[MaggieL]

Originally posted by jaguar
Thank you for illustrating an argument for gun control.

Nonsense.

The woman was assulted by a man who was drunk, and on psychiatric drugs. I personally think she should have had the opportunity to defend herself.

Instead *you'd* let her face a lunatic perhaps twice her size barehanded so you can have a feel-good about gun prohibition. Nice guy.

Summerised to: I can't acutally deny this one.

No, summarized to: I won't sacrifice the principle to extreme hypotheticals. Very few people waste money on overkill weapons like that. Some admittedly do, legal or not. If someone wants to keep a tank in his backyard, it's OK with me. (in fact some people here do). Toxic chemicals of any kind, including fissionable materials, fall more under public health issues in my view; but I don't think they should be regulated <i>because they might be used as weapons</i>.

C'mon, you know enough about argumentation to know what a "slippery slope" is.

Out of question, why do you want an assult rifle, personal protection? Killing wildlife?

Oh, please. Why do you buy meat? "Eating wildlife"? It's called "hunting", you're really stretching to try to make it sound evil.

I might want one for self-defense, or for hunting, or for both, or for neither. I might be a collector. I might be a sport shooter. The fact is, my personal reasons for owning any particular weapon (or anything else, for that matter) aren't subject to your personal review.

Do you own a car? Why? Why not? What are you going to do with it.? Can you justify it against the environmental impact? Why don't you sell it and feed the starving children? Why don't you buy one and support the auto industry? Can you prove you'll never have an accident with it?

How about that computer of yours? Why do you need that? It's perfectly capable of comitting intellectual property theft. I demand you surrender it to the government, and replace it with equipment that's been neutered to make sure it can only be used for nice, safe, legal purposes.

You see jag, I don't *have* to justify to you my desire to own any particular weapon, computer, data, software, tool or anything else. It's my business, not yours. Any of them *could* be used to comitt a crime, or make war...or not. That doesn't justify your desire to confiscate them, or make them contraband, just because *you* think I don't "need" them.

Firstly i'd point out that over 3 million Vietnamese died to 50,000 US soldiers. If the govt dissolved to the point where the vast majority of the population was in open insurrection many other things would happen before it dissolved into armed conflict anyway, its silly to even argue it.

And yet the Vietnamese now control ther own goverment. You then go on to confirm *my* position that the balance of power is much more complicated than a simple head-to-head slugfest where higher firepower always wins and thus whoever has fewer/smaller weapons doesn't stand a chance so they might as well surrender before anything happens.
It *is* silly to argue about it in those terms...why are you?