I'd say your government did a good job of brainwashing you Al. There would have been less tragedy in New Orleans if honest law abiding people had had more guns. That's the lesson of history, of free men and even in Oz.

Cheers Mate!

ps And it would have helped if police had shot looters. I'm not talking about the ones with food or shoes. I am talking about the ones with televisions and guns and raping.

It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

“There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the [German] people were not brainwashed about gun ownership and had been well armed. ... Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half-starved group of Jews took 10 handguns and made asses out of the Nazis.” -Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military." -William Burroughs

“America has many more guns than England, and a lower violent crime rate. Switzerland has many more guns than Germany, and a lower violent crime rate. England had much less crime in 1900, when the nation had no gun laws, than it does in 2000, when England has some of the most repressive gun laws in Europe. Gun prohibition leads to boldness by criminals, and passivity by the innocent - and therefore to many more violent crimes committed against the innocent.” -David B. Kopel, in an interview with Carlo Stagnaro for Zola Times 2000-Oct-23

“One man with a gun can control 100 without one. [...] Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms.” -V.I. Lenin, from Collected Works

“When the government has guns and you don't, it makes rebelling against the rulers a very perilous enterprise.” -Judith Miller

“But focusing solely on guns is not the right question, according to Joe Morse, president of Seacoast Firearms in Hampton. Morse pointed out that New Hampshire has the second lowest homicide rate in the country, while Granite Staters own the most guns per family of any state in the nation.” -the Portsmouth Herald, 1999-Apr-22 (shortly after Columbine), "Gun laws debated", by Steve Jusseaume

“To disarm the people--that was the best and most effective way to enslave them.” -George Mason, founding father who led opposition to adoption of the US Constitution before the addition of the Bill of Rights

“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicide, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.” -Ceasare Beccaria, 18th century criminologist, in On Crimes and Punishments

“Free men have arms; slaves do not.” -William Blackstone (1723-1780), English jurist and professor of common law at Oxford

“The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.” -Andrew Fletcher (1655-1716), quoted by James Burgh (1714 -1775), in "Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses," (London, 1774-1775)

“Armed women deter rapists over 400 times each day.” -bumper sticker

“Armed women equals polite men.” -Charles Curley

“At first glance, it may seem odd or even perverse to suggest that statutory controls on the private ownership of firearms are irrelevant to the problem of armed crime: yet that is precisely what the evidence shows. Armed crime and violent crime generally are products of ethnic and social factors unrelated to the availability of a particular type of weapon. The number of firearms required to satisfy the crime market is minute, and these are supplied no matter what controls are instituted. Controls have had serious effect on legitimate users of firearms, but there is no case, either in the history of this country (Britain) or in the experience of other countries in which controls can be shown to have restricted the flow of weapons to criminals, or in any way reduce crime.” -Chief Inspector Colins Greenwood, West Yorkshire Constabulary, Police Review, Britain after six months of study of firearms control systems at Cambridge University

“This proposal will never prevent criminals from possessing firearms and we never said it would.” -Daryl Smeaton, Attorney General's department, Director of Law Enforcement Co-ordination, on the new Australian gun bans, in The Weekend Australian, 20-21 September 1997, page 6

“This business about gun control is a joke really. I come from Switzerland where everyone is taught how to treat weapons sensibly and with care. In Switzerland everyone keeps a gun in their own home and we don't have any problems with them.” -Mrs Emma Jay, 70, Northern New South Wales, Australia, Friend of Port Arthur mass shooting victim Jim Pollard, as reported in The Age 19/7/96 page A7

“Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins.” -Mafia informant Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, on gun control, in an interview by Howard Blum that appears in the September 1999 issue of Vanity Fair magazine

“Accidental gun deaths among children are fortunately much rarer than most people believe. Consider New York, with more than 2.6 million children under the age of 10. From 1993 to 1997, the Centers for Disease Control report that there were only six accidental gun deaths in that age range - an annual rate of 1.2 deaths. Yet, with over 3.3 million adult New Yorkers owning at least one gun in 1996, the overwhelming majority of gun owners must be extremely careful or such gun accidents would be much more frequent. [...] Guns clearly deter criminals: Americans use guns defensively around 2 million times each year - five times more frequently than the 430,000 times guns were used to commit crimes in 1997. And 98 percent of the time, simply brandishing the weapon is sufficient to stop an attack. [...] Recent research that I have done, examining juvenileal gun deaths or suicides for all the states in the United States from 1977 to 1996, found that safe-storage laws had no impact on either type of death. However, what did happen was that law-abiding citizens were less able to defend themselves against crime. The 15 states that adopted these laws during this period faced over 300 more murders and 3,860 more rapes per year. Burglaries also increased dramatically.” -John R. Lott, senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School, author of the book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws

“Liberalizing concealed carry laws won't lead to a return to the Wild West - though it wouldn't be bad if it did. ... in 19th Century cattle towns, homicide was confined to transient males who shot each other in saloon disturbances. The per capita robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City's. The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown.” -David Kopel, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, 1994-Feb-28, in “Have Gun, Will Eat Out”

“Antigun advocates have always faced an uphill battle in this country. Americans have, to begin with, a constitutional right to gun ownership. Today, half of American households exercise this right, owning a total of about 250 million guns; and over 99 percent of those households do so in a responsible manner. To fight for major restrictions on an item that plays such a valued part in the lives of so many people looks like a nearly impossible task. So if you're really committed to the effort, and you want to win, what do you do? Simple: You lie.” -Dave Kopel

“It is true that despite an increase in gun ownership in Australia over the past 15 years, there has been a decline in the murder and suicide rates.” -Melanie Granger, for the Hon. Daryl Williams, Attorney General of Australia and Minister for Justice, from a Letter to Ross Wilmoth dated 27/8/97

If guns cause crime, then mine are defective--Ted Nugent