[thechat] Snowball fight turns... umm... I don't even know how to express it...

[John Handelaar]

On Tue, 2003-02-25 at 12:31, Chris Marsh wrote:

> Whilst I'm with you thus far...
>
> > And people wonder why I'm for gun control. Good god, sometimes
>
> ...and gun control reduces gun crime?

Well, it sure as hell doesn't *increase* gun crime, does it?

> Um, how does that colossal leap of
> faith work? We have "gun control" in the UK. We also appear to have
> increasing gun crime.

Duff logic.  We also have rising sea temperatures and a near-
total absence of the white-coloured dogshit in the streets which
used to be there when we were kids.  Neither of those are causing
gun crime either.  I hope.

Big difference between proximities and causal links.  Huge.

Me, I like the fact that being found in possession of a handgun in
London means you're going to jail.  So do the coppers, because every
automatically-illegal handgun found is a crime either solved or
prevented.

Which doesn't mean that we don't now have gun nuts hanging around
MeFi etc claiming that the fuckwit crack dealers down the road from
me shooting each other somehow 'proves' that gun control *causes* gun
crime of any _important_ kind [1].

jh

[1]  To begin with, OF COURSE THERE ARE MORE FIREARMS OFFENCES being
committed.  Duh. *Owning* a handgun at all didn't used to be a crime.
Do the math.  And those offences are being committed to a large
extent *by* said gun nuts, who failed to take advantage of the
amnesty and didn't turn the guns over.  Fuck 'em.

--
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John Handelaar

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