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From: denbeste@bbn.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.flame
Subject: Hand gun defense
Message-ID: <4018@cc5.bbn.COM>
Date: Thu, 22-Oct-87 09:52:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: cc5.4018
Posted: Thu Oct 22 09:52:15 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Oct-87 15:47:02 EDT
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 61

[Shoot this line, please!]

OK - someone challenged to see if a good argument against gun control could be
found. First let me say that I am intensely ambivalent on this subject. I HATE
guns - they scare the living shit out of me. I don't like even looking at them.

[A side note before we get to the real game - I sometimes suffer from what I've
come to call "high cliff syndrome". When standing at a view-point over a
precipice, enjoying the view, a little voice inside will say, quietly, "jump".
- my hands and feet sweat, and all of a sudden it isn't a beautiful view, it is
a positive hazard. "jump" it says.

I used to request window seats on the jet when I flew. Once they put me next to
the emergency exit over the wing, and I spent 45 minutes with my eyes glued to
the handle that would open the door, depressurize the cabin, and suck me
outside to certain horrible death - and then asked to trade places with someone
else. Now I ask for aisle seats.

A cute young thing comes my way wearing a knit tube-top. The little voice makes
me want to reach out and pull it down - and she would scream and I would go to
jail and be disgraced and my professional life would be OVER and I would commit
suicide.

Sitting in a BK-Macburger, a cop comes in, wearing a pistol. The voice makes me
visualize trying to take it from him, who knows why. I HATE that little
voice...]

Most of the arguments for gun control concentrate on the microscopic - the
catastrophic hazard they represent for some specific individuals at certain
times. If one takes the long view of effects on society as a whole, though guns
is a problem they aren't one which will destroy it, only perhaps warp it a bit.

On the other hand, from the long view of the society as a whole, I present the
following two scenarios:

1. The USSR invades the US and completely defeats the armed forces and turns
the US into a police state. Now all they have to do is deal with 50 million
angered citizens armed with hand guns and hunting rifles. The mind boggles at
the difficulties this would present. Just look at the grief fifty thousand
armed Afghanis are causing them, and multiply this by three orders of
magnitude.

2. General Madman of the Army, Admiral Schizo of the Navy, General Powerhungry
of the Airforce and General Maniac of the Marines, heads of their respective
services, decide that the President and Congress are out of control; they have a
military coup over the US government. Guess which 50 million angered citizens
will prevent this?

Neither of these scenarios are particularly unbelievable anywhere else in the
world - but both of them are frankly impossible here, precisely because of the
enormous amount of fire-power in the hands of, as the constitution puts it, the
well armed militia which would spontaneously form in either case.

The simple fact is that in any rationale sense of a threat of a complete
turn-over of the system we all know and love, it isn't the army which supports
it, it is the millions upon millions of armed citizens which would defend it as
the last ditch, even AGAINST that army if necessary. 

THAT is why I am ambivalent about guns. I've never been held up, and I hope
no-one ever points a loaded gun at me for any reason at all, but ultimately I
am glad they are out there.