From: owner-utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com (utah-firearms-digest) To: utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: utah-firearms-digest V2 #67 Reply-To: utah-firearms-digest Sender: owner-utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk utah-firearms-digest Wednesday, June 3 1998 Volume 02 : Number 067 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 14:44:30 -0600 From: "S. Thompson" Subject: Politics Explained - Humor >----Forwarded Message(s)---- > > #: 768915 S8/Humour/Jokes/Verse [UKFORUM] > 12-Mar-98 13:49:06 > Sb: Politics Explained > Fm: Juliete Cook 73500,441 > To: ALL > >If this does not explain it guys...LOLOL..well, there's no hope !!!! > > ~Juliete Cook ~ (*)(*) > > > >THE WONDERS OF POLITICS, EXPLAINED BY A BLOKE WITH TWO COWS: >@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ > > >1. FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk. > >2. PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts >them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the >cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need. > >3. BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and >puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by >ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government >took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as >many eggs as the regulations say you should need. > >4. FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take >care of them, and sells you the milk. > >5. PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You help to take care of them, and >you all share the milk. > >6. RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but >the government takes all the milk. > >7. DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots >you. > >8. SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for >keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. > >9. MILITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts >you. > >10. PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the >milk. > >11. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick >someone to tell you who gets the milk. > >12. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you >vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating >in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate". > >13. BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and >they go mad. The government doesn't do anything. > >14. COMMON MARKET BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government >regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays >you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other >and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms >accounting for the missing cows. > >15. ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price >or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows. > >16. CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. > >17. HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your >publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your >brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated >general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for >keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a >Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the >majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to >the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight >cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because >the fung shui is bad. > >18. ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from >milking or killing them. > >19. FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf. > >20. TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and >denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. > >21. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of >"ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant >past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of >non-specified gender. > >22. COUNTER CULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You >got to have some of this milk. > >23. SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take >harmonica lessons. > > > > >----End Forwarded Message(s)---- > > - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 18:12:32 -0600 From: chardy@ES.COM (Charles Hardy) Subject: [Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com: Write-thru, May 31] - ----BEGIN FORWARDED MESSGE---- FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA EDITORS: DUE TO LENGTH, CONSIDER THIS YOUR MONTHLY BONUS FEATURE (THIS VERSION IS A WRITE-THRU, INCLUDING JUNE 1 FIXES) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MAY 31, 1998 THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz Stop schoolyard shootings: hand out more guns On May 21, all indications are that pencil-necked 15-year-old misfit Kipland Kinkel, younger child (and the only one still living at home) of well-to-do government schoolteacher parents, took a .22-caliber rifle, shot his mother and father to death in their home, and then headed down to the school cafeteria to wound 22 of his