[Martin Taylor 2000.05.25.10:20]
[From Rick Marken (2000.05.24.1910)]
The current drug laws
are equivalent to gun confiscation, which, I agree, would produce
results as ugly as drug (and alcohol) prohibition.
I'm afraid I don't see why you agree.
Surely the _only_ design use for a gun is to reduce or eliminate the
ability of some human or animal control system to control? That isn't
the case with a drug. Disturbances to other people are side-effects
of the use of drugs, but are the intended effects of the use of guns.
To me, that makes the situations _very_ different.
That comment is independent of what the actual results of prohibition
are observed to be in the two cases. We can see the horrifyng results
of drug prohibitions almost everywhere we look, both within and
outside the USA. We must look outside the USA to see what happens
with gun prohibition, and there the results seem mixed. In countries
with similar levels of industrialization it often seems to have good
results, but nowhere is gun prohibition absolute, so far as I know.
Martin
[From Rick Marken (2000.05.25.0800)]
Me:
The current drug laws are equivalent to gun confiscation,
which, I agree, would produce results as ugly as drug (and
alcohol) prohibition.
Martin Taylor (2000.05.25.10:20)
I'm afraid I don't see why you agree.
I was just trying to be a tad agreeable.
But, actually, from the way gun lovers carry on I think they
are as addicted to weapons as drug addicts are to drugs. I
think it's very likely (in the US, at least) that efforts at
gun confiscation would lead to the kind of violence we've seen
in the war on drugs. I'd settle for registration and licensing.
This could be accompanied by a buy-back program, which is
basically voluntary confiscation.
Best
Rick
···
--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates mailto: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken
[From Richard Kennaway (2000.05.25.1623 BST)]
Rick Marken (2000.05.25.0800):
voluntary confiscation.
Is that like "giving someone a choice"?
-- Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~jrk/
School of Information Systems, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
[From Rick Marken (2000.05.25.0920)]
Me:
[Gun licensing and registration] could be accompanied by a
buy-back program, which is basically voluntary confiscation.
Richard Kennaway (2000.05.25.1623 BST)
Is that like "giving someone a choice"?
Yes, but not in the RTP sense. In a buy back program, people
really can choose to sell their guns or not. If they don't
sell their guns back, they are not sent to the social skills
room (or to jail or anywhere else). There is no _forced_ choice
masquerading as free choice in a buy back program.
Requiring licensing and registration is more like the RTP
"choice" because there _is_ a forced choice; gun owners are
"given the choice" -- a forced choice -- of getting a license
and registering their gun(s) or going to jail. This kind of
"choice" is coercive, just as giving a child the "choice" of
staying and behaving or going to the social skills room is
coercive. But in both cases I think the inconvenience the
coercion causes for the individual is worth the benefits to
the group.
By the way, if licensing and registration were the law of the
land and a government agent appeared at the home of a gun owner
who had not obtained a license or registration and said "I see
you have chosen to go to jail" I would object to this wording
as strongly as I object to the RTP wording (except I think
it's more crucial in RTP, where you are dealing with children
who are presumably still learning about what it means to be
responsible).
Best
Rick
···
--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates mailto: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken