guns prevent violence!

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu May 6 08:19:35 PDT 1999


At 07:09 AM 5/6/99 -0400, Margaret wrote:
>I'm always stunned and dismayed that _hugely_ educated
>people, big intellectual credentials, committed
>leftists, able and willing to go into the most
>searching analysis of geopolitical economics...these
>very smart people seem so often to get a short circuit
>in their brains when talking about guns or some other
>classist hot-button-du-jour.
---snip


>The Dunblane massacre that precipitated wholesale
>firearm confiscation in the UK was a failure not of the
>principle of private gun ownership, but of social
>responsibility up the chain of civil authority. The
>beat cop knew the perp was a nutter, and reported it
>repeatedly. Nothing was done and, afterward, nobody in
>authority lost his job or pension.
>
>We had another example of the same dynamic recently in
>Colorado USA. People in authority knew, and did
>nothing. Now there's plenty talk of tightening the
>screws on kids who are 'different'.
>
>This is symbolic of a pattern.
>

Nicely said, Margaret. There is a definite pattern here - it is always human error/operator's fault - never a systemic failure. The Exxon Valdez disaster was caused by a drunken skipper, not by a faulty design of an inherently risky operation. Police violence is always the work of some rotten apples on the force, not the system of policing that resembles a military pacification. Ironically, I heard the same spiel on the other side of the iron curtain - where the assorted motley of guitly characters included bureaucrats, kulaks, speculators, hooligans, saboteurs etc. -- anything but the system itself and its captains.

Wojtek


>



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