Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 02:00:50 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), crh@outpost.co.nz (Craig Harding), adam@whizkidtech.net (G. Adam Stanislav), chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Oh no. The Guns Debate (was Re: On "intelligent people" and Message-ID: <200003300200.TAA22147@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.20.0003291246500.1439-100000@theory8.physics.iisc.ernet.in> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Mar 29, 2000 01:36:33 PM
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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? Yes. There would be a balance of power, and any terrorist action would be a preterbation of the status quo. Balances of power are feedback systems for maintaining the status quo. > In places with already heavy terrorist problems, the terrorists > may use machine guns. There is already a law that you need a Federal Firearms License in order to obtain a machine gun in the U.S.. The law is in fact unconstitutional, but it exists, and it is enforced by those who have more machine guns and tanks. Nevertheless, this does not prevent people from illegally obtaining machine guns from across the U.S. borders. If the borders did not leak like a sieve, there would be no percieved "drug war" or "illegal immigration" problems. > 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. The biggest bomb incident in the U.S., in terms of lost life, if one does not count fallout vistims from nuclear tests conducted before fallout was considered dangerous, was Oklahoma. It does not hold a candle to most mass death around the world, which is a result of what would be called an active war, if outside nations were willing to officially recognize the other side. > (You can't walk around in the middle of a big city with a machine > gun, You can. Drug dealers and large scale do it all the time. If the penalty society extracts for a behaviour is high enough, it will drive up the prices to the point that the risk is worth the reward, and the people after the reward will arm themselves to a degree commensurate with the risk. If drugs had a street value of 1000% of their current value, there would be significantly less drug trafficing. > Moreover, they either escape well before the blast, Soldiers. > or are suicide bombers. Fanatics. > Try using a gun against that. You can't use a gun against fanatacism, unless you are fighting a single fanatic. Even then, you can't use it until after you identify the fanatic, which you can't until after the fact (which is what makes them a fanatic, rather than "the stange guy who was always threatening people, so they locked him up"). > 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. They probably were afraid to mug you because you might be a terrorist, and kill them. > 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. "Thank you, war on drugs!"... it's a function of the force with which the people in the areas would be prevented from doing what they are doing by the authorities. It's not just drugs, but drugs are a large part of it. Another part of it is the differential penalties for juvenile offenders. Does Dehli have differential penalties for murder by a 16 year old vs. murder by an 18 year old? > 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. That's easy. Remove the economic incentive to violence. > 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. I would not mind compulsory training. It's no more onerous than, say, jury duty. I object to the license, because you could send soldiers, un announced, to one residence at a time to collect the guns, using the license database, and not face coordinated resistance. Then you could be tyrannical all you want, and no one could do anything about it. > > 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. You're right. I'd have to include the tactical nuke we dropped on Canada. > 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. It seems to me it's gotten worse, now that ordinary people have had their guns confiscated. It doesn't seem to stop the people who you don't want to have guns from obtaining them. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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