Darren New wrote:
>> True. But the mere presence of weapons can often times defuse a 
>> situation to
>> such a degree that actually firing a shot is not needed. 
> 
> The FBI reports here show that the presence of a gun without firing 
> stops more violent crimes than the presence of a gun that does get fired.
> 
Yeah. Its one of those interesting catch-22s. If everyone in a room is 
armed, and someone fires, not everyone is going to be looking to *see* 
who fired, so what you get its a room full of armed corpses. If, on the 
other hand, someone guy walks in, and notices that people have guns, 
unless he is mentally unstable, he won't try pulling his. The problem 
being, some people ***are*** mentally unstable.

Its a complex mess, but what it comes down to is that the less you have, 
the less likely you are to be "in" a situation that you would have 
needed one, but the more likely you are to get shot, having not had one. 
So, the question is, how do you balance that? Is the risk that you might 
have a run in with the one idiot that is mentally unstable, and got hold 
of a gun of some sort, worth 99% of the time not having to worry about 
such a person? Or is it better to live in the world of people defending 
the questionable value of a, "right to bear arms", who think that having 
every single person in sight armed is a good idea, on the entirely 
imaginary position that no one is mentally unstable enough to pull one 
in such a situation? How about if you have a crowd of 100,000, three of 
which are unstable, but only one of which could "get" a gun? Would you 
rather be in the group closest to the two that don't have them, or the 
one closest to the one that does? If you where armed, would that really 
change things? How about completely unarmed, without even a pocket 
knife? What is the risk that the 50 other people around you, if you, and 
they, are armed, will see "you" holding your gun, and assume, based on 
people dropping to the ground, that you shot someone?

The only "safe" world is one which doesn't include guns. All else is an 
exercise in making people feel safe, when they might not be. And the 
only real difference between pro and anti gun people is which situation 
they "think" is safer, the one where they might be shot by accident, or 
the one where they might, by shear misfortune, actually run into a guy 
that got hold of one. The constitution does not even **try** to address 
this issue, and that makes arguing from its authority on the matter, 
when the guy you are running into might have a damn 100 round machine 
gun, instead of a muzzle loaded musket, problematic at best.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message