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

[Sabrina Dent, Apperception]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Marsh" <chris at ecleanuk.com>
To: <thechat at lists.evolt.org>

> Agreed. But by disarming the population one is giving Bad Men a near
> 100% chance that a citizen will be unarmed. Thus if a Bad Man wishes to
> assure himself of near 100% probability of success in commission of his
> crime, he will purchase a firearm on the black market and use it on any
> innocent citizen that he wishes to without fear of any pesky
> "self-defence" diversions.

Guns are a fact of life in the worlds in which most of us live. They exist.
Wishing they did not will not make it so. Keeping/making them illegal will
not make it so. Having been held up at gun point, I can assure you that Bad
Men do have them. Having also pulled a (licensed) handgun on an (unarmed)
intruder to defend my 14-year-old sister whilst screaming at her to call the
cops, I can also say that as a Good Citizen, I was very, very pleased to own
a handgun and to know how and when to use it.

> Apart from the police, of course. They are being armed at quite a rate.
> It makes me feel *much* safer to know that were I to be caught in a
> crossfire, the odds of the bullet shattering my spine being
> government-issued is rising every day. If gun control *worked*, we
> wouldn't need to put more guns on the streets.

Personally, I'm happier that more police on the streets are armed in the UK.
I'm sorry -- I love England and hate Brit Bashing -- but the vision of the
traditional Bobby yelling "Stop! Police!" whilst chasing down some thug
always makes me quietly laugh.

Stop? WHY? What are you going to do, chuck your *hat* at me?

Also, I'm not sure about this, but I've always assumed that when the Met
sends out an armed response unit, they are more likely to send one to, say,
Brixton than, say, Kensington. I have no statistics to back up this
assumption, but I'm thinking you have a better chance of being caught in
police-issued cross fire if you live in a neighbourhood that's poor,
racially mixed, or just minority populated. Seems like the sort of silent
racial bias the Met would continue to embrace.

And with those incindiary comments, I take my jet-lagged arse to bed.

(PS -- If people would *not* trim the name of the person they're quoting,
that would be very useful for clarity. Ta.)

--Sabrina
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