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From: brooks@lll-crg.ARPA (Eugene D. Brooks III)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame,net.legal
Subject: Re: Re: Personal Defenses  (Wrong, Robert.)
Message-ID: <539@lll-crg.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 21-Apr-85 18:22:31 EST
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Posted: Sun Apr 21 18:22:31 1985
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> 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

This is a very good point.  For once we have moved away from the issue
of whether citizens have the right to self defense to the issue of just who
should we trust with the responsibility of carring around deadly force on
a daily basis.  Fortunately there is a ready solution that is already accepted
by society.  For a criterion of who to allow weapons permits use the same
one used by selection of police officers.  You might even do better than this
and make the selection process a factor of ten tighter.