OT: Americans love their guns

[Peter van Kampen]

In article <slrnblj40a.vc8.grey at dmiyu.org>, Steve Lamb wrote:

>     If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
> if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?  For that matter

I very much doubt that, can you provide some numbers to backup this
statement?

> why is it in several other European nations (Netherlands and Switzerland
> IIRC) where there is a legal requirement for all males over a certain
> age to be armed (standing militia) that there is so little gun related
> violence?

The Netherlands has no standing militia, nor does it require all males
to own a gun. Until the early 90s there was a draft --if that's what
it's called-- (Give all young men a chance to learn how to kill and
then bore themselves to death in the other (11,13 or 17) months of
service), but it was abandoned in 1993. The Netherlands now have a
profesional army (i.e. all military personal voluntarily joined the
army/navy/air force) that is mostly used in peace-keeping missions
(with, regretfully, very mixed results). 

>     When are people going to learn, it ain't the guns, its the education
> and attitude surrounding them.  It isn't guns that are the problem, it's
> ignorance of guns thats the problem.

By that rationale it wouldn't matter who owns 'weapons of mass
destruction' as long as they would know how to (not) use them... If
you would agree that Saddam Hussein shouldn't be allowed to own a
'gun', could you still argue that every Tony, Dick and George should?

Only-mentioning-Godwin's-Law-ly yours,

PterK

-- 
Peter van Kampen
pterk -- at -- datatailors.com