-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 10/1/97 4:20 PM, Cynthia Brown (cynthb@sonetis.com) passed this wisdom:

I agree wholeheartedly. Uncontrolled guns do not solve problems, they create them. If most households have at least one firearm, it makes it that much easier for a criminal to obtain one by stealing yours while you are at work.

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 detectorsat the entrances because they are not needed.

I live in the state of Vermont, where we have more guns per household than most of the states in the US. We are one of the only (if not *the* only) states in the Union that permits concealed carry without requiring a permit (with the not surprising exceptions of USG buildings and schools). Our record high murder year was a few years ago, twenty three murders (that high because we had a woman go crazy at the Eveready plant in Bennington and killed five people in one sitting) in more recent years the figure generally stays under ten per year ...three years ago the figure was five and only one of them was with a gun ... a shotgun, not a handgun. We go where we please with little fear as well; It has to do with a frame of mind, a set of values, not with a lack of availability or opportunity. There is something to be said for living in a place where a man can come right down off the hills during deer season and walk into a liquor store with a shotgun to buy a bottle of hooch without drawing a SWAT team! Try that in NYC or Toronto! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNDMWG8dZgC62U/gIEQLX+gCfZ+GzaNlvSx+xQPszw8cD/1VrDxkAoJ7Y aESM15SJSCwdbYKjDRG2zCIi =69FK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Brian B. Riley --> http://www.macconnect.com/~brianbr For PGP Keys <mailto:brianbr@together.net?subject=Get%20PGP%20Key> "Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day, but give him a case of dynamite and soon the village will be showered with mud and seaweed and unidentifiable chunks of fish." -Joe Chew