Wolfgang

I can't quite get the words sorted out, but

There is a difference between prohibiting actions and prohibiting material objects. Prohibiting drunk driving makes more sense than prohibiting possession of a bottle of wine for use in after-dinner drinks, or for use in gettting quietly looped. A target-shooting gunner is not more dangerous than a target-shooting archer. It would be ok to pass a law requiring a backstop behind the targets.

And then, there's consistency. Are all you gun-ban people in favor of reinstating Prohibition, and including tobacco as well as alcohol? Of course that's more of an aside than an argument, but it's worth thinking about.

Even if guns were successfully prohibited, are you sure that homicides would be decreased? There's a lot of bludgeoning and machete work in the world as it is.

But my basic argument is that as far as I can see, we have a cultural problem, not a material problem. It seems to me that it's not the people with guns, it's the people with the will to kill. Members of my family have had firearms, including handguns, at least since the American Civil War, and haven't murdered anyone. Some people have kitchen knives and use them homicidally. They're cultural things.

clint