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

[Bill Cullen]

Should I get involved in this, hmm, it's not really plug related,
but.....

John Summerfield wrote:
> I agree guns aren't the problem: the problem is the availability of guns.
> 
> >
> > Also, it would be nearly impossible to remove guns from American society.  It
> > 's actually part of our constitution that an individual has a right them.  So
> 
> As I recall, the term is "right to bear arms." The problem seems to me the
> interpretation of that phrase. It would not surprise me if it was intended
> to mean that everyone is entitled to take part in the defence of the
> nation. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that everyone is entitled to go
> bunnyhunting with AK47s and such. Makes the bunnies entirely unsuitable
> for the table.
> 
> 
> Even if you educate today's six-year-olds (and get them all educated), it
> will still take best part of a hundred years to get it out of the system.
> Until somone succeeds in nailing some responsibility on the NRA and gets
> the American nation to understand that violent people with big guns do
> lots more damage than those with peashooters and baseball bats AND to want
> change, then nothing will change.
> 

Ah, simple solutions - I see Senators Alston and Harradine believe
in them as well. Nothing like applying knee jerk reactions to a
problem you don't fully understand. You also see a similar reation
when people call for the re-instatement of capital punishment
after a pretty appalling crime.

Hmm, nailing responsibility on the NRA, is that like blaming 
the IIA for pornography on the net.

I have actually read that the murder rate in the US amongst whites
is lower than that in Europe. The murder rate tends to be higher in
those states in the US that have gun controls. When they removed
gun laws in Florida the murder rate dropped 14%. 

The real problems in the US are social. Poverty, racial
discrimination and a lack of oppurtunities and appropriate role
models have led to widespread drug and alcohol abuse which in turn
have fueled an increase in voilent crime. However, we don't hear
about the deaths of several LA gang members much here in Australia,
unless of course one of them is a gangsta rapper. Not that I'm 
suggesting that our media might be displaying any racial
discrimination.

As to the "right to bear arms" in the American constitution. I'm not
an American so I can't claim to be an expert. However, like everyone
else, that won't stop me expressing an opinion. One of the reasons
for the American War of Independance was wide spread unhappiness
with the taxes and rule of England. This combined with the (former)
frontier nature of the US led to a distrust of government and a
strong belief in the rights of the individual. Much of the US
constitution is about protecting the rights of the individual from
an onerous government. The Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This really means that the people should have the right to keep and 
bear arms in case the government ever attempted to repress them.
It's there so that the people can rise up against an oppressive
government. 

Lastly, poeple tend to be very quick to deny the "rights" of others.
They do however get very upset when it's their "rights" that are 
being removed. How many people on the list are feeling a bit
angry about the governments attempts to deny access to sites
that we might want to visit? How many people feel that the
legislation will actually do what it's supposed to do?

Now something almost as off topic:

Did anyone read in the "Bug of the Month" section of the May APC
about a bug in the Windows timing algorithm (95 and 98) that will
hang a PC after 49.7 days of continual uptime. 

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q216/6/41.asp

It says something about the reliability of Windows that it's taken
this long for the bug to come to light.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  Bill Cullen, ENFP, billc at wantree.com.au, Perth, Western Australia
               Life's too important to take seriously.
=====================================================================