Text 31502, 66 rader
Skriven 2009-04-20 05:46:56 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
  Kommentar till text 31471 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Weapons
===============
Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Robert Bashe on Sunday April 19 2009 at 23:54:

MV>>> Drugs don't kill people, it is people that kill people. Drugs do not
MV>>> enter the human body all by themselve, it is the person that takes
MV>>> them.

RB>> True, but there are such things as addictive drugs

MV> And guns are not addictive?

No more than the old newspapers some people seem not to be able to throw away.

Let's not mix up apples and oranges again, Michiel.

As for guns, there are guns and guns. Some people collect them for their
historical interest, which is as legitimate as collecting coins or books for
the same reason. Some like to hunt, incidently a passtime as old as man has
been on this earth.

Not all people who take drugs (in the sense of potentially addictive drugs like
the opiates) are or become addicts, and not everyone who has an interest in
firearms and may even own a few is interested in or would even contemplate
murder.

The problem is separating this majority from the minority who really _do_
become drug addicts and the minority who view guns as a means of compensating
for their own perceived inadequacies, i.e. of gaining power over other people.
And here I'm definitely not merely talking about kids who go off the deep end
and start blasting away at everything in sight, but also about the political
leaders they effectively imitate.

As I have written before, there _is_ no "simple" solution for this, or any
other of the world's problems.

Cheap, realiable, regulated sources of addictive drugs would quickly dry up the
illegal market and presumably leave nobody except illegal drug dealers the
poorer. They would also save a lot of lives presently lost to overdoses and
toxic diluents. I personally don't believe this would increase the number of
true addicts, but since there mere suggestion makes some people (including the
powerful politicians who make the laws) foam at the mouth, we'll presumably
never know for sure.

Reasonable gun laws that are less restrictive than in Germany (where you
meanwhile need a license to buy a _blank_ pistol, i.e. one that will not fire
bullets and only makes noise, and historical weapons are as strictly regulated
as grandfather's Lueger from the service in WWII) and more so than in the USA
(where civilians can still apparently buy automatic weapons in some states
after a waiting period and a check with the FBI for felonies) would probably
help to deal with that problem.

But the politicians are stuck in their familiar ruts, and the general
population more or less accepts the status quo, only occasionally screaming
about some particularly blood-curdling piece of news. So nothing really happens
to correct either of the above problems. At best, political and regulatory
Band-Aids are applied here and there. But nobody has the _balls_ to actually
come out and suggest, much less _try_ any novel methods. More laws, more
regulations, more police, more punishment seems to exhaust the political
imagination.

Reality is not always pretty, and humans are neither angels nor devils, but the
truth is often hard to accept.

Cheers, Bob

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