> No matter what laws get passed, no matter who can leagaly cary a gun and > who > can't Criminals will allways own and carry guns. > Right, and other criminals will always commit crimes, so why have any laws at all?
> A much more interesting statistic would be the perentage of > non-law-enforcement people who carry a conceled weapons who are also > non-criminals. > > Personsly I would prefer there to be more non-criminals with concealed > weapons than criminals with concealed weapons, but proponents of gun control > laws seem to prefer it if ONLY criminals carry weapons. > No we don't. We don't want anyone to have a gun who doesn't have a good reason to have one. And we don't feel it is impossible to cut down on the sheer extraordinarily huge number of guns circulating in our society. Difficult, especially given the grinding political power of the NRA, but why should it be so easy to buy a gun in Virginia that criminals drive down from New York to stock up on guns and then drive them back up to New York to sell? Nobody really needs a gun. Seriously. If you absolutely have to have one (and I don't know why you would), you should have to demonstrate that need, demonstrate proper training in its use, be required to own insurance against any possible misuse of your gun by you or by anyone else (thus giving you a powerful incentive to take good care of it). I'm not talking about hunters or target-shooters, but they tend to be much more responsible about taking care of their weapons than the gun nuts symbolized by Phil Gramm, who, when asked how many guns he had, replied, "More than I need but not as many as I want." Guns are dangerous. Pure and simple. It may not be possible to get rid of them entirely, but that should be our society's goal. Meanwhile, let's settle for what limitations we can get. Tom Beck www.prydonians.org www.mercerjewishsingles.org "I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last." - Dr Jerry Pournelle _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
