From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 15:42:21 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Guns, Roses & Tobacco
Message-ID: <199707290722.JAA09290@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



  Meantime, taking their cue from the Tobacco Nazis, the city of
Philadelphia is trying to figure out how to sue gun manufacturers for
their
crime rate -- 414 homicides last year, according to conservative
gabmeister
Rush Limbaugh. "Expect the arguments to focus on how unsafe guns are,
the
lack of warning labels, the lack of formal training programs, etc." ...
rather than simply improve public safety by legalizing concealed
"Vermont
carry."

  The notion that gun manufacturers can be sued for manufacturing a
faulty
product is somewhat bizarre, of course, if the product (rather than
blowing
up in the user's hand, say) did precisely what it was intended to do.

  If America's socialist mayors and city councils are going to play this
brand of roulette, at least the odds should be evened. Why don't the
firearms manufacturers go ahead and offer to pay the municipalities,
say,
$500,000 for every innocent citizen killed by one of their products
(except
by the government's own police, of course) ... if the municipalities, in
turn, will pay them $500,000 every time one of their weapons is used (by
either police or commoner) to kill, wound, or drive away an intended
rapist, robber, burglar or murderer ... or tax collector or other
government agent acting in excess of his or her constitutionally
delegated
powers -- the main purpose for which the founders wanted to guarantee we
had such instruments of liberty, in the first place.

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com.

***


Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com

Voir Dire: A French term which means "jury stacking."