[thechat] Bowling for Columbine

[Ben Dyer]

At 09:02 PM 1/26/2003, you wrote:

> > types of crimes with. And for those who enjoy using handguns for target
> > shooting could rent them at the range, much like most people who enjoy
> > aiming at bowling pins don't actually own their own bowling balls.
>
>Yeh, you'd think.
>
>But what are the chances of getting the laws changed to reduce the 10k+
>gun-related deaths in the US?

Mostly because new laws don't do anything.  [Insert standard speech about
how laws only apply to law-abiding citizens, etc.]

Most American gun deaths are gang-related anyways.  (I'm looking for some
good statistics, but everything I'm finding is slanted in one direction or
the other.)  And most American gangs aren't buying their weapons legally,
anyways.  They'll buy cheap knockoffs smuggled in from Cuba, Panama,
Colombia, etc.

Of course, we could stop this if the American government didn't ask the
Coast Guard not only to stop illegal aliens, drugs, weapons from being
smuggled in, but also do the standard search-and-rescue, hurricane
monitoring, port security, etc. missions and everything else that the Coast
Guard needs to do on such a small budget (compared with other government
agencies, that is, $5bn is still nothing to sneeze at, but we're talking
thousands of miles of coastline here) each year.

<http://www.oig.dot.gov/item_details.php?item=692>

Anyways, I'm not exclusively against gun control laws.  I'm more or less
for the Brady Bill but I think parents need to be more responsible for
their weapons to prevent accidental deaths.  My dad had a rifle in my house
for my whole life and I didn't even know about it until I was like 20.

--Ben