Response to the Armed Canadian

I have to respond here to your post dated 11/5/07 so that I can respond to your comments as I read them.

First, I have to hand it to you guys. You always find a way to say something like "I can kill you dead with ....".

"As to guns being confiscated or restricted based on lethality, .... Such a statement illustrates that you have no firearms knowledge and do not understand that "lethality" has numerous variables." Nothing in my statement requires that I know all the variables which affect lethality. My statement is true regardless of those variables.

"What you feel is irrelevant." You referenced my comment "but surely all of you has seen some guns which you privately must have felt ought to be illegal". Clearly, the usage of the word "felt" was synonymous with "believed", so you misunderstood my point.

"I don't care how a particular guns based solely on how they appear make you feel." Again, it was not about appearance. You missed my point. Guys like you who are very knowledgeable about firearms ought to be able to identify guns that are too lethal. You may still disagree, but my point was not about "appearance" but about "reality".

"It should take more than revulsion to dictate laws". I agree. Never had anything to do with my views.

"So you don't need to worry about it. RPGs and their ilk are already heavily regulated." I never worried about RPGs. (I worry about al Qaeda bringing a nuke onto American soil.) The point was "The line between a legal gun and illegal gun will always be blurry and somewhat arbitrary".

"So I ask you, what intelligent gun laws are you looking for?" I have answered this question many times over the past few days. OK, here goes: The laws I want, I am not qualified to write. You are in a better position to write them, along with other responsible folks, and I guess you have to throw in some attorneys. But the main thing is this: it should be national (so it is simpler for everyone), and it should prevent some of the mayhem in which, today, guns play a role. (It's ok with me if the national law specifies different rules for different regions of the US.) Now, this is my opinion. The important thing for me is that the laws get improved over time, over where they are today. And it is more important that they get improved, than precisely how fast the changes occur, or if the changes are in stages, or if there are grandfathering provisions. Note: improved certainly includes removing sections of the existing laws which are deemed not effective in reducing crimes committed with guns.

Thank you for the nice recap on existing gun laws. It was very informative.

"what intelligent gun control did these laws fail to take into account?" Impossible to answer, but a mind experiment might point the way. Again, since we are delving into human behavior, society, and culture, there are no simple "tests" as in physics, no "proofs" as in geometry. But I would like to see an analysis of how guns, manufactured legally, end up in the hands of the bad guys. (Try not to muddle this thought experiment with cliches about locking up the thugs; we can all agree to that, but we need to deal with the world as it is, not as it should be.) Perhaps this type of analysis could lead to better laws and/or regulations.

"The problem with this idea is simple: What if the result you are after is unachievable?" That is possible (in a theoretical sense) but not likely. All of our laws will evolve over time, zigging and zagging, better and worse, but better over time. I find it hard to imagine that we cannot do better.

"And these ineffective, "feel good" laws are never repealed...." Like I said, they should be.

"All these laws do is move the bar...." That is true, and for all laws in general. Again, this is not physics. Laws are not perfect, ever.

"you don't "experiment" with Constitutional rights." Apart from my never suggesting that, we are constantly interpreting our glorious and beautiful Constitution.

"We've had 73+ years of experimentation and what is the result? Criminals still get guns and still use them." We must never lose our faith in man's ability to make progress.

"Until we address the base cause of gun crime, the criminal himself, we will not have the peace you are looking for." Two points:

1. I always said we have to work on both: lock up the criminals and improve the gun controls.

2. If truth be told, this is not about the peace I am looking for. The peace I am looking for will come after we have erased al Qaeda from the globe. (I got drawn into this debate in a roundabout way, but I take full responsibility for it, and have enjoyed much of it.)

"But this balance must work against the criminal and not 99% of the law-abiding citizens out there. What does it say about our society that this criminal minority is the one serving to impose legal and legislative tyranny on the rest of us? This isn't the way it is supposed to be." I agree, and I see this in all walks of life. Most of the irritating laws we can blame on the "bad guys" for not being honest, decent, etc.

"Law enforcement is the answer, not gun control. Improve that and we will improve everything." You and I disagree, but I applaud your civility and knowledge.