On 2/3/2011 12:29 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> guns ***have no other use*** other than to kill, injure and/or
>> threaten the death/injury someone/something.
>
> Nah. There are plenty of people who go target shooting, for example.
>
Interestingly, this doesn't require that the weapon used even have ammo 
that is deadly, just that *generally* behaves like it would if it was, 
in principle. So... But, in most cases "target shooting" is practice for 
something else. Some of my family might even joke that it was to make 
sure they hit the other guy wearing an orange vest in the woods, instead 
of accidentally shooting an innocent deer, given the number of morons 
that manage to do that every year. lol My brother stopped going on 
hunting trips with friends a while back, because of that. They either 
wanted to get drunk first, or drive to places no sane person would take 
a vehicle, etc. He figured either he would come back one day, tied to 
the hood, or he would have to leave his jeep wedged between two 
boulders, half way up a cliff, and walk out.

> And you know, if you said "outlaw all guns", I might even be with you on
> that one. But nobody ever proposes that. They propose "outlaw all guns
> except those belonging to government employees."
>
Yeah. Sort of a drawback to the whole mess. You kind of can't do that, 
without leaving them vulnerable to *outside* dangers, which would still 
have them. But, I have always found it a bit silly that "bare arms" only 
means guns, with the result that martial arts weapons **are** banned. 
Heck, even if you carried a billy club, you would probably get arrested 
faster for having a "deadly weapon" in some places, than you would 
totting a machine gun (as long as you had the proper permit, or it 
wasn't concealed... lol).

But, seriously, if you limit what people can get hold of, you can also 
limit what the government officials need. If you take the position that 
you can't limit anything much, all you get is a constant escalation from 
**both** sides. How long before someone figures out how to make a 
nuclear battery, and a "fast charge" capacitor, and we start seeing 
people carrying around railguns, leading to the police deciding they 
need some too, to offset that? So far, they are bulky, hard to power, 
one shot, jobs, which only a few goofballs have built in their basement 
(in both cases I know of personally, by people that badly underestimated 
what the hell the muzzle velocity would be, and thus, how much shit it 
goes through before the projective stops).

At what point do you stop? Or, more to the point, at what point do you 
bloody stop and think, "Heh, you know.. it might just be a good idea of 
this *never* hits the market for the average person." Somehow, these 
things never get thought of until *after* something happens.

-- 
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();
}

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