The long guns you're talking about have folding stocks and flash
suppressors.
There is no good reason for "honest citizens" to own these things without a
permit.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:27:09 -0400, "Vito" said:

Mr. Poodle is clearly the ignorant one. He thinks that it's ok to put
more guns on the streets.

It's not only OK, it is better to have more guns on the streets so long as
they are in the hands of competent law abiding citizens. Cities and states
with the most restrictive anti-gun laws have the worst crime rates and
vice
versa. Meanwhile, states that passed versions of the Florida law allowing
concealed carry saw a drop in crime.

Call me an agnostic on this one. The above argument is less than
compelling.
Correlation is not the same as causation, and one might as persuasively
argue that high crime rates made the citizens of those cities and states
more amenable to gun control. I think the best you can say is that current
gun control laws don't seem to have much impact one way or the other.

So far as the assault weapons ban goes, that's not surprising since as you
say the objective of the law was not to ban assault weapons but to ban
weapons that look like assault weapons. And despite a small number of
highly
publicized events involving rifles, I'm not at all persuaded that long
guns
are a major problem.