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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (36648)	5/2/1999 8:27:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Christopher, when I was referring to weapons which have no legitimate purposes for civilians, I was using the same words that I have heard police advocates for stricter gun control laws use. In these discussions, they are saying that guns that can kill many people at the same time indeed do not have other civilian uses. Why is this simple statement such a huge deal? This general touchiness is what absolutely amazes me about the argument over guns in American society; this argument would not even be happening in other western industrial nations, which do not understand our fascination with guns or our defensiveness when it is pointed out that they are killing us in rather inflated numbers. I admit is is true that the gun lobby does not share my values, but I think they are all mentally ill and/or operating from a profit motive, so I guess I don't care. Do civilians typically hunt with assault weapons? What would their typical civilian use be? There is an argument to be made that they could be used for protection, but that is only because their very proliferation has made it so. Does anyone see where this is going, or that it might be a good idea to stop increasing the firepower so that an Uzi is NOT in every suburban household? <<I also happen to abhor the supercilous assumption that many of my friends make that our values are better than other people's because we are better educated, or more computer literate, or somehow "better" people. [I met many people in the South during my days in the civil rights movement who were by all common definitions ignorant, uneducated, and uncouth, who never aspired to fame or fortune, but who were more human and had far better values than many of the educated and wealthy friends I had in the sophisticated world.] >> I totally agree with this statement, unless you are making the argument that the intellectual upper classes are advocating handgun control and the less educated, lower classes are not. I think the demographics are much more mixed up than that.