Did you notice

[Ray Dillinger]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Ken Brown wrote:


>I think the murder rate in Britain is about 1/6 of what it is in the
>USA. (I mean rate, not actual numbers, this is not a 28% paternity
>error). And the proportion of people killed accidentally is far lower
>here as well.  We are perhaps a fine example of finding ways to live
>longer?

Yup.  I'm not sure that's actually better though.  Don't get me 
wrong, I've nothing against living a long time -- but I'm also 
perfectly willing to accept that being free enough to find extreme 
ways to live or silly ways to die young is also better than being 
"protected" from myself.  

As I get more accustomed to living in close proximity to many 
others (urban vs. rural) I'm mellowing in this opinion a little 
bit.  It's easy for a rural kid to accept that stupid people 
get themselves killed -- I'm accustomed to thinking of guns 
as just one more tool that a rancher needs to keep the numbers 
of predators down so s/he can raise stock, and of course farm 
machinery is all over the place.  But guns, farm machinery, etc, 
take a really heavy toll on idiots and the careless, and that's 
just the way the world works.

But in the city, you can die because someone *else* is being 
stupid, and that's a lot harder to accept.  Also, in a city, 
there are a lot fewer non-stupid uses for guns.  So now at least I 
see the point of some of these laws, even if I still don't agree 
with them. 

It's the old argument about being free enough to make our own 
mistakes -- with guns, or otherwise.  I prefer it to most of 
the alternatives. 

				Bear

On a faintly related note, every time I ride BART (the subway to 
new yorkers; the metro to europeans), I hear the recorded safety 
announcements and I'm vaguely horrified that there are apparently
people out there, still alive and most likely capable of breeding, 
who are so stupid they have to be warned not to lick the third 
rail....