schoolmates, while killing two more. What were all the kids in the mill town of Springfield, Oregon doing in the school cafeteria so early that morning? Being taught to expect a government dole and subsidy even for breakfast, it now appears. At any rate, it was another shooting in the "gun-free zones" which the "send-a-message" liberals have made of our mandatory youth propaganda camps - -- oops, "public schools." So needless to say, the Usual Suspects were shortly heard from. Within days Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association -- America's largest gun control outfit -- showed up on Katie Couric's smugly hoplophobic NBC "Today" show, "debating" all-guns-to-the-state Congressman Charles Schumer on a typically heads-they-win-tales-we-lose question: whether it is federal or only local authorities who should "mandate" gun locks. Needless to say, Mr. LaPierre never asked why they were debating locks for handguns, when all the recent schoolyard shootings were done with long guns. For that matter, the firearms used in these crimes were not full-auto machine weapons (no innocent American civilians have been killed by such legally-owned weapons in years, except by government agents), nor the "murderous" assault weapons which Messrs. Schumer and Clinton are busily banning, with their "deadly" pistol grips, flash hiders, and bayonet lugs. ((start ital)That(end ital) kind of weapon, as it turns out, kills an average of three Americans per year ... fewer than are killed by bowling balls.) Since few to none of the recent school killings have been accomplished with handguns (Master Kinkel, like his recent predecessors in Arkansas, carried a handgun for backup, but preferred to do most of his shooting with his more accurate rifle -- precisely the type of "sporting weapon" which the gun-grabbers tell us is safer to have around), this opportunistic political carrion-feeding on the young dead to promote bad laws already in the hopper makes about as much sense as fighting highway fatalities by requiring more life preservers on pleasure boats. Nor did Mr. LaPierre ever call the gun-banner's biggest bluff -- never asking Schumer "So you're saying gun locks are enough? If you get this law passed you'll never propose another gun control law? This isn't just one more incremental step toward total prohibition?" After all, once the victim disarmament gang effectively outlawed machine guns for most Americans, they didn't hesitate to ridicule the real reason we own guns -- "a safeguard against tyranny," in the words of Hubert Humphrey -- by simpering "Oh, you and your friends think you can stop the 82nd Airborne with your deer rifles?" Similarly, once every handgun in the country is required to be double-padlocked inside a time-locked safe, do we think they'll hesitate to argue, "Since you can no longer get the gun out on short notice, it's no good to defend you against a rapist, so how can you argue you still need it?" Advice from the Germans Highest soprano among the braying state-power bedwetters, as usual, was West Virginia's daily Charleston Gazette: "The slaughter of schoolchildren is a price America pays for being a gun-polluted society. ... The recent mass shooting at an Oregon school was the latest in a never-ending string of horrors. This is what happens in a society saturated with 200 million guns. Any child can obtain a weapon and use it in a moment of childish rage. This is what happens in a society where the powerful 'right to bear arms' lobby cows politicians, making them afraid to take any steps to protect people from the gun danger. How long will America endure this madness?" the coaldust daily ululated on May 22. The fanatical cries to disarm the victims even went international, with Germany's newspaper "Bild" pontificating on May 25 (in the quaintly spastic Associated Press translation): "A 15-year-old murdered his parents in Oregon, shot and killed two schoolmates and wounded 22 others. Again the affected will stand around the coffins, beseech God and bemoan the shameful crime. Probably they will barbarically punish the 15-year-old barbarian. Thereafter they will claim: continuous shooting in television -- only a game. The unscrupulous weapons trade -- a successful business. And the instructions to build bombs in the Internet had nothing to do with the bloody reality. Really not? High Noon in school. Disarm finally!! Also in television and the weapons closets at home. It's not a pistol that makes a man. Playing with violence is instructions on how to kill." We don't really have to respond to our Teutonic critics, do we? Their Jewish and Gypsy minorities took their advice to "Disarm finally!!" between 1928 and 1938 -- gun registration leading to confiscation, just as Mr. Schumer and Mr. LaPierre's back-stabbing NRA plan for us here, and is now underway again in both England and France. They claim European murder rates are lower than ours? Between 1928 and 1945, the German state murdered at least 8 million unarmed civilians from their own and the captured territories (not counting the deaths of men in uniform, though we probably should.) Counting famines created on purpose for