<html> Kelley, <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Still, unfairly though you were treated, I reckon a registered gun and an arrest record are in quite easily separable categories.</blockquote> riiiiiiiiiiight!  i suppose that it really sucks to be stopped driving while black right but hey being black  is easily separable from guilty criminal?  right?</blockquote> Hmm.  I see I'm being pigeonholed.  And by what crab-like means!  Where you can't move forward, move sideways.  But I believe that's how you were able, in the first place, to make an arrest record equivalent to gun registration when it comes to eliciting prejudiced behaviour from policefolk. <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>come on joanna, that's not the way it works.  cops think you're guilty and up to no good if you own a gun. </blockquote> Whoa, hang on.  I suspect I have just as powerful a loathing of copdom as you do, Kelley -- I've had my collisions with them, and the way the institution is run (Peter makes some good points) gives me the dry heaves...though I refuse to hate cops as a bunch, for that would be unfair -- they're as much a product of their circumstances as I am, after all.   But you're sweeping a lot of reality away in one dramatic gesture, m'dear.  When I owned a shotgun in the hills of NY State, I needed the thing to kill rabid varmints with.  The local sheriff would have patted me on the head approvingly if he'd known I had a 20-gauge -- after all, he wasn't prepared to come out and shoot my slavering foxes for me -- and he would have liked it even more if I'd had a revolver.  (Hell, there were times when carloads of Saturday night revelers slowed down outside my lonely little house when I thought maybe I was wrong not to, but my big wuss of a dog had a loud bark, and I figure the best weapons are the ones that can't be turned against you.)  "Little lady's takin' care a herself, boys", is what they would have said down at the station.  So what you contend isn't true for all circumstances.  In fact circumstances may make all the difference.  We do have to suspect, in other words, that not only the fact that I had a gun in the place that I had it, but also my sex, race and class were operating in my favour at the time/place I speak of, probably in the reverse of that order. <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> they are trained and continually exposed to stories about how some cop stops someone on a routine traffic stop, they pull out gun and blam!  i used to tend bar at a place where the Ithaca BCI detectives hung out.  they expl'd all this for me one day.  i had been pulled over for the first time.  i was upset and didn't know what to do, but i thought they needed my insurance card.  so i fumbled around in the glove box as he approached.   he flipped.  also flipped when i gave him my wallet where my license was encased. you know why, of course.  he thought some 18 yo ditzy blonde might have a gun.</blockquote> Yes ma'am, and I think if I were a cop in Amurka I might be plagued with a similar suspicion, might be just as rattleable.  Seems like everybody and their tadpole has a firearm in that country, and most folks who own 'em have never been taught how or when to use 'em.  I'm always very careful when reaching for *anything* in the presence of a Younighted States policeperson, even if I am white, female and well-spoken (yep, it's still the case in the land of the brave and the home of the free that accent can label you), and even if the fella or gal just told me to reach for it.  <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>the sizzlean don't make prejudgments about people at all. right?  </blockquote> I'll just have to sit here and pretend I said that so's not to interrupt the flow, here. <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>how about when the sizzlean busted into my home to protect me?  twice.  the first time:  a report of domestic violence.  i was home alone.  i told the guy that i often beat myself up but i hadn't taken to screaming about it yet!  he wasn't amused.  they searched the place.  for my protection.</blockquote> <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><...> wait, how about this.  i'll grant you that one class of registered car owner is  harassed -- all those ninnys driving around evil SUVs.  got them knocking on my door all the time looking for my hidden SUV, that miserable life threatening hunk of metal and plastic on wheels.</blockquote> Good horror stories, Kelley, I've got similar ones to tell, about me and friends of mine, especially city stories (Washington, Bawlmer, St. Louis, New York).  But cops are not evil by virtue of being cops, they'll have to be included in the revo, somehow'r other.  I've got a sorta sweet story about a police car hauling up at my little Cayuga Lake home when, as it turned out, I'd been heard (by some passing cyclists) yelling to beat the band.  Bright sunny Sunday afternoon.  I trailed out in my bathrobe, my partner cautiously following, to enquire what boy in blue was after, and when he told me, I was on the point of assuring him I'd just had the best orgasm of my life (which was true), but faced with that big well-scrubbed, anxious, solicitous face I couldn't bring myself to embarrass him, so I said we were practicing a play.  I think my glowing grin probably told another story, but in any case the cop was finally reassured and drove away.  What pisses me off is those lily-livered bike riders!  If they thought I was being murdered why didn't they stop instead of waiting to call the cops from the phone booth at the corner diner three miles up the road?!  Typical American don't-let's-get-mixed-up-in-it attitude -- puh!  But come to think of it, probably justifiable, considering the fact that they were unarmed and couldn't have bet that would be true of whoever was whaling female flesh in the little house on the hill.  People do come out with shootin' arms when you least expect it in that great country of ours.  I've another story about stopping my car and U-Haul trailer under some spreading maples by the side of the road in Indiana on a blistering hot summer's day, and finding myself faced with an irate midwestern housewife standing on her  front stoop wielding a rifle, yelling at me to get off her land....  Sigh... (Do that in Australia and you're more likely to have people come over to enquire whether everything's okay and would you like to come in for a cuppa.) Point is, you haven't established that registering guns produces harassment by police in the US.  Am I being simple-minded?  Look at it this way: the whole fucking place is a war zone.  So are a lot of other countries, where innocent folk are treated just as badly or worse.  And it's true that, as the instruments of essentially unjust government, the police can hardly be expected to be fair (though since they're human beings as well as being tools I grant them the potential for sweet warm generous inclinations).  But harassment, though it can ride on regulation in some instances, isn't produced by regulation.  I do object to ID cards because they are a form of regulation that's easy to use against us, but why shouldn't property that has the potential for causing grave bodily harm (guns, cars, dogs) be given a number?  I object to ID cards because I don't think we should all be treated like property of the state, never mind property that has the potential for causing grave bodily harm. You'd probably agree that both the subject and the object of harassment are produced by disenfranchisement, the skewedness of privilege under capitalism, especially in its extremest forms.  I guess I'm saying let's fight the battle where it's at.  Letting Joe Blow have an arsenal in his basement unbeknownst to the rest of us is not going to make the world a better place.  Eh?  Or what. Joanna </html>