From: "pa49", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<Have to agree to disagree on this. I have no wish to live in a society
where
<guns are as freely available as you want them to be. I find that disturbing
<coming from a dealer. (I presume......'Jackson rifles?)
<As I said elsewhere, this viewpoint of freedom from gun control is not the
<majority nor even a popular viewpoint. No credible political party
<subscribes to the theory and it will never appear on any election manifesto
<during the remainder of my life.
<It is held by a very small number of people. No matter how honourably and
<passionately those people hold the view, by very virtue of the fact that
<they are so committed to the viewpoint, they will never ever be prepared to
<countenance the moderate stance. They will remain, hoewver, in the
minority.
<That fact is inescapable.
<I am not alone in the shooting world, not even alone on cybershooters, in
<being an advocate of sensible restrictions on ownership. It is amazing, and
<amusing it has to be said, to see the frenzied outbursts from people when
<someone has the sheer nerve to state an opposite viewpoint.
<From some of the hate mail I have received outside of the public area, I
can
<tell that there are some deranged people out there. They know who they are.
<To be fair, the email addresses from them do not appear amongst the regular
<posters.
IG,
I read your posts and admire your ability to express your views cojently and
with conviction (NPI), but, if you re-read the above all you do is make
statements without any backing arguments whatsoever. If you believe that you
take a "moderate stance" you are being extremely dogmatic about your stated
views, which is a pity. Please don't take this the wrong way. I am sure we
are all genuinely interested in your opinions, given your position, but
could you expand your points a little more?
<Going to zero controls in this country would be a disaster, if only
<because by the end of the week a hundred or more people would have
<accidentally shot themselves because your average person in this
<country does not know how to use a firearm safely.>
Fuzzy logic?
Steve,
I think you did the same thing.
If you gave everyone without a vehicle a car, by the end of the week you
would have XXX number of casualties because the majority of them would not
know how to drive safely. Fuzzy logic?
Neil Saint
--
No, personal experience. I have let people I know handle one of my
deactivated pistols, if it was live they would surely have shot
themselves or someone else accidentally. Okay, fair enough, if it
wasn't deactivated and they knew that, they may have been more
careful and read the instructions.
However, this is not the US or Switzerland. Your average person
in the street truly knows nothing about how to use a gun. Nor
are there even people knocking around who they might question
in most urban and surburban areas.
I see all kinds of accidents reported in the paper involving
people who have found guns or illegally gotten them. There
was one in Handsworth where a guy left a cocked and loaded
Browning on the nightstand, safety off, his daughter found it
and fatally shot herself. There was another one in Birmingham
where two children found a MAB pistol in an alley, they took
it home to show a parent, and discharged the pistol into the
door frame.
I have never ever advocated zero controls on firearms because
I truly think it is a poor idea. As I've said many times I'm
not a Libertarian. An age limit on acquisition and unsupervised
possession as well as a criminal/mental health history check
prior to acquisition are two controls that do work, not 100%
but then nothing is, but they do reduce criminal misuse. And
if you want to get into the statistics we'll be here a very
long time. (And I say that because there are about
a zillion studies on the Brady Act and it would require a
seperate email list to go through them all comprehensively
with all the ifs and buts about waiting periods, coverage of
the background check and so on).
Suffice to say there is an alternative viewpoint but I don't
agree with it. I've looked at the systems of control in a
much larger area than just the US.
My viewpoint is tainted once again by my personal experience.
One day I showed up to the range (in Florida) and there was
someone there trying to buy a gun. When I came out of the
range the dealer was giving a police officer a witness statement,
because the guy had been arrested for illegally trying to buy
a gun and was apparently a fugitive the police had been after
for some time after he had killed his wife or something along
those lines. I've read similar accounts of things happening
in Virginia where they have a similar checking system.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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