Cynthia Brown <cynthb@sonetis.com> wrote on 1 Oct 97:
Canada may be regulated to death according to most libertarians, but I for one like it that way. I can walk alone and unarmed at night in Ottawa, Toronto, etc. without fearing for my life. Can a female resident of Washington or New York say the same? Our schools do not have metal detectors at the entrances because they are not needed.
Painting America with a rather broad brush, aren't you? I never went to a school--and I attended public schools for ALL of my education--which had a metal detector. But comparing America and Canada is pretty much apples and oranges again. Do you [in Canada] really have our ethnic mix? America's violence problem is not one bit related to guns everywhere in the street. There are much deeper problems, including distrust between ethnic groups. The O.J.Simpson was a real eye-opener on black-white relations, for example, and I think the Native Americans have yet really to speak about the shitty way they have been treated over the years. By the way, have Canada's European descendants come to proper terms with its native American neighbors?
IMNSHO the best way to fight crime is not with bigger guns than the "bad guys", but with better social programs such as universal health care, and improved day care so single parents can show their kids what a productive lifestyle looks like. This takes longer than blowing the brains out of some teenager that feels his only path to a better life is through crime, and it doesn't give the same adrenalin rush. However, it works at the source of crime, and not the consequences.
Cynthia, unrepentant bleeding-heart liberal Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng.
Now you're talking! Don't ever repent for thinking clearly. But do keep in mind that not all people who own guns and wear red plaid Pendletons and sport scraggly beards are the neoFascists of tomorrow. I don't own a gun myself, but I wouldn't hesitate to obtain one to defend my civil rights against a corrupt police force or government "just doing its job" (how many horror stories do we hear about a bureaucracy going by the rules as it sees them and with a stroke of the pen, a mid-level govt official puts a family on to the street? And this can happen in the US? Book recommendation: Dark Rivers of The Heart by Dean Koontz; think it's all fiction?) Yours in paranoia, ;-)