Bob Martin (in ) said:

| in 1249707 20051118 191003 Dave Hinz wrote:
|| On 18 Nov 2005 07:27:17 -0800, Too_Many_Tools
|| wrote:
||| Exactly Alex....there are very few "true" rights.
||| Gun ownership is not one of them.
||
|| It's the one that, if you live in the US, preserves the rest of
|| your
|| rights. How long do you think you'd be free to disagree with the
|| government if the citizens were disarmed?
|
| I think you've lost it, Dave. I'm quite free to disagree with my
| (UK) government and neither I nor anyone I know owns a gun or is
| ever likely to.

That's a tough argument to make to Americans, Bob. In the restored
(British) Governor's Mansion in Colonial Williamsburg, in the
Commonwealth of Virginia, the most prominent display was of *large*
arrays of muzzle-loading rifles - to impress upon the colonists just
who exercised the power to govern and by what means that governance
would be enforced.

Neither the colonists nor their decendants have forgotten either how
that power was abused nor what was required to to dismantle that
misgovernance and to distribute its power among ordinary citizens.

We recognize fully that government /can/ be benevolent; but will
remain so over the long term _only_ if the general citizenry are
ready, willing, and *able* to say: "Thus far and no farther."

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html