political reasons, Joe Stalin and his Communists during the same years murdered civilians numbering at least 20 million. Even assuming not one single murder has occurred in Europe since 1945 -- ignoring Bosnia and all the rest -- that averages out to 400,000 murders per year since 1928, caused by the citizenry being disarmed, while their governments stayed armed -- exactly what's planned for us here. Or have the brave state socialists like Mr. Schumer or Sen. Feinstein called for disarming the DEA, the ATF, and the FBI -- America's SS -- while I wasn't listening? The government dispensary Any death of a child is a tragedy. But if someone has to be callous enough to inject a few facts into this debate, let's start here: Our murder rates are way below the European rate reported above, not in spite of, but (start ital)because(end ital) we are a well-armed nation, where the government (up until the past decade, when they started testing the waters with Waco and Ruby Ridge) never dared attempt such atrocities. (We'll have more now, of course, after federal judge Edward Lodge on May 14 -- one week prior to the Kinkel rampage -- dismissed all charges against FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, ruling he was "just doing his job" back in 1992 when he shot away the lower jaw and carotid artery of an Idaho woman named Vicki Weaver, wanted for no crime, who he found standing in the kitchen doorway of her home, armed with a baby. Vicki Weaver screamed for 30 seconds as she lay dying, whereupon the FBI agents who had her family home besieged named their encampment "Camp Vicky," and taunted her surviving family members over their bullhorns, asking if "Mom" was going to cook them blueberry pancakes. The fact that Gunner Horiuchi -- who has testified his qualifications include accuracy within one-half-inch at the range from which he shot Mrs. Weaver -- will not even face a manslaughter trial was by far the most important gun-crime-related story of May, 1998 ... yet how much play did it receive in your local newspaper or television station?) Actually, some excellent commentary has moved on the wires in the week since the Springfield cafeteria shooting, though it will be interesting to measure how much of this common sense made it through the nation's anti-gun editorial filters. While "What caused this?" tends to be a rhetorical question, with the inquirer standing ready to answer "guns," isn't it interesting that the day before young Kip Kinkel had his bad day in Springfield, two teens were arrested in Clearfield, Penn. for the 10-days-past murder of 15-year-old Kimberly Jo Dotts, who was dragged into the woods by her teenage friends with a rope around her neck when she threatened to "snitch" about their plans to run away to Florida. There, they hanged young Kimberly Jo by her neck from a tree, before bashing her head in with a rock. How do the gun-grabbers explain the role of the "easy availability of guns" in causing (start ital)that(end ital) schoolgirl murder, in which no firearms were involved? Easy. They just ignore it. In my newspaper, the arrests in Kimberly Jo's death were buried on page 12, on the same day the Kip Kinkel story broke on page one, with photos. And since it didn't fit the anti-gun agenda, Kimberly Jo's horrendous murder was thereafter ignored - -- even as we heard day after day of anti-gun drum-beating follow-ups about Kip Kinkel's rampage. But even in the Oregon case, there is a far more obvious suspect than "guns," as Maureen Sielaff was quick to detail in the Vigo Examiner (http://www.Vigo-Examiner.com): "Kip Kinkel had been attending anger control classes and was taking a prescription drug called Prozac," Ms. Sielaff reported early the next week. "Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, Indiana was recently sued over the homicidal tendencies this drug is alleged to induce in patients. "Prozac is commonly given to youth as a treatment for depression. In the book 'Prozac and other Psychiatric Drugs,' by Lewis A. Opler, M.D., Ph.D., the following side effects are listed for Prozac: apathy; hallucinations; hostility; irrational ideas; and paranoid reactions, antisocial behavior; hysteria; and suicidal thoughts." The drug's form PV 2472 DPP, prepared by Dista Products Company (a division of Eli Lilly) and last revised on June 12, 1997 -- the paperwork included in each package of Prozac -- lists such other "frequent" symptoms as "chills, hemorrhage and hypertension of the cardiovascular system, nausea and vomiting, agitation, amnesia, confusion, emotional liability, sleep disorder, ear pain, taste perversion, and tinnitus." If this kid gets a good lawyer, look for a "Prozac defense." And if that happens, my cheery thought for the day is that young Kipland could be looking at as little as three-to-seven on the psychiatric farm. "Though many are demanding stricter gun control laws as a solution to this sudden increase in homicidal shootings," Ms. Sielaff continues, "these events do not appear to correlate to a sudden increase in firearm ownership. But when the percentage of these killers that are on Prozac is compared to the percentage of the