[rescue] Octane R10K/175 CPU module available

[Mike Meredith]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003 15:15:46 -0500, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 07, 2003 at 02:56:08AM -0800, Janet L. Campbell wrote:
> > law-abiding, responsible people do have them.  The genie is out of
> > the bottle, and trying to put it back in and pretend that you can
> > really eliminate something just by making it difficult or illegal is
> > foolish, at least in the USA.  Other countries are different in a
> > number of ways.
> 
> I'm glad to hear that.  It's a refreshingly realistic viewpoint.  I've

Looking at it from an entirely theoretical viewpoint, making guns (or
certain catagories of guns) illegal and "changing things" in the US
would be very difficuly but not impossible. It would take a long time
(several generations?) and would have to be tackled in small bites, but
it could be done ...

* Restrict gun ownership to those who are "of age", don't have criminal
  records, don't have mental health problem. Over time make the 
  restrictions more severe.

* Restrict where guns can be bought. Enforce a cooling off period so
  you can't buy one and immediately take it away. Again increase the
  restrictions over time to make it more inconvenient to get a gun.

* Catagorise guns and ban certain kinds ("only a terrorist would want
  a heavy fully-automatic gun").

The belief that the US is a special case is a bit deluded. The gun
culture in the US is certainly more pervasive than it has ever been
elsewhere, but other countries have had widespread gun ownership and
then been more or less successful in making them illegal and unpopular.

This isn't intended to be an anti-gun rant. I'm not in favour of them
myself, but as I'm in the UK it's no skin off my nose if USians choose
to hang onto them. If you want to hang onto your 2nd amendment rights,
you should oppose any restrictions of them; if you want to get rid of
guns suppose laws that'll nibble away at those rights.