Re: Opium [was: Re: freelance sysadmining -- superlong -- [WAS: "Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers"]]
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:06, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:41, ScruLoose wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:09:27PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 12:41, donw@examen.com wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 01:35:20PM -0500, Alfredo Valles wrote:
> > > > > I don't think they will do so well with the number of guns you have
> > > > > in the streets, bullets don't distinguish Ph degrees.
> > > >
> > > > PhDs and brains don't go hand-in-hand; part of being smart is knowing
> > > > how to work within whatever cultural limitations you must; in the
> > > > case of firearm-owning Americans, you just need to be smart enough
> > > > not to not get on their bad side. Social engineering at its most
> > > > useful.
> > >
> > > There are roughly 40M handguns in this country, and quite a number
> > > of states have "right to carry concealed handgun" laws. If the
> > > vast majority of people had such a low level of self-control, we
> > > should see, for example, multiple Columbines[1] on a daily basis.
> > > Since we don't, what conclusion can we draw from this?
> >
> > Well, when you look at the US figures on "firearm-related fatalities"
> > being up in the tens of thousands per year...
> > compared to (for example) Canada with a couple of hundred per year (and
> > tight gun control laws, what a bizarre coincidence)...
> > http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/994015/posts
> >
> > I realize that Canada has about one-tenth the population of USA, but
> > that still gives you per-capita rates that say Americans are somewhere
> > on the order of ten _times_ as likely to blow each other away.
> >
> > Does it take "multiple Columbines on a daily basis" to constitute a
> > problem?
> > Somewhere close to a hundred Americans blow each other away _per_day_
> > and you want this to lead me to the conclusion that things are okay?
>
> And...
> - most are done with hot weapons
> - most are "criminal-on-criminal"
>
> I'd rather not live in a nanny state, and take my chance, however
> minimal they are, in a slightly more anarchic society.
That's kinda a risky argument to rely on, since if accepted it inevitably
leads to the question - why does the US have ten times as many homicidal
criminals per capita, than other countries? Answers in the back of an
envelope please, addressed to the Director-General, FBI, Washington (I guess
he'd dearly like to know...) <vbeg>
cr
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