Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!rochester!ritcv!ccieng5!ccieng2!kfk
From: kfk@ccieng2.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Final thoughts on gun control
Message-ID: <162@ccieng5.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Oct-83 16:38:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ccieng5.162
Posted: Mon Oct  3 16:38:10 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Oct-83 14:47:15 EDT
Lines: 69

Last submission on this subject:

Scott Preece says, "If you create a situation where the intended victim
is perceived ... as ... armed ..., you increase the criminal's likely
response to resistance or surprise and you increase the likelylihood
that he will attack from ambush with immediate use of force."

I disagree.  There was a recent submission on the subject of crime rate
statistics of Morton Grove vs. an (Atlanta?) suburb whose name escapes
me just now.  Though I am very wary of statistics ("...statistics used
as a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination..."), I think
it showed a drastic DECREASE in violent crime as well as non-violent
burglaries and such in the now-gun-owning suburb.  (For those who missed
this: Morton Grove, IL has outlawed handguns entirely; the other suburb
now requires all citizens to own/be capable with handguns.)

One other argument of Mr Preece: "If the state of New York insists on
allowing some people to own handguns, I think it's nice that they at
least require those people to convince someone ... that you are [a res-
ponsible user]."

If they wish to question my skill and safety with a firearm, that's fine
with me.  Have the gunshop owner/manager take me to a basement firing
range, and I'll demonstrate that I *do* know how to pick up, hold, clean
and fire (that's last) a firearm.  That's just like getting a driver's
license.  No problem.  But the laws of NY do not question skill and
safety; they question moral uprightness.  That can be done external to
any request on the part of a citizen to own a handgun; it's done anyway
right now.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms does routine
checks on purchasers of firearms.  To make a priori restrictions without
benefit of the doubt is wrong.  Someone noted (I can't remember his/her
name) that, in our democracy, everything is legal unless specifically
disallowed.  That looks very contradictory.

Also, someone said that anyone who would use an unloaded firearm as a
threat is irresponsible.  Consider what was going on at the time:  I
was in my apartment, and the police had already been called.  The door
buzzer goes off, down the hall and up a half flight of stairs.  I can
either sit on my derriere, in which case the police will decide it's a
hoax, or (if it's the attacker again) he will give up.  Well, it was
supposed to be the police, so I had to go let them in.  Now, should I go
out into the hallway completely unarmed?  No.  I took what seemed to be
the safest course, which was to take a large (club-size) firearm.  If
the person buzzing my door was actually the attacker, I could threaten
him with it, while being ready to run quick.  If he wasn't armed any
more than when I saw him previously, I still had a better weapon than
he; I had a great, big, heavy club.  If he had gone to get HIS firearm,
I could always turn tail and duck back into the apartment.  There was
little else that COULD have been done under the circumstances.

Several people claimed that a tire iron was not sufficiently dangerous
to have warranted any such action on anyone's part.  After all, they
said, it's just a lousy tire iron.  Well, let me inform you that the
victim spent 5 days in the hospital, and that one of the reasons she
was in so long ("for just a simple knock on the head") was that she had
to undergo surgery to take care of bone fragments in her head.  Now, who
would care to discuss relative danger?  This is what I have been told,
though I must cross-check these facts.

Absolute last comment: I have had a LOT of complaints from people claim-
ing that I was putting on a "Charles Bronson" image for all this.  This
is completely false.  I may be 6'2", but I barely weigh 170 lbs. I can't
even LOOK the tough-guy part.  Also, whether you care to believe it or
not, I am absolutely TERRIFIED of the possiblity of having to shoot
someone.  I have never done so, I have never yet even had to point a
loaded firearm at a person.  I don't want to, but that does not prevent
me from being PREPARED to do so, *should the situation warrant it.*

Karl Kleinpaste