Dave Balderstone wrote:
In article , Morris Dovey
wrote:

Dave Balderstone wrote:
In article , Morris Dovey
wrote:

Of course not, but please be wary of over-simplifying. As soon as you
make it impossible for ordinary citizens to have a weapon, you will have
created the social environment in which broken individuals blow
themselves up in crowded places.

Morris, that doesn't scan. Many broken individuals are blowing
themselves up in crowded social environments that are flooded with
weapons.

You're scanning backwards. It's not the guns or explosives that produce
the causes, it's the social environment that produces the behaviors.

That's not what you said.

It's what I meant to say, but I'm not much of a wordsmith. My apologies
for causing confusion.

At the risk of over-generalizing, when too much freedom is removed,
those who still have hope that something can be salvaged opt for the
wherewithal to resist, and those who see no light at the end of their
tunnel become willing make the "ultimate sacrifice"...

Yet many societies where it is trivial for citizens to be armed have
"broken individuals" blowing themselves up in crowded places almost
weekly.

Your statement above doesn't scan.

It does for me. Feel welcome to disregard if it doesn't make sense for you.

...not always explosively - one of the memories I'd most like to lose is
of a Buddhist monk soaking himself with gasoline in the middle of a
street and setting himself on fire.

Well, religion makes people insane...

Hmm. Religion generally involves accepting something objectively
unknowable as True. Insanity generally involves a significant individual
deviation from the norm in the context of the individual's
culture/society...

I think you'll need a /lot/ of bandwidth to convince me of an
across-the-board cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

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