to write their own names let alone get into college.  So
what planet are you from?

>accussing me of playing god is one thing

You're not competent to play god.  You haven't got enough
of the facts to even start on the omniscience test.  So
stop telling people what they do and do not need.  You,
taking Intro Psych, are only 18 years old.  When you are
80 maybe you will have seen enough to play in this game.

>how do you justify your HAVING or being FORCED to invoke your right to 
>defend yourself by shooting dead some poor kid who breaks into your home
>to get a few bucks to buy his next shot?

Not bad for someone taking intro psych.  You've mastered
the art of making the villian out to be a victim.  But
rhetorical devices have no relationship to truth or facts.

So, how's someone supposed to tell if the kid breaking in
just wants a few bucks, or maybe to power-trip by holding
people at gunpoint as he cuts them and watches them bleed?
Maybe he's a Jeffery Dahmer-wannabe; are YOU going to tell
ME which one's which?  I ordered my Acme Mind Reader last
week, but they seem to be having production difficulties.

>it's so much easier to condemn killing in defence when it doesn't affect 
>you PERSONALLY no? i guarantee if it were your kid who O.D. ed on crack
>and you saw the guy who was his dealer across the street, you'd find
>all sorts of justification for shooting him dead too no?
>or maybe i'm a bit too presumptious.no offence.

No offense, my ass.  You're as deliberate about it as they come.

And learn to use shift keys.  Put two spaces after the period
ending a sentence.  Get yourself a copy of Strunk and White.
Enroll in an English Composition course next term.

>every decision has its repercussions. when you have a weapon nearby,
>i would think that the POTENTIAL to take a an already disastrous
>decision on a course of action and give it SERIOUS potential for
>EXTREMELY dangerous consequences. case in point, assasinations
> and attempts on the lives of former presidents and celebrities 
>have by and large been committed with firearms.

So?  The vast majority of vehicular homicides are committed
with automobiles, not bicycles.  Do you want to ban cars now?

>( it could be
>that i'm just the argumentative sort of a sonnovabitch of course
>nyuk!).

You said it, I didn't.  My response to people like you is a
KILLfile entry.  Why bother to listen to somebody who won't either...

>would it not be easier to go out and help change
>society than simply adding to the problem by staying stagnant and
>blaming a dangerous society for making you HAVE to keep your gun?

It never occurred to you that guns have deterrent effects on
the problem elements, did it?  (The better-armed parts of the
USA have less crime than the less-armed parts.  Now, isn't
that *interesting*?)

So why are you demanding that people dump a solution that is
largely effective, fairly cheap and eminently workable?

>you have a much larger population and a whole different culture and
>set of problems that are more difficult to get rid of than a 
>600 sq.km island with only 2.5 million people.

You see the glimmering of the light...

>but it seems to me
>that there all too many people with contradictory solutions to your
>problems who aren't willing to admit that they might just be a part
>(F**K!I HATE THIS COMPUTER!!!) of the problem.

But you turn away from it.  I don't think you're cut out for
life as an academic, you're too dogmatic.  Shoot for a career
as an ideologue, you'll do just fine.

>one more exam on friday- psyc 100. got to go study.have fun.

18-yr olds.  They think they know everything.  Not even the
list of advanced and graduate courses in the catalog, and
the prerequisites they haven't even looked at yet, can
convince them otherwise.