ctembreull

I've tried to trim your post down to get rid of the ad-hominem argumenta, and a bit of the techno-weenie stuff. I recognize that you are far, far, far more conversant with guns than I will ever care to be, but I'm sure you'll pardon me when I say that that doesn't make me feel any more secure. Much less so, actually.

I think I see the crux of your argument here: so long as guns are legal in any form, you appear willing to concede that a non-trivial number of gun deaths will occur in the United States every year. This is, apparently, where we diverge: you're quite willing to frame the debate in terms of a gun duel, which presumes that one or more participants will wind up dead or wounded. I would much rather frame the debate in terms of finding a way to prevent such situations and to, with any luck, minimize or eliminate gun accidents and homicides in America. It's as simple as that. I want to try to fix a badly broken system; you want to talk about things like muzzle velocity and the relative merits of this gun over that gun.

(... a point dodging the issue of technology versus gun laws).

You don't, apparently, see what I'm getting at. Just because people have come up with a way to make handguns fire rifle ammunition, or that such-and-such a gun requires such-and-such an ammo, it does not automatically follow that said gun should be legal. Again, there's the "more power than you'd ever need" aspect, which has a lot to do with this.

You like quibbling with my definition, I see. That's fine, but you've managed to completely miss the forest whilst you were counting trees. But, for your information, no - all the conditions need not apply. If a gun has a thirty-round clip loaded with Teflon rounds, I don't see how the size of those rounds matters. It's the people who are probably about to die because of that gun that matter.

Well, actually, it *is* an alternate definition to my own. And I don't recall ever calling it your opinion...

In your hands, I'd probably say any gun is an assault weapon. You'll pardon me for saying so, but without looking at your profile, you strike me as a high-schooler. You're very fond of guns, I see that, and you're always very happy to talk about them, much in the fashion that other high-schoolers do about cars or other things. All technical, with no thought given to the actual impact of what you're saying. You can argue the technical all you like. I don't think I'll be listening too closely: technospeak outside my own professional field tends to bore me intensely. I would rather be fixing the problem.

Thanks all the same.

__________________
Mac
"If it's nae Scottish, it's crap!