XPost: calgary.general, can.politics, edm.general 
 XPost: hfx.general, tor.general, van.general 
 XPost: wpg.general, can.talk.guns 
 From: justaskmeforit@shaw.ca 
  
 penny wrote: 
  
 > 
 > 
 > But all of that shooting of five million shotshells  is useless. It 
 > has no purpose.  With a knife you can peel a potato, but you can't 
 > peel a potato with a gun.  An aspirin might cure your pain, but a gun 
 > cannot cure pain. . A car can transport you anywhere you want.  You 
 > can take your children to their after-school hobbies in a car.  A gun 
 > won't take you anywhere except to a hole in the ground in a coffin or 
 > to a hospital trauma ward. 
 > 
 > Guns are useless. 
  
 Since when, in a democracy, must you prove you have a use for something 
 before you are allowed to own it? This kind of talk reeks of a state run 
 population. Furthermore, where is the cutoff line for your reasoning? 
 There are many dozens of things that you own that have a detrimental 
 effect on others. 
  
 I used to argue against SUVs using the same reasoning. Almost no-one 
 needs one but many have them. The SUV poses a far greater risk, for 
 several reasons, to drivers of reasonably sized vehicles than their need 
 warrants. How many people buy SUVs because they feel "safer" in them? In 
 fact this safe feeling, by being surrounded by a large vehicle, comes at 
 the cost of reduced manoueverability, increased braking distances, 
 increased bumper heights, and a mass capable of absoultely crushing 
 smaller vehicles. I have no doubt that unnecessarily owned SUVs kill 
 many times more Canadians than guns for just these reasons. The only 
 difference is that in most cases SUV drivers are not criminals but they 
 still kill. 
  
 So where will the proof for need end? The Liberal gun ban will be the 
 first full scale confiscation of citizens property in Canada opening up 
 a dangerous precedent. The scariest part is that this action will not 
 remove even one firearm from the hands of a criminal and in fact will 
 increase the value of any illegally imported firearm ensuring that many 
 more guns will be smuggled into the country. 
  
 Put criminals in jail. Keep them there. Let private citizens be free 
 until their own actions cause them to be incarcerated. 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)