Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!gatech!rpi!yoony
From: yoony@aix.rpi.edu (Young-Hoon Yoon)
Subject: Re: A Scoop of Waco Road, Please
Message-ID: <-2s51qb@rpi.edu>
Keywords: topical, smirk
Nntp-Posting-Host: aix.rpi.edu
References: <S539.2adf@looking.on.ca> <1qjran$9sh@transfer.stratus.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1993 22:27:05 GMT
Lines: 62

cdt@sw.stratus.com (C. D. Tavares) writes:

>Your "lite" posting for the day, from rec.humor.funny:

>In article <S539.2adf@looking.on.ca>, bellas@tti.com (Pete Bellas) writes:
>> 
>> There is a new Ice Cream Flavor inspired by the incident at Waco.
>> 
>> It's called Mount Caramel, it's full of nuts but you can't get it out
>> of the carton.
>-- 

>cdt@rocket.sw.stratus.com   --If you believe that I speak for my company,
>OR cdt@vos.stratus.com        write today for my special Investors' Packet...


Even though I find this to be funny on the surface, the original poster of the
joke has  tried and convicted the members of the BD to be a bunch of "nuts".
This may be a dangerous thing to do.  It is my opinion that most educated
or well informed people of this country have some distrust of the government.
This should exist because as a bureaucracy, any government given enough time
will tend to exist for it self and not for the original purpose it was 
created for.  This distrust by the people should keep those in power in-line.
That and a properly functioning press.  When a sensationalism oriented press
portrays a group of people as "nuts" or crazies, a violation of those
people's civil rights seem justified.   Since we, as American's, have the 
gurantee of rights as enumerated in the constitution, to include the
2nd ammendment, the government must appease the public's opinion or risk 
voted out of existance, or if it has become corrupt enough to tamper with
domocratic process itself, being thrown out by force.
  Our government as it stands, must appease the public.  Therefore the 
official press releases portray the BD's as fanatics who are a threat to
public safety.  We must not prejudge people based on one sided information.
So far the only information that we are being given is comming from the very
agency that was embarrased by the BD(Branch Davidians sp?).  It is to their
advantage to make the BD's as fanatical and dangerous as possible.  If they
were portrayed as law-abiding citizen's, then they(ATF) had no justification
what so ever of doing what they did.
   So let's keep an open mind.  Jokes like above, even though it may be funny,
may mislead the public from the truth of the matter.

Just as an aside,  my understanding of U.S. vs Rock Island and U.S. vs Dalton
leads me to believe that the National Firearms Act, which allows the Fed's
(in this case ATF) to regulate firearms(machine guns), has been deemed to be
unconstitutional since 1986.(By two federal district courts at least).
And since, I believe the only reason ATF was involved
in this case is because of firearms violations, it would be interesting to 
find out whether or not the search warrent was based on the NFA.
It would be very embarrassing indeed if a search warrent based on a possibly
unconstitutional law has resulted in 4 deaths(Law enforcement). 


****************************************************************************
The above opinions are mine and mine only.
I'm solely responsible for my opinions and my actions.  If you must flame
then flame away, but a well constructed argument will be much more respected.

Young-hoon Yoon                         yoony@rpi.edu
211 North Hall                          n6zud@hibp1.ecse.rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute        N6ZUD/2   HL9KMT(former)
Troy, NY 12180

