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Re: OFF TOPIC

  • From: Dean Anderson
  • Date: Tue Jun 16 00:28:51 1998

At 11:09 PM -0400 6/15/98, Nathan Stratton wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Jun 1998, Erich A. Boehm wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jun 14, 1998 at 04:12:03PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>>
>> > Cheers,
>> > -- jr 'if everyone has a gun, no one will hijack the plane' a
>>
>> Someone will try and people will die.
>> If no one has a gun, no one can hijack a plane.
>
>I know this has nothing to do with NANOG but...
>
>Why on earth not? You could hijack the plane with other weapons if no one
>else had a gun. I agree with Jay, if everybody had a gun no one would
>hijack the plane. Anyway, this has nothing to do with NANOG and I have
>been up for way to long.

Actually, not to alarm anyone, but onboard every commerical airliner, in
the passenger compartment (possibly several places), is enough "equipment"
to seriously damage if not cripple or destroy an airplane: There is a fire
extinguisher and a flare gun.  Thats more than enough to break down the
crew compartment door and kill or severely injure the pilots and/or set it
on fire, or cause a dangerous decompression.  Oddly, this is required by
the FAA.  Another example which all of us on this list should know: Setting
blocks of PVC on fire will kill everyone with cyanide gas. (you don't have
any PVC covered cable in your plenums, do you?  There is a good reason its
not allowed: If the cable burns, the Airconditioning will blow the cyanide
gas down on people).

Guns aren't the only weapons.  They're merely the most convenient, at
present. Another thing to remember is that we only began to ban guns after
the Black Panthers (specifically their armed guards with shotguns) burst in
on the California legislature in the '60's causing a mild panic amoung the
white legislators who initially assumed the armed black people were going
to open fire. So in a sense, gun control is a racist activity.  Another
personal anecdote of gun control racism is that a roommate, who was a
national record holder on the MIT pistol team, who nearly made it on US
Olympic Pistol Team, a graduate of MIT with a DOD security clearance, was
denied a pistol permit for a single shot, competition .22cal pistol in MA.
That pretty much ended his post-college shooting practice.  While no reason
was given, he was Puerto Rican with apparently black features.  Evidence of
racism? You decide.

		--Dean


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