4th paragraph:

Meanwhile the US of course has the right to bear arms in the constitution, a
fact that has frequently been cited as the reason they must be allowed to do
so - to defend against tyranny from their own government. Unfortunately the
only ones who use that argument I ever saw who would bear arms against the
government - as opposed to just letting freedom be encroached on out of
existence - are the crazies who do basically want to shoot the weak and
anyone who tries to protect them. The rest are just like the British
citizens, who can't help defining what is right as whatever the government
of the day tells them it is.


Shane wrote:
Hmm. 3rd paragraph:

Anyway, I say yes to gun control. Because we're not living on the
frontier - or most of us aren't anyway. Maybe those in the rural
mid-west should just lobby to leave the Union - or stop pretending to
care about Americans rather than just America. However, handguns are
a fact of life. I say better to live with it, responsibly, than to
pretend they don't exist. They're like the atomic bomb, it would be
nicer if the technology had never been dreamt of, but it was and
they're here to stay.


Shane wrote:
2nd paragraph:

But the world over, people are lazy thinkers and don't look beyond
the first conclusion. So its like we're living in a world ruled by
children. And the politicians pander to them, of course.

There are Pro-gun lobbyists who deny irrefutable fact the way some
deny the Holocaust (another parallel!). Now, say they were at a dance
- and the polite thing to do was hand your firearm in at the
cloakroom. Handing it back at the end of the evening would be akin,
responsibility-wise, to giving back a drunk their car keys (I'm
drowning in parallels here!). There are certain rights that conflict
with other people's rights, aren't there. But those Pro-gun
supporters think theirs always comes first. Maybe that comes in
growing up in the mid-West, miles from anyone else and they do still
think they're on their own on the frontier.

Shane wrote:
I'll send paragraph by paragraph and see which do and don't get
through.


Shane wrote:
I've sent three posts this morning - a response to Job, an inserted
oar to Patc, and the response I promised Figgs (in which I now see
I repeat quite a lot and its not quite as incisive as I originally
meant). The first two got through, the last hasn't (I've reset the
group twice). The last one gives my reasons for no longer believing
in a law passed here some years ago now, allusions to which I've
made before. The question is: who would censor it? Because these
days it wouldn't necessarily be MS and such is precisely why I
justified my current position on the emotive subject. If this gets
through and *it* hasn't I'll repost it in various forms.