From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 04:07:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: "Show me an example of terrorists using the Internet or crypto"
Message-ID: <199710011942.VAA09393@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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Alex Le Heux wrote:
>You people just don't get it do you? A gun has one purpose: To
>kill. Just like any other tool, a gun, if it is available _will_ be
>used at some point.

Although guns are obviously designed for killing things, this does not
mean that they will be used.  This can be seen from the statistics.
There are far fewer murders than there are guns.  Almost all of them
are never used for killing someone.

You are also not considering the case where one person has a gun and
another does not.  The situation is more stable if both people are
armed.  (And don't claim you are talking about disarming a whole
society.  You aren't, just part of it.)

>So making sure there are lots of guns around only serves to make a
>lot of people very dead. This is a Bad Thing.

Depends who they are.  Bet the Dutch resistance made good use of their
weaponry, eh?

>In the US, where guns are tradition and part of the American way,
>many people would not think twice before shooting someone.

This is simply untrue.  TV and movies are not the best way to form an
understanding of another country.

>The result of this is that the number of people getting killed by
>guns is enourmous, be they criminals, little kids, old grannies, or
>presidents.

I read recently that 9000 people a year die in the United States from
food poisoning.  This should be almost entirely preventable.  Why
isn't this a big political issue?  Could it be that the people pushing
gun control do not have entirely pure motives?

Be aware that the gun control lobby has often used misleading
statistics.  For instance, you will hear a lot about "handgun deaths".
It turns out that most of these are suicides.  While undesirable, most
people perceive a difference between somebody killing themselves and a
nutcase doing his thing at a school.

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html

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