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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (41030)	11/9/2005 4:24:49 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 90947

it should not be a revelation to anyone that Brazil has a thriving black market in guns. Virtually any type of gun is available, for a price. We did a little experiment down here a while back called "Prohibition". The prohibition was on the manufacture, sale, and drinking of ethanol. A Constitutional amendment- -a difficult process in the US- -was needed to do this. The experiment was so succesful that a little over a decade later another amendment was passed repealing Prohibition. One result that was notably not achieved by Prohibition was a reduction in alcohol intoxication. In fact, Prohibition has often been charged with turning the Mafia, previously an organization of two-bit thugs and toughs, into big business. They were heavily involved in smuggling alcohol into th US- -much of it coming across the Great Lakes from Canada. Currently we are fighting the War On Drugs. We have been since about 1973. You can see how successful this has been. So what's your cure? Make guns completely illegal so only criminals will have guns? You'll get to see the result of such an experiment. San Francisco just passed an ordinance requiring its citizens to surrender all their firearms to the city. It may be a while though. Legal challenges to the Frisco law have already been filed.