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You want to punish someone forever from one mistake.

This was turned over in appeal: http://www.wlf.org/Litigating/casedetail.asp?detai l=48 and http://www.tsra.com/finlnail.htm

I'm sorry, but I call bullshit.

Because DC is not a very large place, and immediately surrounded by places with less restrictions.

Well, then, explain the increase in gun crime in Britain since they banned handguns.

While you're at it, you can explain why the homicide, assault and armed robbery rates are up in Australia as well

After all, they're obviously not very large places, and surrounded by places with less restrictions -- oh, wait, no they're not. ;)

ne could also go into the socio-economic forces which usually parallel crime rates.

Of course we could, and there would be the meat of a cause of a lot of crime - but it's so much easier to blame guns, especially when you want to ban them (not you specifically, I'm referring more to the anti-gun movement in general).

For the average person in fit of rage/anger, if they don't have immediate access to a gun, or had to sit through a 10 day waiting period. You are aruging that every single one of those people will instead commit the same crimes if they didn't have ready access to such a simple and suddenly lethal instrument?

No. I am arguing that many but not all would.

If everybody having guns is supposed to level the playing field between criminals and victims ( an arguement btw, that I do not buy into ), what happens when everyone has a gun, and criminals move up to more fire power?

210 lb rapist. 110 lb woman.

Both with guns, the odds are evener than niether with a gun - whoever is quickest wins, rather than who is stronger/heavier.

I don't understand how you can not see that as leveling the playing field.

As far as "everyone having a gun", I've already said that not everyone needs to have a gun. We just don't need gun ownership arbitrarily restricted to 'necessity'.

A later study by Lott and William Landes found that concealed-carry prevents mass shootings. This study is available online here. There is also a list of his non-academic articles here and a brief bio here.

Gary Kleck has also done many studies on the issue of guns, crime, and self-defense. There is a good introduction and an interview with him here, a summary of his work here, and a his own home page here.

It might be worth noting that none of the above studies were funded by gun advocacy groups, gun control groups, gun manufacturers, or any other special interests. They are politically balanced -- John Lott is an iconoclastic conservative/libertarian, and Gary Kleck is a lifelong liberal Democrat. (I don't know David Mustard's affiliation.)

Also, they have impeccable credentials. John Lott got his Ph.D. in economics at UCLA, and David Mustard at University of Chicago. Gary Kleck got his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

There is an extensive list of articles on gun control here. The folks running this site are against it, but they don't seem to be connected to pro- or anti-gun groups. They have, among other things, an excellent chart showing gun ownership rising as gun crime stays steady and then falls here.

This should be enough to get you started -- feel free to post follow-up for sent me e-mail if you have any questions! --Robert A. Book, Ph.D. rbook "AT" pobox.com

119,000 disqualified voters? And what's so unusual about that? I remember reading that there was nothing unusual about the number of spoiled ballots in 2000 as compared to previous Presidential ellections. According to this link, there were 101,452,285 ballots cast in the 2000 election. Your 119,000 is 0.1173% of that total, a small percentage.

Is it anyones' fault but their own for casting spoiled ballots? Answer: no. Ballots are published WEEKS in advance. Voter guides are myriad; pick one that matches your political beliefs if you want. Conscientious voters should have a pre-marked ballot to carry to the poll with them. Standing in the booth is the wrong time to be reading a ballot for the first time.

As far as taxes go, I dream of the day we return to constitutionally correct government, shedding the largess that has been added since the New Deal (I consider myself a strict constructionist). Eliminating the unconstitutional programs would free up trillions of dollars-- money that would stay right in your pocket.

Okay, so take your statement one step further, that it's okay to register with the government. You're assuming that the government has to permit anyone to register that wants to register. When have you ever known THAT to be the case?

To go back to the much-derided gun analogy, look at the situation in Chicago with handgun registration. In 1968 Chicago imposed mandatory firearm registration, with no effect on homicide rates. In 1982 Chicago closed handgun registration, forbidding any new firearms from being registered.

