Hi David, On Tue, 14 Jan 2003 14:28:56 -0500, david gunnells wrote:
> Hello Ron, > Maybe you'd be interested in these: > http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/ > specifically, this page: > http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/confiles.html Thanks for that David. :) I finally got it all - I had to "leech" the site with WGET, then re-write the background colours in order to see any of it, but I now have it all. As I suspected before, it is a collection of bits and pieces put together by our own version of the gun lobby - the Sporting Shooters Assoc. Some of it is actually well researched and documented, and much of what is said I can only agree with, although not actually pertinent to the issue of gun ownership and public safety. But some of it is also deliberately misleading, e.g. by stating what is true (but unreleted) and then saying "therefore ..... ", or by other manipulative tricks used by all flavours of propagandists. For instance, any treatment of facts and figures from before the gun control laws were even proposed have no relevence to the efficacy or otherwise of gun control, and gun "registration" was never an issue in our present gun control measures, and has no bearing on the present situation. Sadly, it is the sort of woolly and extravagant collection of claims, mostly unsupported by facts, decorated with largely irrelevant numbers and selective quotes that I would expect from the knock-on-your-door God-botherers. I am sure that even legitimate gun supporters would wince at some of this stuff. On the other hand, there is absolutely NO, repeat NO, support for Charlton Heston's claim that violent crime rates exploded immediately after the current laws were introduced. It seems that was too much even for our gun enthusiasts to claim. BTW: I have never owned a firearm, although I have owned air-guns (pistols and rifles) and may do so again. I have friends who are gun owners, and have been duck-, pig-, and deer-shooters. I don't have a problem with that. While I was growing up in East Africa, my father had a large collection of guns (mostly rifles), some of which I have used. A proportion of our diet including warthog and hippo, gazelle and guinea fowl, was hunted with those guns. Dad got his leopard in our chicken run with a 12-bore shotgun. Our family was also very grateful for that. But I also know people who own guns, who have given no obvious reason for police to refuse a licence - but who make me very, very nervous. I am glad that at least one automatic shotgun I am aware of has been removed from Australian society. Regards, Ron Ron Clarke http://homepages.valylink.net.au/~ausreg/index.html http://tadpole.aus.as -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/