general public on Prozac, a very disturbing pattern emerges. ..." In an apparently unrelated incident, I find the Cincinnati Inquirer editorializing on May 14, "Last month, when a classmate suffered a severe asthma attack on a school bus in Mount Airy, Md.., Christine Rhodes, 12, shared her prescription inhaler with the stricken girl -- possibly saving her life. "In a rational world, Christine would be hailed a hero. But 'rational' is not a word that fits the world of education these days. Christine was branded a 'drug trafficker' by school officials -- a black mark that will remain on her record for three years. Makes you wonder what they were inhaling." Two years before, and also in Ohio, the paper noted, "Two middle-school girls were suspended for sharing a packet of Midol." It is not the dimmest, but the brightest of our young men who are bound to go stir crazy as their government incarceration stretches to 13 years and beyond ... as they are forced to spend 12 or 13 years having the sparks of creativity and intellectual curiosity snuffed out, learning less than their grandfathers learned in eight, merely to satisfy the labor unions' economically misguided desire to keep them off the job market, bolstered by the teachers' union full-court-press for full employment now dubbed "dropout prevention." Meantime, as the religious zealots whoop it up, demonizing every recreational drug of choice but their own, just as fast as they do "guns," does anyone really know how many of our schoolchildren (particularly boys) are now doped up by school nurses with Prozac and Ritalin, relatively new drugs whose long-term psychiatric effects are only now beginning to be discovered? If you shut up enough animals in a small enough cage, they will eventually start killing one another. Do the mass dopings of kids like Kip Kinkel subdue their "escape" response, and if so are the effects actually worse when they finally break through? Is anyone even tracking the (start ital)growth rate(end ital) of these mass drug-dosings of our innocent young men by their government wardens? And doesn't this mean our schools' "zero tolerance" drug policies really only mean zero tolerance for (start ital)competing(end ital) drug pushers? The crime shortage On May 28, I published across the top of our own Op-ed page here in Las Vegas a piece by James K. Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute, pointing out that the New York Times ran the story of the Springfield, Ore. shootings "for three straight days on the front page," while "President Clinton used his Saturday radio address to decry the 'changing culture that desensitizes our children to violence'." The only problem is, according to Mr. Glassman, "The truth about violence in America is that it is falling, not rising. From 1993 to 1996, the number of murders fell 20 percent, and just four days before the Oregon shootings, the FBI announced preliminary figures for 1997 that found both murders and robbery down another 9 percent and overall crime off for the sixth straight year. Murders in New York City fell a stunning 22 percent in 1997; in Los Angeles, 20 percent. ... "You have to wonder about the claims of pop psychologists and of the president himself when he says, as he did Saturday, that the rising tide of murders and mayhem on TV, in movies and on video games, is turning kids into killers. U.S. News noted that 'juvenile murder arrests declined ... 14 percent from 1994 to 1995 and another 14 percent from 1995 to 1996'." But if violence is falling, why do these rare schoolyard incidents get so much media play? "One answer may be a crime shortage," Mr. Glassman figures. "At a Harvard symposium recently, one panelist pointed out that local TV news shows have to import violent footage now that local criminals aren't turning out enough product (there were only 43 murders in Boston last year, the fewest since 1961). ... "So, what's the meaning of the schoolhouse slayings? Frankly, not much. The meaning of the hysteria over them ... now, that's worth looking into." Writing for the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service a few days later, Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., concurred: "I have now been on television news following every one of the recent school killings answering basically the same question: 'How do you explain the trend of shootings by kids in rural schools?' My answer is always the same: I cannot explain it, because no such trend exists. ... "In 1992, 55 killings occurred in America's schools -- a remarkably small number. By 1997, that number dropped by more than half, to 25. By contrast, 88 people were killed by lightning in 1997. "The Los Angeles County School System, with about 600,000 students in it, has not had a homicide since 1995. The District of Columbia, with about 600,000 citizens, has had about 600 homicides since that time. "Overall, between 1994 and 1996, there was a 30 percent drop in juvenile homicides in America. Ninety kids were arrested in rural communities for the crime of homicide in 1996, compared to 1,800 in cities. ... "Between 1992 and 1996, the homicide rate in America dropped