Beyond gun control:

Josey1

Beyond gun control:Do you have a permit for that baseball bat, son? GUN CONTROL opponents have long repeated variations of the slogan "guns don't kill people, criminals do." The idea can be traced at least as far back as the Roman philosopher Seneca, who said, "a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in a killer's hand." Probably its most humorous permutation was in an ad a few years back for a Charles Bronson movie marathon on TV. "Guns don't kill people, Bronson does." Far be it from gun control advocates to take advice from ancient philosophers or Charles Bronson movies. They carry on with the idea that the weapon, not the person wielding it, is the evil to be controlled. This raises interesting questions in light of recent events. On Monday a Hudson woman was beaten with a baseball bat in a mall parking lot. If the weapon, not the criminal, is to be controlled, then there can be no argument against registering and licensing baseball bats. Many of us saw "The Untouchables," in which Al Capone beat a man to death with a baseball bat. Isn't it time we worked to prevent future bat murders? The New Hampshire Sunday News and The Union Leader had stories this week about the surprising number of registered sex offenders in the state. Sex offenders are interesting in that they are both the criminal and the weapon. New Hampshire, along with most other states, wisely sought to reduce sexual assault by registering criminals known to do that. Can you imagine the scenario if the state had instead opted to register the "weapon" instead of the criminal? If the weapon were to blame for the crime, then everyone who ever played baseball, used a steak knife or skipped rocks would be a potential murderer, and every man would be a potential sex offender - as some radical feminists have argued. But by that same logic, every woman would be a potential prostitute as well, as some gun-control opponents have wryly pointed out. Of course, it isn't the weapon that causes the crime, it is the mind of the criminal, as assaults with baseball bats and other off-beat weapons periodically remind us. http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_show.html?article=8474