[CLUE-Talk] Bowling for Columbine

[bof]

Timothy C. Klein wrote:

>What is it?  An armament serves no purpose other than inflicting
>damage/death on other living beings.  That puts guns into a different
>class than most other human tools, to my mind.  
>

Sorry, but guns are designed to fire bullets. What the bullet does is up 
to the intent of the user. Guns have no mind of their own, and do not, 
in spite of what Sarah Brady will tell you, take over people's minds and 
make them do bad things.

>Also, keep in mind that the Constitution does *not* grant you the right
>to have a *gun*, it grants you the right to keep and bear *arms*.
>

Arms, in the intent of those who framed the Constitution, were guns and 
it was the intent of those framers not to restrict their ownership  -- 
this is clear throughout their writings. Firearms ownership was an 
individual right, like the right of free speech, and had nothing to do 
with being a member of a militia, which was considered the population of 
able-bodied men in society who banded together to form a pool from which 
an army might be drawn.

>One can not run to the Constitution to solve all arguments
>
That's strange: I thought that it was the fundamental pillar of our 
government: a social contract between the governed and the government, 
and was the basis for all our laws. In theory at any rate.

>We need to always keep in mind the best interests of the country at large.
>
Seems to me that is the fundamental problem with our society today: "we 
must have laws to make people good" (from the film Intolerance, 1916). 
Every tinhorn politican who wants to advance his program, like Clinton, 
Gore, Bush, or Ashcroft, mutters this as he rams though whatever thing 
he favors at the moment. It always amazes me how the members of the 
government, who take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, are 
so willing to gut it.

BOF