From catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au Tue May 25 17:18:56 1999
despite jordan's previous list to me i don't see any nonviolent
uses for guns ...
Well, it's not for lack of my trying :)
and no uses for guns at all that can't be given up in the
interests of avoiding the incredibly pervasive unethical uses
of guns which i think will be and is assisted by mkaing them
less avilable.
This sounds like the arguments made for capital punishment: "it's cheaper than housing bad criminals forever" (it's not; it costs 3x on average to try a case involving the death penalty), "it provides a deterrent for those really bad people" (it doesn't; there's much more evidence that it provides a convenient avenue for abuse by the government against the poor and minorities) and "it provides closure and justice in an unjust world" (it doesn't; it's barbaric and inflicts undue punishment on survivors and is prone to not un-doable mistakes).
You don't like guns. Ok. You can't see a reason to have a gun or even to use a gun. Ok. "incredibly pervasive unethical uses" is an exaggeration that would need to be backed up: given there are two to three times as many guns as cars in the US and up to twice as many gunowners than voters, I think you have a long way to go to prove that. Gunowners, as a group, are far more lawabiding (or more 'ethical,' as you say) than car owners, as a group. Even though there's a very strong overlap (gunowners are almost a strict subset of car owners). Finally your "thought" that making them less available is going to stop this trickle of unethical use is worth the paper it's printed on.
but there you go i am. scared, very scared.
Well, at least you admit it. So why not go all the way and also admit that your fear is irrational? And then given that your fear is irrrational, you'd hate to simply push it off on everyone?
But I have to ask: why are you afraid of guns in Australia? Didn't your laws relieve your fear?
Hmmm. Let's see. For the 25 years preceeding Australia's gun confiscation, gun homicide was declining. In 1997, the first year after confiscation of 640,381 personal firearms at a cost to taxpayers of $500M, we see:
- Homicide is up 3.2% - Assaults are up 8.6% - Armed-robberies are up 44% (!!!) - Unarmed-robberies are up 21% - Unlawful entries are up 3.9% - Motor vehicle thefts are up 6.1%
Data from Victoria are particular "frightening":
- Firearm homicides are up 300% - Overall murder rate is up 18%
Ok, you've convinced me: we need to get rid of these things!
/jordan