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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!godot!ima!inmet!nrh
From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: handgun reqistration...
Message-ID: <1918@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 27-Jan-85 01:16:52 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.1918
Posted: Sun Jan 27 01:16:52 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Feb-85 21:15:58 EST
Lines: 58
Nf-ID: #R:whuxl:-43300:inmet:7800282:000:2803
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Jan 26 03:19:00 1985
Xref: seismo net.politics:7477

>***** inmet:net.politics / whuxl!orb / 11:44 am  Jan 23, 1985
>> 
>> Look -- you register your car, why not your sexual preferences?  Why
>> not the contents of your safe deposit box?  Why not your travel
>> intentions?
>> 
>> Get it?  The fact that one registers one thing doesn't justify registering
>> another, unless they are somehow similar.  Given all the "oh but cars
>> kill people while being used for a constructive task and are therefore
>> different from guns" I hear from gun control advocates, I'm surprised you
>> would imply such similarity.
>
>Can I kill anybody with my sexual preferences?  

As I recall, somebody went on trial in London, England, about a year ago
because a woman he'd had rather kinky sex with had suffocated.  In the
trial, the bondage mask involved was fitted onto an inflatable dummy's
head, which promptly deflated.   I don't know about your sexual
preferences, but here's a case in point.  Should we register bondage
masks?  Pieces of leather?  Condoms?  Fact is, an argument can be
made that almost ANY item is lethal if used with lethal force and
intent.

>Or the contents of my safe
>deposit box? 

I don't know what you keep in your safe deposit box, but in mine there
are a number of items, which, properly applied, could kill someone.
(You force this-many page lease into their solar-plexus, whilst you stab
at them with some old keys that could penetrate (say) an eardrum).  If
you keep a sack of old "mercury head" dimes there, you could roll them
into a pretty good blackjack.  Get it?  A gun could be used to kill
someone, so could sheets of paper, coins, and old keys.

>Or my travel intentions?  

Oh but they can!  Suppose you're a farmer who is
required to keep a farm going.  Suppose further that you supply 
(charitably) a soup kitchen.  If you were to go away and not tell
anyone where you're going, your workers might not give to the
soup kitchen (lacking your orders).  A person who depends on the
soup kitchen could starve!  A libertarian might say: "Pfui!  You've
every right to go where you like, and no societal (excepting
your own sense of morals) obligation to continue
charity if you don't choose to."  A socialist might say: "You're 
required to give to the soup kitchen, and to continue to 
operate the farm, otherwise you're liable for the fate
of the soup-kitchen denizens.  Because this is necessary, we
reluctantly must demand to know where you are at all times."

>I think these are all different
>from handgun ownership whose sole purpose is killing or maiming other
>people.  

I BEG your pardon.  I've posted a poll of why people own guns.  THEY
don't believe it is to kill and maim others.  Do you have some special
insight into gun-owner motivations, superior to their own?  Do you
have some evidence that they're lying?