RE: Moscow surplus and seized weapons policy

[Marc <cram3813@uidaho.edu>]

At 03:57 PM 9/17/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear Visionaries,
> What would keep the City of Moscow from deciding to destroy surplus and
>seized weapons under its control as a token of our community's commitment to
>reducing handgun and automatic weapons violence?
>Steve Cooke
>
I would think that wanting to have a workable budget would be a priority.
As a "token of our community's commitment to reducing handgun and automatic
weapons violence", it would be token at best.  It would express no
commitment other than finanical foolishness.  This would be about the same
as telling Walmart that if they wanted to reduce handgun violence then they
should take some weapons off the wall in their store and destroy them.
After all, those guns have the same chance as surplus ones as being used in
crimes.  (Or should I say 'causing crimes' as the term 'handgun violence'
would suggest.

And, just out of curiosity, exaclty how much "automatic weapons violence"
do we have?  

As a token of our community's commitment to reducing ANY violence, I think
we should lock up violent people.  I realize this is a somewhat
old-fashioned approach, but it does seem to work.  To me, this is like when
the feds made carjacking a crime.  If the carjackers would get locked up
for assault, theft of auto and other items in auto, battery, kidnapping and
other crimes that they did commit, there would be no reason to waste time
and money making the collective group of crimes, carjacking, a crime.

Marc