Since 1983, the number of legally registered handguns has dropped from 750,000 to 164,030 in 2001. Permits must be renewed every year, and as residents age, move out of town, or forget to renew, the number of grandfathered owners drops. Meanwhile, Chicago continues to set homicide rate records

Each year in Chicago's "gun court", hundreds of people are convicted for a 'catch-22' crime, not doing something (registering a handgun) that they are not allowed to do (closed rolls since 1983).

Or that if in fact they do have to allow anyone to register, that your paperwork won't get lost for 25 years? The assumption that registration is okay ignores the possibility that it's actually an explicit (or implicit) approval of your ability to provide crypto. Because I can very easily see a scenario where if you're not willing to provide special Clipper Chips with Key Escrow, your registration will be disallowed or take forever to process.

I'm not so much concerned about "the government" intercepting my communications as I am with the real-life abuses that will come out of the infrastructure involved, including the sharing of intercept data with corporations and other interested parties.

I have nothing to hide from any three letter agency, but I cannot trust that such information will stay there. When priviledged communication is made available to my competition, to megacorporations, to "patriotic" extremist religious groups with their own agenda, I have a problem.

Besides, it's handy to have along if you lose your job/girlfriend/motorcycle, go bonkers, and decide to shoot 20 people at an airport.

First of all, I resent the characterization. If you're going to argue the point, don't resort to FUD. It undermines your credibility. OK?

Second, you have no evidence that violent crime rates are higher because of the legality of concealed carry. There is evidence (on both sides of the gun control debate) that concealed carry does not lead to an increase in crime. Admittedly, this is because most concealed carry permit holders are white men who live in the suburbs -- that is, the persons who are least likely to need a firearm. But, that also contradicts your claim that legal concealed carry leads to more guns "on the street."

If you ask me, the high violent crime rate in the United States is due to completely different factors, such as poverty, racial segregation, poor education, or maybe even the hormones in our food.

Likewise, legal use of firearms while exercising one's RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE "... results in severe physical and emotional trauma, and often in death" particularly when defending yourself against violent criminal assault (e.g. home invasion, car jacking, rape, convenience store hold-up, etc). The victim, even after killing the assailant, will often suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Of course, I would rather suffer PTSD having shot a criminal DEAD than be beat to death with a baseball bat by that same criminal.

The biggest violation that you missed was perpetrated by FDR during WWII. This was the closest America has come to a "final solution" so recently (terrifying).

Previously it was the American Indian (from our modern standpoint it is fortunate for America that the American Indian lacked access [GUN CONTROL in action] to a sufficient quantity of guns and ammunition to preserve their way of life ... visit some reservations to get a clearer picture ... the ones who faught are all dead now so we can't ask why they faught)

Because the second amendment, and those championing "gun rights", have never protected their rights and they never will. NOT EXACTLY ==> Guns Save Lives [News] Stories (eleven-pages of hyperlinks ... there would be more for 2001/2000 but there seems to be growing censorship of publishing these stories - memory hole???)

California's Government Code, Sections 821, 845, and 846 which state, in part: "Neither a public entity or a public employee [may be sued] for failure to provide adequate police protection or service, failure to prevent the commission of crimes and failure to apprehend criminals." (Please check this out as I only copy 'n pasted from a non-CA gov't website ... maybe it is misquoted ... whether misquoted or not you can still "Dial 911 and [wait to] die" ;-);-);-)

Of Holocausts and Gun Control (Washington University Law Quarterly)

GAMBLING WITH YOUR LIFE Is 911 an acceptable option?

Statistics the Gun Haters Don't Talk About

The Racist Roots of Gun Control

Taking Aim at Gun Control

"Dial 911 and Die (Radio Commercial)"

GUN CONTROL: A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT

The First Million Mom March

Guns and Violence: A Summary of the Field

Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths

Research related to "Gun Control

"Genocide Delayed"

Jews and "Gun Control": Fear of Freedom or Freedom from Fear?

The Racist Origins of US Gun Control: Laws Designed To Disarm Slaves, Freedmen, And African-Americans

Post your mailing address so I can send you a yard signs and window stickers that say "The people in this home are unarmed. We depend on 911" and "Protected by 911"

I would post more links to DATA but the hour is late and we are beginning to go off topic from the First Amendment issue. Although I raised the other twenty-six Amendments as a "tangential editorial comment"