Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxa.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxa!wetcw From: wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Gun Control again... A Position Paper Message-ID: <940@pyuxa.UUCP> Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 09:09:27 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxa.940 Posted: Wed Aug 8 09:09:27 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Aug-84 03:20:00 EDT References: <1565@sun.uucp>, <1076@hou4b.UUCP> Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J. Lines: 44 Sorry friend, but most black market guns are NOT stolen from homes. Most black market guns are openly bought on the street after being smuggled across borders and between states with stricter laws. Saturday-Night-Specials are produced by a few companies, one of which is operating in Florida. Gun running is the province of the old time mobsters and provides a lucrative income. Cases of SNSs are bought in areas where it is quite legal and brought into areas where the laws are stricter. There is no real incentive to go bumbling around someones home or apartment looking for weapons when you can buy them on the street. Besides, not too many people would want to pay good money for a cheaply made SNS when they can aquire a well-made weapon from their local sporting goods store for the same price. My feeling is that SNSs should be outlawed entirely. Close down the factories. Of course smuggling would then become a bigger problem as probably three quarters of the SNSs come from outside this country. I don't have any real answers, but disarming the honest citizen while allowing the criminal access to weapons is not one of them. This is not an easy problem to solve. Short of deputizing every fourth person to watch for smuggling of guns, I don't know what we can do. Registering guns only tells us who owns the gun at any one moment. It doesn't prevent the use of the gun. Confiscating all guns only increases the likelyhood that gun runners will get richer and criminals will have a decided advantage in their proffessional calling and nuts will hide their weapons under the bathroom floor. All of this business about rights, protection, and preventing a government coup is academic. The guns are here now and many more are on their way. No amount of calling for abolition or complete arming is going to change this fact. What has to be done is to find a middle ground so that we can begin making a dent in a bad situation. I think we should start with applying the laws that are already on the books. Get tough with those who would use weapons in the commission of a crime. New York state started out being tough, but there are just too many lily-livered judges on the bench who have seen fit to ignore the law in this area. How about docking the judges pay $100 every time they fail to apply the law where it concerns guns? (I know, prosecutors are just as bad about charging gun users. Do the same to them.) T. C. Wheeler