[plug] What do you school-age members think of SlashDot'sHellMouth articles?

[Mike Holland]

On Tue, 4 May 1999, Greg Mildenhall wrote:

> "if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns."

 Where will outlaws get the guns if there is no-one to steal them from?

Are you saying it would be impossible to remove existing guns, or stop
illegal imports?

> 3. The strictest of measures were taken to keep them out of other hands.

It was never strict enough here. Gunshops rely on padlocks and insurance.
Would you agree to weapons being stored in steel&concrete armouries,
with time-delay locks?  Except for the rich, that would mean keeping
them at the gun club, or militia barracks. I cant see a cheap
way to secure deadly weapons.

Or we just say, the number of lives it would save inst worth the trouble.

> Quite the opposite. It is so that they cannot, in theory, be oppressed by
> the govt. The founding fathers were so in favour of self-determination
> that they demanded that the govt. could never curtail the people's
> capability for an armed uprising.

A noble ideal, but in those days, one nutter with a muzzle loader
couldn't do so much damage.

>  The 'net
> takes control of the media out of the hands of the centralised powers, and

I hope so, but we may see 99% of people getting there news from the same
big 'portal' sites, controlled by the same Murdochs and Packers.

> Funny that in Australia such restrictions of freedom are being propounded
> by the loonie right.

We shouldnt  ascribed to loonieness, that which can adequately be
explained by ignorance of new technology, and plain old conservativism.
  To call someone a loony would be to give up all effort at understanding,
which just encourages conflict.

Though, for pipebombers, "loonie right" is fair enough.


Mike Holland <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>            Perth, Australia.
                          --==--
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
                -- Rich Kulawiec