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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame,net.legal
Subject: Re: Personal Defenses  (Wrong, Robert.)
Message-ID: <189@spar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 02:59:13 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.189
Posted: Thu Apr 18 02:59:13 1985
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> >> I think the point of whether it is good or not good to carry personal
> >> defense weapons (unconcealed) is moot when compared with the fact that if I
> >> WANT to and am not violating someone else's personal rights, I should be
> >> able to. I think that says it all.	-- Jay Mitchell
> > 
> > The trouble is that some people feel they have a personal right not to
> > be faced with an implicit threat of armed force.  -- Baba
> 
> I applaud Baba's statement: it contains the distilled essence of the
> fuzzy-mindedness that people associate with California. People have a RIGHT
> to a life that keeps them feeling warm and safe, and doesn't FACE them with
> such HORRID events such as crime, murder, death, and the worldwide shortage
> of hot tubs.
> 
> Jay shouldn't be able to tote a gun, not so much because Baba expects to be
> shot with it, but because it FACES Baba with the CONCEPT that violence might
> somehow intrude into an otherwise comfy existence.
> 
> The answer, of course, is for Jay to carry a concealed weapon.  It's just as
> effective, and doesn't intrude on anyone's dream-world.
> 
> 	Robert

As I live in a high-crime area, have already lost one friend to a
recreational killer, and don't even *like* hot tubs, I find Robert's
gratuitous aspersion on my motives deeply offensive.  In his
dream-world, I have just killed him.  But this is usenet.
 
Theres a saying that the Democratic party operates on the assumption
that people are stupid, while the Republican party is based on the
assumption that people are lazy.  The rationale for Jay and Robert's 
advocacy of a citizenry generally armed in public is based on the 
assumption that people are rational, and indeed most people are subject 
to at least occasional bouts of reason.

But people do irrational things.  They get angry.  They get drunk.
They get crazy.  Sometimes they just make mistakes.  Sometimes somebody 
gets hurt.  And to the extent that people are armed, they hurt one another 
more severely.

There are times when justice is best served by an cool-headed victim
with a .44.  But shootings over traffic accidents are already ceasing
to be newsworthy in California.

It is unfair to deny perfectly rational individuals like Robert
their street pistols, but how can the institutions of a free
society go about determining who is and who isn't rational?

					Baba