If I had my way..........

[laughingwillow]

Interesting.... If I read it correctly, you would be all for a guy on the block owning a suitcase nuke but have reservations about people being allowed to harvest game with a shotgun.

What if your neighbor with the nuke was named Aziz Hassan?

lw

[Glider]

Take the part about the shotgun wielding bird harvester as a bit tongue in cheek.  Bag enough starlings with your 410, and they are actually pretty tasty.  Er, so I've heard.

I might be a bit embarrassed around Aziz at first, until I learned how to pronounce Aziz.

-G-

[Amomynous]

Another side of that same coin, JRL, is to compare crime rates in an area before and after increases or decreases in gun control.  

I believe this has been occasionally done in places that have liberalized their laws (such as in Virginia), and if I'm interpreting the data correctly it seems like the people on the far sides of the debate--both pro and con--are a bit off-base. Not much happens under these circumstances, so I think the arguments have to be framed philosophically. If there isn't much practical difference, philosophy and aesthetics tend to be how we form our opinions.

It reminds me somewhat of the welfare reform that took place in the late 80's/early 90's. Arguments were very shrill, with opponents to welfare reform predicting that there would be mass starvation of the poor, and proponents saying this would provide the impetus to the dissolution of the welfare cast. The reform was passed for the most part, and... not much happened.  

There is a certain stability in the outward manifestation of social and cultural milieux that many people overlook.

More specifically on gun control: did any of you see Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine? He's not my favorite film-maker (in fact he annoys me), but I decided to watch the movie anyway, and the movie was entirely muddled and schizophrenic.  On one hand he would go to great lengths to show that it's not the guns that make a society violent (by, say, going to Canada, where gun ownership is much higher than in the US, but violent crimes rates are much lower), and then he would go to great lengths to blame the gun and ammunition manufacturers. I'm not really sure what his point was, unless is was "Guns don't kill people, gun makers do."

But at least the movie had some Camper Van Beethoven.

[laughingwillow]

Take the skinheads bowling,
take them bowling..... - CVB -