Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:36:33 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: Craig Harding <crh@outpost.co.nz>, "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Oh no. The Guns Debate (was Re: On "intelligent people" and Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.0003291246500.1439-100000@theory8.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <200003290302.UAA27687@usr05.primenet.com>
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> Perhaps this is because America provides most of the sensational > television. > > The rest of the world has a significantly higher rate of > terrorism; I'm sure many terrorist countries are only too happy > when their victim neighbors disarm their populace. You're saying it would be better somehow if the victims were armed? In places with already heavy terrorist problems, the terrorists may use machine guns. For instance, Kashmir. But that's a more complicated problem than just terrorism. When they strike in a relatively peaceful area, with the intent of drawing attention to themselves, they use bombs. In America, too. (You can't walk around in the middle of a big city with a machine gun, and you can't kill a large number of people with a pistol.) Moreover, they either escape well before the blast, or are suicide bombers. Try using a gun against that. Anyway, that has little to do with regular violent crime. I lived in Delhi, which had a terrorist problem in the 1980s, as in bombs would randomly go off in buses. Delhi's not regarded as totally safe even crime-wise, but I've never been mugged or robbed at gunpoint/knifepoint there, and don't personally know anyone who has. Yes, crime does happen, killings too, but it's not like you walk into any "unsafe" area and you're immediately asking for it. In other cities in India one can walk around safely at all hours of night. I've heard that that's impossible in most places in the US; I've never been to the US myself, and most people past their twenties tell me they've been mugged at least a few times. I'm not saying that the solution is to disarm the population in the US: I know that won't work. But there is a problem of how to deal with increasing violence, in America and elsewhere, and I don't think arming ordinary people is the solution. I absolutely don't understand the moral / "democratic rights" / "our founding fathers wanted it" arguments in favour of guns at all. The one statement on this thread which I fully agree with is the idea that all gunholders should have compulsory training and pass thorough tests before being given a licence. But I'm still unconvinced that anyone willing to go through such training should be given a gun. > Similarly, the U.S. has not really had mass violence incidents > resulting in large scale death, which seem to be common in the > rest of the world. The only real exceptions to this are the > Civil War, the Revolutionary war, and government actions like > those in Waco. If Bin Laden and his group were in Canada, rather than halfway around the world, you would not be able to say that. Even now terrorists only go to America in numbers of dozens at most, not thousands. I'd like to know the British opinion about the IRA problem, especially in the 70s and 80s, and whether it would have helped if ordinary people had been given guns. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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