Topic: Stories Found In The News

Here is an interesting article from Africa, where the police have been made to explain their use of handcuffs. Apparently people are upset because women charged with the same crime as men often are not handcuffed, while men always are.

Interesting side note, I've been arrested and taken to jail before. Nothing more serious than a traffic offense, yet I was forced to be handcuffed. Had I see a woman arrested for the same traffic offense and not be handcuffed, I'd be quite pissed too. I wish our society would get the balls to question more police tactics and procedures, we could get some of our rights back that Bush took away.

Police explain the use of handcuffs

BAME PIET Staff Writer 4/13/2006 2:28:59 PM (GMT +2)

Botswana Police Spokesperson Superintendent Solomon Mantswe has said that police use handcuffs and leg irons on violent suspects. He was speaking in an interview after members of the public recently raised concern that female suspects were not handcuffed, even if they were suspects of the same offence as their male counterparts.

This article is another attempt to link firearms to crime and lawlessness in an area. This time the area is in the Sudan, and the IANSA is trying to use it as an excuse to push for a global gun ban.

Now, I encourage everyone to read this article to see what they are trying to justify. Here are some key points to draw from the article:

* The people who they are referring to as being affected by the AK-47 are called "nomadic herdsmen"

* The country they are reporting from, Sudan, is described as "one of the poorest in the world, recently beset by a cholera epidemic"

* One nomadic hedsmen is quoted as saying "We need the Perik (AK-47) to protect our cows. We used to have spears and axes."

* The article continues to state: "the nomads have continued their age-old conflict with the other cattle-keeping tribes, in particular their great rivals, the numerically superior Dinka. Armed raids to steal cows from the herds of "enemy" tribes have been commonplace since time immemorial."

So, after you read everything in this article, I urge you to answer this multiple choice question:

What is the problem in Sudan?

a) The people are uncivilized, and uneducated. If they didn't have AK-47's they would be still using their spears to kill each other, as they've done since "time immemorial"

b) The AK-47 is the problem. It caused the cholera epidemic, the civil war, the stealing of cows, the poverty, the lack of education, and even made all of Sudan cry because its so evil.

c) Nosy reporters trying to put their own political agenda onto a story.

When I see stories like this story from Australia it reminds me of how much I hate laws that ban guns.

First, the majority of gun bans are in fact racist in nature. Take for example the ban of "Saturday Night Specials" in some states. When you look at what type of gun is considered a "Saturday Night Special" you will see its nothing more than any inexpensive handgun.

Who buys inexpensive handguns? People who can't afford an expensive handgun for protection. All of them are poor, and most of them are minorities of some sort. So this type of gun ban basically makes it so that only upper middle-class people can afford to protect themselves while poor people are left relying upon the police to protect them.

Then there is the other type of gun ban, where either a state or country decides that guns are the reason why they have crime. None of them ever examine their society as a whole, they just scapegoat guns. Their people go along with it, as no one wants to think that perhaps the problem lies within themselves, everyone wants to place blame elsewhere. What better place to lay blame than an inanimate object that isn't capable of defending itself?

Australia has one of the strictest bans on weapons of all types, with their gun laws being cemented after The Port Arthur Massacre which shocked the Australian people to their core. As we've now learned after enacting the Patriot act after 9/11, the wrong time to legislate anything is right after a national tragedy.

This article is really not anything shocking, however it shows that gun bans never remove guns nor do they reduce crime. Guns are now only available to the wealthy, or criminal gangs. No one is safer, no one has been protected. Only innocent law abiding Australians have been hurt.

This is the sort of story that really bothers me, as I know that the chances of this happening are so slim that its laughable. The police obviously know that this woman's husband shot her, as thats the only logical explanation for why she was shot twice. Putting an AK-47 under your bed does not lead to being shot twice in the stomach. Pissing off your husband might though!

Officers Arrest Man Inside Home On Outstanding Warrants

POSTED: 7:55 am CST March 14, 2006 UPDATED: 8:06 am CST March 14, 2006

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Police said a woman was injured early Tuesday morning while putting an AK-47 assault rifle under her bed.

This story combines two of my favorite topics, slingshots and crazy British scientists.

Apparently, the European Space Agency has funded a research project into using giant slingshots to launch supply pods to the Moon and back. If this actually works, can you imagine what people will try to launch next?