Subj : The "G" word
To   : ALL
From : JIM HOLSONBACK
Date : Sun Feb 04 2001 04:23 am

Hello to ALL.  Below is the opening part of the 7/3/99 article from the
Economist which I referred to back in the TECH echo.  While at
www.economist.com, I emailed it to myself, but all they send is the
opening part of the article, so you'll have to go to their website if
you want to read the whole article.

I dunno how "unbiased" the author may be, and probably the NRA doesn't
agree with everything he says.  But, the article gave me some food for
thought.  Some of the quotes about the ineptitude of many militias prior
to the Civil War were pretty funny, IMO.

- - -  JimH.

 *******************************
Arms and the man

America's love affair with the gun is the eternal stuff of fiction.
It has not always been the stuff of fact.

RICHARD HENRY LEE, one of the signers of America's Declaration of
Independence, wrote that "to preserve liberty, it is essential
that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught
alike, especially when young, how to use them." This association
between guns and liberty seems hard-wired into the American
consciousness. It has produced a country with more guns than people.
It has made national heroes of the armed frontiersman, the cowboy
and Teddy Roosevelt, the president who carried a big stick and a
hunting rifle. Above all it has engendered such a powerful cult of
the gun that whether you glorify it, fear it or accept it as a
necessary evil, hardly anyone questions its basis in fact. Have
guns really been an essential part of American life for 400 years?

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=218080
Visit the link above to go directly to the selected story or head to
http://www.economist.com for global news, views and analysis from the
Economist Newspaper Group.

<   snip, for brevity>
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This e-mail message and Economist articles linked from it are copyright
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.... Bother, said Pooh, as Eeyore violated Piglet's constitutional rights
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