From: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 13:44:02 +0800
To: Ernest Hua <hua@xenon.chromatic.com>
Subject: Re: Giving 6 year old kids Uzi's (Was: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids)
In-Reply-To: <199607192139.OAA23712@server1.chromatic.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960719165151.22708A-100000@crl8.crl.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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                          SANDY SANDFORT
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C'punks,

On Fri, 19 Jul 1996, Ernest Hua wrote:

> I suspect you might be baiting ... but ...
> 
> If you can trust a six-year-old with an Uzi, I assume that you believe
> the six-year-old can "properly" judge what is a threat and what isn't?
> Just why do you suppose a pissed-off six-year-old (because, let's say,
> another six-year-old stole his lunch) would not blast someone?

Works for me.  Throughout most of the history of the US, children
have routinely been intrusted with deadly weapons--rifles, pistols
and shotguns.  I got my first real gun when I was seven or eight.
(Before that, I had a BB gun as long as I can remember.)  I gave 
my daugher one when she was nine or ten.  I know of one FOUR YEAR 
OLD whose parents gave her a gun.  (I have no doubt she would use 
it far more judiciously than your average cop.)  

For two hundred years Americans have been able to buy small
guns made especially for children.  I've seen them and they
were beautiful little guns.  Nowadays, the gun manufacturers
has eschewed them--probably for PR reasons.

> Would you just hand out guns to all teenagers?

Hell no!  Let them or their parents buy them.
 
> You might have had a different childhood, but when I (and most of my
> friends) were 6 (or 12 or even 18), our primary concern was having fun,

Ditto, bro.  And guns are great fun.  That's why Thomas Jefferson
opined that giving a young man a gun would do far more to build
his character then engaging in sports.  (I agree.)  Next time you
are in the San Francisco Bay Area, let me know and I'll take you
shooting.  Looks like you need some character building.  :-)

> This means that a group of 1000 KKK members will kill a group of 10
> blacks due to overwhelming force. 

Again, history shows you to be wrong.  Gun control started in
the antibellum South as a means to disarm the newly freed blacks.
When the Black Muslims bought a Southern plantation in the '60s
they were harassed--until they armed themselves with AR-15s. 
After that, no more problems.  Finally, I know a lawyer who was
a Freedom Rider in the '60s.  Whenever they were confronted with
threats of force, they shot back.  Presto, off into the woods
shrank the cowardly Klansmen.  Other--unarmed--civil rights
workers ended up being encorporated into dams and land fills.

> One principle in the Constitution (which I personally respect
> very much) is that a majority should not force its views on a
> minority.

Me too.  That's what we gun owners are fighting to preserve.
 
> Incidentally, if you are interested, I DO have a child (almost 2 yrs),
> and I certainly would not even contemplate letting him have a gun (no
> matter how well he can use it) until he can legal get one himself.  I
> will certainly invoke serious wrath (on him and anyone else involved)
> if I ever found him with a gun.

Unfortunately, the first you might know of it is when he comes
across a gun and ends up shooting himself or someone else because 
of the gun ignorance to which you have condemned him.  Good luck.


 S a n d y

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