John,

>>The obvious point that you avoid like the plague is the immediacy of the gun. Some drunken knucklehead with an axe to grind, or someone who's been "dissed", or someone who's been cutoff driving down the road... if a gun is easily available, and they are, they pull out the gun and shoot. They dont go home to buy furtilizer and construct a bomb, they pull out a gun right then and there. This "other weapon" argument is weak.

>And the point you ignore is that there are other weapons besides guns that are immediately accesible. I could kill you with an ink pen, a steak knife, a stick, or my hands, but I don't hear anyone trying to outlaw any of those.

john, john, john.... an ink pen is design for writing, a steak knife is designed for eating steak, a baseball bat is designed for playing baseball. A gun is designed for killing !! Don't you get it? : A GUN IS DESIGNED FOR KILLING ! Every nutcase can use a gun to kill. Not everyone has the skill to kill someone with a ink pen, or even a baseball bat or steak knive. They need way much more force. I don't see a 4 year old kid walking into school with a baseball bat or knife killing someone do you ??

You can't ban the ink pen, steak knife, or baseball bat because they have a very different primary goal. You can ban guns because they don't have any other goal than to wound (in the best case) or kill someone else.


>The gun has no intrinsic behavior - IT ISN'T THE GUN! It's the "knucklehead". We need to put the emPHAsis on the right sylLABle.

Sure, but who is the "knucklehead" ?? Everyone can become one. Just by preventing that just everyone owns a gun will prevent these situations. Every honest man can be turned into a bank robber if he is exposed to certain conditions, even you as a law officer.

I forgot the links (maybe tracy can come up with a few), but the argument for defense does not cut it at all. The chance that you are able to put of robbers by the use a gun is very slim. If you do pull a gun you have about 40 times larger chance you'll be hurt rather than the criminal.

Walter,