by 20 percent. But the number of homicides reported on network news increased by 721 percent. ... Distorted coverage of ... these events has violated recently victimized communities, frightened parents, fomented reactionary legislation and misinformed the public. Worst of all, it may be creating an environment where other troubled youths are copy-catting their well-publicized peers." Too many laws The NRA's standard cry, "Why don't we enforce the laws already on the books?" can get to sound pretty lame through repetition. But in fact, I remember interviewing Marion Hammer of Florida (since elected to head the NRA in Washington) about one of the tourist murders in Florida five years back, and having her point out that the culprit -- a young woman -- had been arrested for being a convicted felon in possession of an illegal concealed weapon while shoplifting -- as well as resisting arrest -- only few days before. The authorities let her out due to a lack of jail space (too many victimless dope smokers tying up the cells, presumably.) Similarly, Kip Kinkel was arrested and booked for storing a stolen gun at school the day before his murder rampage ... but then promptly released back into his helpless parents' custody. So, it turns out the NRA's recurrent cry has some specific application: Why push for more gun laws, when the cops aren't able enforce the 20,000 gun laws already on the books? To outlaw everything has the same effect as to legalize everything, except that the cops are thus empowered to harass anyone, any time they want. The Florida tourist-shooting epidemic is also relevant in another way. In 1993, as research by Prof. Gary Kleck of Florida State University has shown, Florida crime rates were actually plummeting, due to new laws which allowed far more law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. As that beneficial change took place, the only motorists who criminals could be assured would be unarmed were newly-arrived tourists driving rental cars with big fluorescent rent-a-car stickers. Once the airport rental lots started removing those stickers, Florida's "tourist murder crime wave" disappeared virtually overnight. Similarly, one of the last places a criminal knows he can find unarmed victims in an increasingly well-armed and peaceful America today ... is in the "gun free school zones" in which the snivelliberals have locked up our children. Hand out more guns In fact, it turns out that if a solution to schoolyard violence is needed, experts with some mighty solid credentials propose that the solution is not to ban guns, but to hand out more: Slated to appear Monday, June 1, I'm publishing in the Review-Journal an excellent piece initially prepared for the Los Angeles Times by John R. Lott, Jr., a fellow at University of Chicago School of Law, and author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, 1998), under the headline: "To stop mass shootings, hand out more guns: When Israel armed teachers, the school shootings ended." In that essay, Professor Lott writes: "What might appear to be the most obvious policy may actually cost lives. When gun-control laws are passed, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who adhere to them. Police officers or armed guards cannot be stationed everywhere, so gun-control laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves. "Other countries have followed a different solution. Twenty or so years ago in Israel, there were many instances of terrorists pulling out machine guns and firing away at civilians in public. However, with expanded concealed-handgun use by Israeli citizens, terrorists soon found ordinary people pulling pistols on them. Suffice it to say, terrorists in Israel no longer engage in such public shootings. "The one recent shooting of schoolchildren in the Middle East further illustrates these points. On March 13, 1997, seven Israeli girls were shot to death by a Jordanian soldier while they visited Jordan's so-called Island of Peace. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Israelis had 'complied with Jordanian requests to leave their weapons behind when they entered the border enclave. Otherwise, they might have been able to stop the shooting, several parents said.' "Hardly mentioned in the massive news coverage of the school-related shootings during the past year is how they ended. Two of the four shootings were stopped by a citizen displaying a gun. In the October 1997 shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Miss., which left two students dead, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car and physically immobilized the shooter while waiting for the police." (That assistant principal had, fortunately for all, violated federal law by bringing that firearm onto campus, even though he left it in the glove compartment of his car. "More recently," Professor Lott continues, "the school-related shooting in Edinboro, Pa., which left one teacher dead, was stopped only after a bystander pointed a shotgun at the shooter when he started to reload his gun. The police did not arrive for another 10 minutes. Who knows how many lives were saved by these prompt