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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame,net.legal
Subject: Re: Re: Personal Defense
Message-ID: <147@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 14:24:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.147
Posted: Fri May  3 14:24:35 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 4-May-85 01:17:10 EDT
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Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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Xref: watmath net.politics:8837 net.flame:9694 net.legal:1650

> Me:
> >>   How long would it take to see the disappearance of the handgun from 
> >>criminal's hands if handguns were totally outlawed today.  That it would
> >>be illegal to import, sell or own a handgun or handgun ammunition.  My guess
> >>is that the we'd see a dramatic decrease in one year, and none in five.
> 
> Him (David Canzi):
> >WISHFUL THINKING! It has been illegal to import, sell, or own marijuana
> >for a lot longer than 5 years, yet there's always plenty around.  There
> >is no way to completely seal off the borders of a country that isn't
> >prohibitively expensive, like, say, an electric fence, which would have
> >to be several miles high to stop airplanes.
> 
> Me again:
>   However the States is the major source of handguns.  Assuming that they
> are no longer being made there, it's going to be a long hard haul to get
> a handgun.  Remember that handguns don't grow on trees (or in hemp).  They
> require a reasonably sized industrial element to produce.  Something fairly
> easily spotted (remember the raw materials for handguns aren't invisible
> either.)  Making handguns is a *lot* harder than making drugs.  Also, 
> while some handguns would leak in, the number would be so many times
> smaller that the entire crime situation would change.  Maybe the
> organized crime types might have them, but since when have "good
> citizens" been fighting off mafia types with their handguns?
> 

Making handguns is a lot easier than growing marijuana.  Handguns can be
made in a legitimate machine shop.  All the equipment and materials to
make them are entirely legitimate for other activities.  Unlike a field
of marijuana, handgun manufacturing takes place entirely in doors, where it
can't be spotted by satellites and airplanes.  Also, unlike marijuana,
handgun manufacturing can be moved around from time to time to reduce
the risk of discovery.  (Try moving a field of marijuana part way through
the season.)

Unlike marijuana, which requires continuous supplies to be imported,
handguns have a substantial lifetime (hundreds of years).  The sheer
bulk of drugs imported into the U.S. (and presumably Canada) is thousands
of times the bulk of handguns that would be smuggled.

Incidentally, let me tell you how well the Canadian border guards keep
out handguns.  A friend of mine used to be a Canadian border guard.  
Americans heading north to Alaska through Canada are required to seal
their handguns at the border, and at the Canada-Alaska border the seal
is checked, and the numbers are supposedly matched.  In fact, my friend
told me that the paperwork was thrown away at his end --- there was no
cross checking.

Concerning organized crime: do you really think they aren't going to
take advantage of the situation to sell handguns?  It's probably already
happening in Canada.  It is certainly happening in Japan, where the 
Yakuza are already smuggling in handguns for sale.

>   The idea is not so much stopping them at the border (although remember
> that they're *metal* and thus can't really be imported on airlplanes to
> well.) but drying up the #1 supplier of freely accessible handguns in the
> world, the US.
> 

You are right that handguns couldn't be smuggled in by plane, since they
are metal.  Marijuana doesn't come in on commercial airliners anymore,
since it is too easy for drug sniffing dogs to find it.


>   Tom West               "Trust the computer, the computer is your friend."
>  { allegra cornell decvax ihnp4 linus utzoo }!utcsri!west