Phil Karn writes:

Worst of all are the complete loonies (some apparently on this list) who assert that guns are an essential protection against a tyrannical US Federal Government.

Those "complete loonies" include Thomas Jefferson and many other of the founding fathers.

Those who believe this have apparently never heard of the US Civil War,

...a conflict in which the opposing sides were geographically separate, making it easy to know where to aim an attack. The situation is much more difficult when the enemy is hidden among you. Apparently, you've never heard of the Revolutionary War, the Vietnam War or the Afghanistan War.

I'd rather not be associated with gun fetishists [...]

My, my, more name-throwing. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how selective some people can be in the rights they support (and for whom). It always comes back to bite them eventually, though. The South might have successfully seceded if it hadn't been for their nasty habit of keeping slaves. Conservatives who supported property rights but not certain personal rights now find that no-one's property is safe under the civil forfeiture laws, which were passed to fight the War on (Some) Drugs. And those who support the right to use cryptography, but not the right to bear arms, will find that the same argument used against gun owners -- "X is a favored tool of criminals, thus we must ban X" -- will be turned against users of cryptography. You'd better learn to get along with gun owners, Phil. You just might end up sharing a prison cell with one. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kevin S. Van Horn | It is the means that determine the ends. kevin@bert.cs.byu.edu |