responses?" Dr. Lott's exhaustive studies of multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995 reveal that "only one policy was found to reduce deaths and injuries from these shootings: allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns. "The effect of 'shall-issue' concealed handgun laws, which give adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness, was dramatic. Thirty-one states now have such laws. When states passed them during the 19 years we studied, the number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, injuries by 82 percent. ... "Unfortunately, much of the public policy debate is driven by lopsided coverage of gun use. Horrific events like the Colin Ferguson shooting receive massive news coverage, as they should, but the 2.5 million times each year that people use guns defensively -- including cases in which public shootings are stopped before they happen -- are ignored. ... Without permitting law-abiding citizens the right to carry guns, we risk leaving victims as sitting ducks." Sitting ducks like Colin Ferguson's victims on the Long Island Railroad, that is -- all forbidden by New York law to carry weapons for their own self-defense. The gun-grabbers will respond "a resident of the house is more likely to be injured than an intruder." But only if they cleverly include suicides in their statistics, of course. Besides, you can scare away 100 intruders without ever wounding one, just by showing (or audibly cocking) your weapon. Which makes the minuscule "injury" statistics a red herring. Crediting Eddie Eagle All these statistics can get a little boggling, I know. So let's take a specific example. The Elko Daily Free Press reports that on April 7 of this year, an unnamed 15-year-old boy in that northern Nevada community tried to stop an intruder from beating his mother, but found he was not strong enough to do so. The lad therefore raced into his mother's bedroom, retrieving a .22 semiautomatic handgun, loaded several rounds into the magazine, inserted the magazine into the weapon, returned, and fired at the assailant three times, hitting him twice and killing him. "He is credited with saving the life of his mother, and possibly the 3-year-old child also present," the newspaper reports. "The mother suffered a broken cheekbone, a broken nose, several bruises on her body, and a cut to her forehead from the attack." "It seems to me to be a fairly clear-cut case of self-defense," said D.A.. Gary Woodbury, in which case "an inquest is not warranted." If Mr. Schumer's proposed federal "gun lock" bill had been in effect -- or even the non-federal version tacitly OK'd by Mr. LaPierre -- the Elko teenager would have done better attempting to whack his mother's assailant with a fireplace log. Following the successful Israeli example of arming teachers and parent volunteers, Georgia state legislator Mitchell Kaye has now proposed one of the few legislative initiatives likely to directly address the problem: He wants to authorize and encourage Georgia teachers to carry concealed weapons at school. "They know that all the adults in these school gun-free zones are unarmed, and that's the problem,'' Kaye told CNN the day after the Oregon shootings. In a carefully scripted line, the gun-grabbers reply that teachers "are supposed to educate children, not execute them." But we don't give weapons to police officers in the hopes they'll "execute" their suspects, do we? Guns are the great deterrent, preventing crime by their very presence. The NRA does do (start ital)something(end ital) useful. The victim disarmament gang whine that the group's "Eddie Eagle" gun safety and training classes are nothing but "Joe Camel with feathers." But as it turns out, the parents of the young wrestling team member who finally jumped and subdued Kip Kinkel, 17-year-old Jacob Ryker, credit his firearms training with the fact that he was able to detect when Kinkel's .22 rifle was empty, timing his leap when the assailant had to change weapons. Linda Ryker also credited her son's familiarity with firearms for helping Jacob deal with the crisis, keeping his wits about him even after he was shot. With his son shot but recovering, Linda's husband Robert, a Navy diver, proudly wore his National Rifle Association cap during the family's press conference. Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. *** Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com "The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." -- Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England." "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." -- Sen. Hubert Humphrey, Democratic Farm Labor, Minnesota - ----END FORWARDED MESSAGE---- - -- Charles C. Hardy | If my employer has an opinion on | these things I'm fairly certain 801.588.7200 (work) | I'm not the one he'd have express it. "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." -- Thomas Paine - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 02 Jun 98 18:24:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: Rebuilt surplus military weapons hit streets Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 11:51:57 -0400 From: "Mark A. Smith" To: SNET , PIML , L & J , David Rydel http://www.freep.com/news/nw/qguns28.htm Rebuilt surplus military weapons hit streets December 28, 1997 Associated Press CHICAGO -- Thousands of powerful, rapid-fire military weapons are being rebuilt and sold to gun dealers for public distribution around the country, the Chicago Tribune reported. More than a dozen gunmakers use scraps from the United States military and armies around the world to rebuild battlefield firearms, the Tribune reported in Sunday's editions. The sale of rebuilt military weapons demonstrates the inability of the nation's numerous gun laws to keep some of the most deadly firearms off the streets. Surplus U.S. firearms that are not used in the Civilian Marksmanship Program, a government program to teach marksmanship and gun safety, are supposed to be destroyed or rendered inoperable. But gunmakers say the military does a poor job of crushing the guns. "If you cut a Chevrolet in half, you may not be able to drive the car, but that doesn't mean you can't use the engine and other parts," said William Dailey, attorney for Springfield Armory Inc., a gun company based in Geneseo, Ill. Military officials say they do a thorough job of cutting up the weapons, and that the law does not allow them to prevent gun dealers from bidding on the scrap metal. But Jack Friese, whose Baltimore-based company Armscorp USA makes semiautomatic M-14s powerful enough to pierce lightly armored cars, said he gets regular notices from the military announcing sales and inviting him to bid on the scraps. For the last 23 years, Friese has used international contacts to negotiate deals for millions of foreign and U.S. military firearm parts. Dailey said that military rifles are too cumbersome and bulky to be used in crimes. But the Tribune traced one military weapon -- the powerful M-1 carbine -- to more than a dozen murders in the 1990s. In all of the cases, the killers bought the weapons at gun shops and gun shows. Gun shows, one of the best markets for secondhand weapons, are almost totally free of state and federal regulation despite a 1993 federal investigation that found stolen military weapons being routinely sold at them. More than 95 percent of the nation's estimated 240 million guns are in private hands, the Tribune reported. For the most part, the resale of these guns goes unregulated by federal or local laws. All content copyright 1997 Detroit Free Press and may not be republished without permission. - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 09:49:56 -0700 From: DAVID SAGERS Subject: Fratrum: Gun Control Bills before Congress (fwd) -Forwarded Received: from fs1.mainstream.net ([206.97.102.4]) by icarus.ci.west-valley.ut.us; Tue, 02 Jun 1998 00:30:57 -0600 Received: (from smap@localhost) by fs1.mainstream.net (8.8.8/8.7.3) id CAA13641; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 02:29:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 02:29:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost(127.0.0.1) by fs1.mainstream.net via smap (V1.3) id sma012513; Tue Jun 2 02:25:23 1998 Message-Id: <9806020641.0kro@xpresso.seaslug.org> Errors-To: listproc@mainstream.com Reply-To: noban@xpresso.seaslug.org Originator: noban@mainstream.net Sender: noban@Mainstream.net Precedence: bulk From: noban@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Fratrum: Gun Control Bills before Congress (fwd) X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Anti-Gun-Ban list On Jun 01, Eugene W. Gross wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] Hi Folks, These are the bills before Congress on gun control. I don't know the present status of the bills, but at least you know what we are facing at the federal level. En Agape, Gene ======================================== 1 . Yates Firearm Registration and Crime Prevention Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1998.IH] 2 . To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide that certain muzzle loading firearms are to be treated as antique firearms for purposes of the Federal firearms laws. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.3140.IH] 3 . Gun Shop Safety Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.922.IS] 4 . Gun Shop Safety Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2359.IH] 5 . To amend title 18, United States Code, to permit gunsmiths to obtain a Federal firearms license without having to comply with State or local laws relating to zoning of firearms businesses. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2342.IH] 6 . To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for reciprocity in regard to the manner in which nonresidents of a State may carry certain concealed firearms in the State. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2722.IH] 7 . Anti-Gun Invasion Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.723.IS] 8 . Anti-Gun Invasion Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1570.IH] 9 . Consumer's Choice Protection Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2734.IH] 10 . Citizens' Self-Defense Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.27.IH] 11 . To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide a national standard in accordance with which nonresidents of a State may carry certain concealed firearms in the State, and to exempt... (Introduced in the House)[H.R.339.IH] 12 . To prevent children from injuring themselves with firearms. