> On the other hand, "guns don't kill people, people kill people."
>
> > They have done great evil in societies around the world.
>
> Gun ahve done nothing. People kill people.
Why does this asinine argument get so much mileage? The same logic must
claim that all technology is benign, that systems are never oppressive, that
structural obstacles don't exist, that anyone can be President. Guns extend,
with purpose, human capacity and possibility - the impossible but
conceivable becomes the possible, the totally do-able. Guns only exist for
this. Guns remove many obstacles - it's hard to kill a bunny or a person
with your bare hands - the bunny must be caught, the person must be
overwhelmed, along with any revulsion we may feel in the intimacy of
slaughter (would Marian Morrison, aka John Wayne, have bested a bunny in a
fair fight?) 'Fear no man, what ere his size, just call on me, I'll
equalise'. - yep, totally benign. I like the way the gun industry feeds and
profits from peoples fears, and in the process strengthens the justification
for these fears - killer loop.
>
> > They cause great suffering in this country. We would
> > all be better off without them, and, if we had any sense, we'd amend our
> > constitution to take guns away from people.
>
> Well, I see we are going to have a debate on this one. OUR constitution?
> Who is 'OUR'?
>
> How does one enforce the rules of any constitution?
>
> With butter?
A progressive constitution, a living constitution, should need very little
in the way of enforcement. There's a problem, however, in taking a
constitution from a bygone age and trying to force the contemporary psyche
into abiding by it. At the level of the State, I think that a reasonably
enlightened approach is in the example provided by the Swiss constitution -
for example, nothing is 'enshrined' or beyond reach - today's people are
free(ish) to reconstruct the principles and laws governing their public
space in accordance with their own judgment, not the judgement of some
ancient paradigm.
cheers
b
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