> > Personally, I would like someone to please explain gabby's interesting claim that "Gun control, historically, leads to the slaughter of a group of people who are unable to defend themselves. Look it up."
>
> Almost every government in the history of the world that has ever gone bad has started by gradually restricting private citizen's right to bear arms.

The problem with emotionally charged issues like this one is the tendancy to throw around a lot of vauge, broad assertions. What governments are you referring to? Can you back up the claim that in these cases the going bad of these governments actually *began* with (or better yet, was *caused* by) a tightening of gun control laws?

> What if the Jews in Germany had firearms? I think the Nazis would have thought twice about mowing them down in the ghettos and in concentration camps.

Uh huh. I'm *sure* Hitler would have been much less likely to single out *armed* Jews as a threat.

> Frankly, I think the basis upon which gun control laws are instantiated are disgustingly immoral. Just as it is wrong to ban alcohol because it can lead to drunk driving, wrong to ban unsavory books in libraries because of the fear that they'll brainwash people into having unsavory ideas, it is wrong to ban firearms because they can be misused to kill someone. We've had this discussion here before, though, so I refer followers of this discussion back and will not say anything further in this one.

Three problems with that paragraph.

1) The link between even the most vile publication and a real damage to society is nebulous at best. The link between alcohol and drunk driving isn't much better; alcohol's purpose is hardly to get people to drive drunk. Guns, on the other hand, are designed to kill living things.

2) Whoever said anything about completely banning guns? The sale and use of alcohol is restricted, and so is the availability of unsavory books (ie I can't go into the local library and check out child porn). Why is it 'disgustingly immoral' to tweak gun control laws?

3) I don't understand the concept of weapon ownership as a fundamental right. In fact, I can't think of any right or freedom that modern society should or does value absolutely. In the end, it's always (ideally, anyway IMHO), on some level, a simple utilitarian calculation of the cost of limiting freedom versus not limiting it. I wouldn't understand an argument for no restrictions to the sale/use of guns any more than I would understand an argument to unrestricted access to drugs, alcohol, or thermonuclear weapons.

Bal "Stupid back button. Had to write this twice" anthalus