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.814.IH] 13 . Second Amendment Restoration Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1147.IH] 14 . Personal Safety and Community Protection Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.816.IS] 15 . Law Enforcement Protection Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.837.IS] 16 . Firearms Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.788.IH] 17 . Trigger Lock Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2673.IH] 18 . To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for the prospective application of certain prohibitions relating to firearms. (Introduced in the Senate)[S.262.IS] 19 . To provide that the firearms prohibitions applicable by reason of a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction do not apply to a government official engaged in official conduct while... (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2255.IH] 20 . Child Firearm Access Prevention Act (Introduced in the Senate)[S.1917.IS] 21 . Gun Kingpin Penalty Act (Introduced in the Senate)[S.658.IS] 22 . Gun Kingpin Penalty Act (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1264.IH] 23 . To authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to ban the importation of firearms that have been cosmetically altered to avoid the ban on semiautomatic assault weapons. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2702.IH] 24 . To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide that the firearms prohibitions applicable by reason of a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction do not apply if the conviction occurred... (Introduced in the House)[H.R.26.IH] 25 . To amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to increase the maximum term of imprisonment for offenses involving stolen firearms. (Introduced in the Senate)[S.992.IS] 26 . To provide that the firearms prohibitions applicable by reason of a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction do not apply to government entities. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.445.IH] 27 . Real Cost of Destructive Ammunition Act (Introduced in the Senate)[S.133.IS] 28 . To provide for increased mandatory minimum sentences for criminals possessing firearms, and for other purposes. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.424.IH] 29 . Stop Arming Felons (SAFe) Act (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1228.IH] 30 . Firearm Child Safety Lock Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1044.IH] 31 . Expressing the sense of the Congress that State and local governments should be encouraged, and have the right, to pass laws and ordinances designed to preserve and protect the safety... (Introduced in the House)[H.CON.RES.70.IH] 32 . Firearm Child Safety Lock Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1074.IH] 33 . Gun Safety Act (Introduced in the House)[H.R.116.IH] 34 . To require the national instant criminal background check system to be established and used in connection with firearms transfers by November 28, 1997. (Introduced in the House)[H.R.102.IH] 35 . To provide for increased mandatory minimum sentences for criminals possessing firearms, and for other purposes. (Reported in the House)[H.R.424.RH] 36 . Twelve is Enough Anti-Gunrunning Act (Introduced in the House)[H.R.12.IH] 37 . Anti-Gun Trafficking Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.466.IS] 38 . Brady Voluntary Compliance Act (Introduced in the House)[H.R.2935.IH] 39 . To reform criminal procedure, and for other purposes. (Introduced in the Senate)[S.168.IS] 40 . To provide for increased mandatory minimum sentences for criminals possessing firearms, and for other purposes. (Passed by the House)[H.R.424.EH] 41 . Violent Crime Control Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.135.IS] 42 . Public Health and Safety Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.787.IH] 43 . Violent Crime Reduction Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.136.IS] 44 . Gun Kingpin Death Penalty Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.796.IS] 45 . Ammunition Safety Act of 1997 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.1349.IH] 46 . Ammunition Safety Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.553.IS] 47 . Federal Gang Violence Act (Introduced in the Senate)[S.54.IS] 48 . Crime Identification Technology Act of 1998 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.2022.IS] 49 . Nuclear Regulatory Commission Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 (Introduced in the House)[H.R.3532.IH] 50 . Anti-Gang and Youth Violence Act of 1997 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.362.IS] [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ End of utah-firearms-digest V2 #67 **********************************