From: "E.J. Totty", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Times 19.2.01
>
>By Stewart Tendler
>
>Crime Correspondent
>
>A MOTHER and her two children are in hiding after a
>wealthy nightclub owner was shot and injured and his
>bodyguard killed.
>
>Arthur de Sousa, 33, was found lying sprawled on a road
>while Al el-Hachadi, 27, his bodyguard, was killed in
>the village of Pangbourne, Berkshire, on Saturday evening.
>The two were ambushed after arriving to visit a house in
>the village.
--rest snip--
Steve, & Rusty,
Amazing, ain't it?
Take away the lawfully held arms, and the criminals
are empowered beyond their wildest dreams.
The cops complain, and politicians elevate their noses
in disdain when they are reminded that few registered arms have
ever been used in a crime. But, how many unregistered arms are
now being used in crime?
The argument, it seems, is that the police and politicians
commented that removing those lawfully held arms would make
for a 'safer' community. Safer? For what? From what? For whom?
If lawfully held arms were not involved in but a few,
highly sensational, and largely isolated instances of crime, then
what of the illegally held arms?
At least before, the police <knew> who was in possession,
and who had been through the wringer of 'approval'.
Now they know nothing, and the criminals are verily
laughing in their faces.
The police want to know every aspect of the lawful owners
of firearms, yet as these owners who brave the veritable assault upon
their privacy -- which opens them to insult, innuendo, and suspicion,
virtually nothing the police discover has every STOPPED a crime.
It may have prevented the lawful acquisition of a firearm,
but it most certainly NEVER stopped a crime from happening.
It seems that those who deprive the lawful of their rights --
because the unlawful flaunt the law at every turn -- would have the
enforcers of the law deprive everyone of every right, in order to prevent
anyone from exercising a right in order to capture the law breakers.
But if the law breakers disregard the laws now, what makes
the law makers and enforcers believe that by totality they will achieve
their end?
When every right is reduced to a prohibition, then everyone
will disregard the law, and everyone will become an outlaw, merely because
it will become fashionable to break the law. Sound familiar?
If those who would distrust the average citizen from possession
of an arm because the arm 'might' be misused by either the owner or
someone who comes by it illegally, then it must be said that by virtue of
the historical record, the concern is not well founded, merely because
it cannot be shown certifiably that lawfully held arms have ever been used
criminally in such a quantity as to raise the concern of the police, that the
populace itself was at risk of mass lawlessness.
All one need do is quantify the number of lawfully held arms,
and balance that against the number which have been used in a crime:
the number of misused arms pales into insignificance, elevated by only
the most salacious and malicious lies to a veritable tempest in a teapot.
When such insidious, hateful, and despicable assertions are
employed to make law, it is found that whatever was legislated against
was not cured, but rather elevated in the status of concern. And further,
that additional restrictions were asserted as necessary in order to confound
the increase in criminality -- which restrictions unto themselves further
exacerbated the 'problem.'
By what manner of logic does one propose to deny lawful members
of a community a right, just because periodically one of them manages to
become less than stable mentally, whereas the criminal element -- which is
virtually uncontrollable in any sense -- is given free gratis to enthrall the
community at large with gratuitous violence? Simply because the lawful
obey the laws?
Or is it perhaps a more insidious, and less understood act
by the inner reaches of government itself, that operates to invite ever more
laws against every liberty, by allowing the criminals to freely acquire arms,
conduct murderous sprees, inviting an outcry for ever more stringent
laws that will eventually strangle liberty in the name of 'law and order'?
If criminals with unregistered firearms have committed more
crime than the absolute largest number of lawful firearms owners who
subsequently committed a crime, then I venture so say that even the most
unlawful of firearm owners who were registered with the police also pales
into utter, complete, and total insignificance.
By what measure and reference to past law does government
propose to punish the populace at large, for the criminal acts of so few?
ET
--
By banning their guns, I guess.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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