Alan S wrote:
On 16 Feb 2008 18:01:00 GMT, Bert Hyman
wrote:

In Alan S
wrote:

After the Port Arthur massacre our government declared
certain weapons illegal and provided funds to buy back the
private weapons from the public....

I couldn't see it working in the USA; apart from the
political differences, the cost would be astronomical.

Did it actually "work" in Australia?

Did Australian criminals dutifully line up and turn in their guns?

Or were guns only confiscated from the law-abiding?

Read the article. Look at the deaths by firearms. And the
crims probably still have their guns but consider how many
massacres these days are by known criminals and how many are
by people with no criminal record?

Was the guy in Illinois a prior crim? The guys in Columbine?

You would have been happier if they mixed up a batch of TATP and made
bombs?

It's not the weapon that's dangerous, it's the desire to kill at any
cost including one's own life that's dangerous.

Remember, the _worst_ "masscre" in US history was committed with
commercial airliners, second worst with gasoline, the ones with
firearms are way down on the list.

With regard to Illinois, there was a time when he likely would not
have been allowed to own a firearm, but various lawsuits aimed at
protecting nuts got the laws changed so that one's civil liberties
cannot be abrogated unless one is "adjudicated criminally insane".
Note that these suits were not brought by "the gun lobby", they were
mostly brought by the ACLU and other professional do-gooders.

With regard to Columbine, the "guys" were in fact prohibited from
owning firearms both due to their age and their criminal history and
in fact obtained them unlawfully with the aid of accomplices, at least
one of whom has been imprisoned for doing so. The real story though
is not the guns, the real story is that if they had been more
competent at making bombs then there would have been far, far more
dead.


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--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)