Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!cca!csin!cjh From: cjh@csin.UUCP (Chip Hitchcock) Newsgroups: net.followup Subject: Re Handguns and responsibility Message-ID: <325@csin.UUCP> Date: Tue, 30-Aug-83 11:58:00 EDT Article-I.D.: csin.325 Posted: Tue Aug 30 11:58:00 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 31-Aug-83 22:15:53 EDT Lines: 20 In response to your message of Mon Aug 29 07:57:35 1983: Only one problem with your thesis: there is no "responsible" reason for private ownership of a handgun. Municipal ownership for "peace" officers, yes. Club ownership for target practice, all right. But self-defense? Even Heinlein, the ultra-libertarian, doesn't fall for that one. (Note that leaving handguns around for 2-year-olds to mess with is less of a problem than having them around during periods of deliberate irresponsibility (e.g. drunkenness).) Teaching responsibility is a great idea; the problem is that it is virtually impossible to do unless you get at people when they're under 10 (and preferably sooner). You don't have to follow the Jesuits ("Give us a child until he is 5 (7???) and he is ours forever"), but teaching "responsibility" would require truly massive interference in the child-raising process, probably even removing children from parents deemed irresponsible on a much wider scale than is now practiced. And of course, the definition of "responsibility" gives room for all sorts of tyranny (on both sides---consider Nicaragua and the Philippines, for instance).