BR>Current numbers are showing a DEcrease in violent crime and a DEcrease in
BR>gun-caused deaths wherever carry laws have been liberalized.  
If I were to go on a shooting spree I'd certainly think twice about it if
everyone else may be armed too. How many deaths could have been prevented if
it were.
BR>Do they seriously think that lawbreakers are going to give a ratsass
BR>about registration requirements
Apparently, they say, this will give the cops someplace to go to track down
the original owners if the firearms had been stolen (and probably charge the
owners with wrongful storage procedures one supposes, what a wonderful
incentive to register them, eh?); depsite the fact that over 90% of
recovered weapons from crimes have the serial numbers filed off them anyhow.
BR>Our idiot president has that as part of his UN-guided agenda.
See the crossposted message below from another echo. He says it better than
I could.
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Conference: 69 Military History
Date:   11-25-97 Time:  17:41
From:  Michael Shirley          
To:  Gus Gere                 
Subject: Comments?                
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====
GG>MS>operate in a mine rich environment which the Centauro isn't, and
that's
  >MS>important given that mines are the prime guerilla weapon
GG>Gee, are you telling me all those guerilla groups didn't 
GG>sign that anti-mine
  >treaty at the UN?
  >Boy oh boy, is the Secretary General ever going to be miffed. I hope he
  >censures them at least.
        Personally, I hope that the Secretary General slips on a bananna
peel, breaks his neck, falls down a stairwell and lands atop the two
jerks who are running the current regime to render them hors de combat.
        That aside, if I were to somehow get involved in a guerilla war,
mines, both command detonated and the more usual kind would figure in
greatly in whatever I was doing. For a guerilla, mines and boobytraps
are essential force multiplyers. Look at it this way. In Vietnam, 90
percent of all personnel casualties and 70 percent of all vehicular
casualties were the result of mines. If the VC hadn't had recourse to
mines, odds are pretty good that they'd have lost the war. Mines are
essential.
        The current antimine hysteria along with the current gun control
hysteria on an international level has the same end result in mind-- to
produce an unarmed and easily coerced civil population by eliminating
their ability to effectively inflict casualties on an occupying force.
(Which is one reason why it's my sincere hope that the aformentioned
international jerk manages to slip on that bananna peel. SOB ain't gonna
get half of what's coming to him!)
        Notice that nearly all of the weapons that the UN really is
getting worried about are of two classes, (a.) weapons capable of
causing havoc within the zone of the interior of any global power that
winds up annoying somebody badly enough to be a target, and (b.) weapons
that a guerilla or irregular force can use to defend their own country
from interventions by the folks concerned with the weapons listed in
item (a.)
        Ultimately, anybody's defense is largely going to be one based
less on inflicting casualties than escalating occupation and
pacification costs to a prohibitive level. Defending forces in a
guerilla insurgency spend most of their assets guarding everything in
sight and that's expensive. Small arms and mines are a great way to
escalate those costs. Care to imagine what a sniper, icepick, pistol and
mine war in an urban area would cost an occupying power?
        Ultimately, the attempts to ban small arms on an international
scale from private ownership and the attempts to ban mines are intended
to preserve the UN's ability to intervene in local affairs without
getting bogged down in an Afghan or Vietnamese style quagmire.
        Personally, I think that I'm gonna write a nasty little pamphlet
on how to build a variety of easily extemporized Soviet type mines and
boobytraps, since it's my humble opinion that anything that keeps that
bunch of meddling collectivst creeps out of my backyard is a good idea.
___
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