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From: ddw@cornell.UUCP (David Wright)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Two topics:  gun control & political spectrum
Message-ID: <5297@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Sep-83 14:38:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.5297
Posted: Sat Sep 17 14:38:12 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Sep-83 11:03:49 EDT
Sender: ddw@cornell.UUCP
Organization: Cornell Computer Science
Lines: 23

From: ddw (David Wright)
To: net-flame

1)  I'm not going to start propounding my views on gun control, but I am
    going to suggest an excellent reference on the subject:  "The Saturday
    Night Special," by Robert Sherrill (sp?  I haven't read it in a while).
    This book is interesting, well-researched, often thoroughly annoying and
    has well-deserved unkind things to say about nearly everyone involved
    in the gun-control debate.  Read it; it's almost certain to explode some
    myths that you think are facts.  Pro-gun-control people probably will
    be annoyed by it; anti-control people even more annoyed.  I'm not
    particularly emotional on this issue, so I could read it without popping
    a gasket, but I'd love to watch certain netters read it...

2)  According to some people in the field, the left/right dichotomy in
    politics no longer makes any sense.  A more general scheme was proposed
    by Jerry Pournelle(yes, the one who writes that stupid column in BYTE)
    as a 2-dimensional system, with one axis being "government can help us/
    government can't do anything to help us" and the other axis as "we should
    have lots of government/we should have no government"; you pick points
    on the axes between the extremes.  This idea, which Pournelle expounded
    on in an issue of the now-defunct Destinies sf magazine, has the advantage
    that all major political philosophies have distinct x/y coordinates.