ERROR: Account closed.

James L Westrich II westrich at miser.umass.edu
Wed Jun 2 05:53:43 PDT 1999


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>>Jordan Hayes wrote:
>><BLOCKQUOTE>&lt;&lt;But enough about me; how about you go find the answer
>>to your question (how often does a handy pistol turn road rage into a shooting?)
>>and come back to us with your answer.>></BLOCKQUOTE>
>>Actually, Jordan, that's your question, not mine.&nbsp; My questions were
>>along the lines of &lt;&lt;Does road rage never seize them when their handy-dandy
>>pistolas happen to be in the glove compartment?>>&nbsp; Not quite the same
>>thing.
>><P>I'm not claiming that guns &lt;&lt;activate>> aberrant criminal behavior.&nbsp;
>>I am saying that guns facilitate the expression of aberrant impulses with
>>gestures that will terminate any conflict just as certainly as they will
>>make the person holding the gun an ex post facto criminal.&nbsp; This isn't
>>just salon theorizing.&nbsp; In my own experience, two friends, both women,
>>died after being shot by their partners.&nbsp; I believe that both women
>>would probably be alive now, had their partners not had immediate access
>>to a firearm.&nbsp; (Yes, I know I said "probably.")
>><BLOCKQUOTE>&lt;&lt;What's I'm not interested in is pre-judging gun owners
>>as criminals.
>><P>And that's exactly what you're doing when you say you're "afraid of
>>guns" and it's exactly why I label that "irrational" ...>></BLOCKQUOTE>
>>Wait a minute.&nbsp; I didn't categorize gun-owners as criminals, did I?&nbsp;
>>What I meant to say is that ownership of a gun facilitates the expression
>>of irrational impulses in ways that most of us would categorize as criminal.&nbsp;
>>I'll concede at once that such d&aelig;monic urges never enter the minds
>>of the vast majority of gun-owners, but it's hard to see how such bland
>>optimism might console the survivors of the two women whose deaths I mentioned
>>earlier.&nbsp; Nothing irrational about that, in my opinion--or about fearing
>>guns as the facilitators of such catastrophes.</HTML>

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