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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!cca!ima!inmet!nrh
From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Gun Control, again...(and Rights) - (nf)
Message-ID: <1669@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Aug-84 06:56:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.1669
Posted: Wed Aug  1 06:56:27 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Aug-84 02:07:51 EDT
Lines: 32

#R:bunker:-47700:inmet:3900138:000:1517
inmet!nrh    Jul 31 14:16:00 1984

>***** inmet:net.flame / ihuxq!ken /  1:26 pm  Jul 28, 1984
>
>Wait a minute.  You either trust your government or you don't.
>If you think the government is so untrustworthy that it will confiscate
>registered handguns, what do you think it will do to you if it no
>longer has to be bothered with the rights of alleged criminals?
>A govenment that can't distinguish between registration and confiscation
>will not understand the difference between accused and convicted,
>innocent and guilty.  Please, if you cherish your right to bear arms,
>including "tools" whose only purpose is to blow away human beings at
>close range, you had better cherish the rest of that beautiful document
>just as dearly.

Why, thanks a lot for burdening us with your assumptions, ken.

	1. I trust the government neither to distinguish between the
accused and convicted nor to understand the difference between the
innocent and guilty.  That's why neither compulsory gun registration 
nor criminal trial without a jury are good ideas.

	2. It is not inhumane or awful to think that some parts of 
the constitution are good and some are bad (depending, of course
on which ones you think are good or bad :-) for example:
I think prohibition was a stupid idea, but it was, for a time,
part of the constitution.  I still think income tax is a stupid, evil
idea, but there is an amendment, not ratified until 1913, that
makes it (supposedly) legal (though it is arguable whether its
framers originally meant "income" to include "wages").