Re: vision2020-digest Digest V99 #61

[Erikus4@aol.com]

>So if a 17-year-old student takes a gun to school, that is nuts.  If 
>she turns 18 and gets a concealed weapon permit, then no problem,
> right?

Firstly, unless this new law changes the age requirement for a permit, the age
would remain at 21.  There are other laws involved here and, not being 18, I'm
not certain of their participation in this hypothetical.

Secondly, even if true, this is a problem with many laws.  In order to have a
system, there must be certain arbitrary dividing lines.  The whole idea of
having adults who are subject to the parental authority of a school is rather
troublesome, but no one is up in arms about it.  I went to a high school where
adult students were "swatted".  Anywhere but in school that would be battery.
Minors are presumed to be deficient in certain respects.  Once majority is
reached they should be treated as adults.  I have no better solution than some
arbitrary age requirement.  I doubt you have a better solution.

If an adult follows the regulatory scheme and obtains the permit, I don't know
that we should be limiting their ability to protect themselves.  Is anyone
going to hold that schools are violence-free zones?  It's kind of ironic that
some of the locations where private protection is most desired are the same
areas where we attempt to prohibit law-abiding possession.  (Schools, with the
increase of school shootings, and college campuses, with their rates of
forcible rape (felony) both spring to mind.)

And your Germany and England examples are not directly analogous.  If the US
would have gotten on the problem early enough they might be more relevant, but
we now have a tremendous problem with criminals and firearms, and taking
firearms from law-abiding citizens DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM.  Criminals want
guns.  We CANNOT stop them from getting guns.  We're not trying to head-off a
future problem, we have a problem RIGHT now.

As for guns being stolen from vehicles...do you realize that many laws require
people to leave their guns in their vehicle rather than carry them?  If I'm
carrying my handgun they'll just about have to kill me to get it.  If it's in
my car they just have to take the car or forcibly remove it.

Do you know that the prevention of "thousands" (tens of thousands? hundreds of
thousands?) of people from buying  firearms through the actions of the Brady
Bill and such have led to the prosecution of only a handful of people?  I seem
to recall that out of the many thousand of felons and criminals (as the anti-
gunners put it) who have been stopped, less than two dozen have been
prosecuted.  (Not that the "thousands" statistic is accurate anyway. . .)
Shouldn't that bother you more than trying to disarm law-abiding citizens?
Why aren't the current laws being enforced?  Why haven't "thousands" of felons
been prosecuted for attempting to obtain a firearm?  Why aren't the anti's in
an uproar over this?

Answer: because the anti's are NOT concerned about OUR welfare, but about
their own position.  A new law proposal gets headlines.  Solving the problem
by prosecuting criminals puts them out of a job.  They are blowing smoke up
the collective ass of America.

Erik O'Daniel