Artful Dodger:

> I'll bet those three dead guy would have like to have had a gun to protect themselves.

Dont' get me wrong. I entirely agree that people have a right to protect themselves. The point I was trying to make is that gun manufacturers and sellers make a huge profit. Nobody even talks about how violence drives their profits. All i was pointing too was that guns would not be a problem if they didn't get manufactured in the first place. Of course it is naive to think weapons manufacture will ever end. We will kill each other with guns as long as human beings are animals, or worse than animals.

To make another point, this is something I wrote in a game I am playing with Welsh Rugby Fan. It had to do with my comment that curfews and shooting on sight were used by the Nazis.

"Oh, I entirely agree. Specially when the rioting accomplishes nothing. There is such a thing as valid political protest and riots that lead to political change for the better. These rioters of today are just hooligans bent on theft and destruction. They have no ideological or political objectives. These riots are just like the movie Harry Brown. "In Ireland the people had a cause, but these animals do it just for fun." A few years later we see exactly the same kind of destructive behaviour. Just for fun. Rebels without a cause or ideology.

As for me, I think shooting accomplishes little. I think forced labour teaches people a lot. Once captured, they should be made to work digging in construction sites until they pay for the damage they have done. At this point I can say "Stalin tried that one!"

There is one thing I am not liberal about and that is crime punishment. I believe in gulags and chain gangs digging roadside trenches. I believe in the death penalty and I think it is underused. I also think prisoners should pay their own keep, instead of having taxpayers house them and feed them. Hence the forced labour comment. I think shooting the rioters accomplishes little, but capturing them and having them work to rebuild the burned buildings and compensate the victims sounds good to me. This is the one thing in which my left wing morals leave me. I think it is a good thing I have no political power!