Theos-Talk Archives (June 1997 Message tl00215)

In message <970611153427_1241873400@emout09.mail.aol.com>,
Wildefire@aol.com writes
>Just a passing thought. I find gun control laws (and all laws that regulate
>the possession of "things") as an interesting manifestation of the human
>obsession with "things" vs. causes and the mistaken idea that, by eliminating
>or regulating the availability of a "thing", a certain problem will be
>solved. Drug laws are another example of this.

Dear Lynn,

A further though following my other post.  Regulating the availability
of "things" is undertaken in human society in many ways in human
societies.  Large coporations regulate mass markets for their goods by
using their financial power to outprice and eliminate the 'little guy'
and his/her product.

Regulating availability of a "thing" may not solve a problem, but it can
certainly make the offence within the problem very much harder to
commit.  For some while now, Canada has regulated the fishing of Cod in
order to prevent the destruction of fish stocks altogether.  Human
greed, left to its own devices, will readily leave a swathe of
destruction in it wake which can never be restored.

As a child in World War II Britain, I was regulated by the rationing of
food, and like everyone else, compelled to carry an identity card and a
gas mask when I was away from home.  If we hadn't had these restraints,
survival would have been much more difficult.  We didn't need the gas
masks in the end, but we weren't to know that in the beginning.

The existence of weapons of violence leads inevitable to their use, and
the international trade in them is, IMO, an abomination.  Huge numbers
of servicemen in the Gulf war were killed by ammunition supplied by
their own nations before the war began.

During WWII, my aunt came home from work in London one day to find not
only that her house and home had been destroyed by enemy bombs, but that
the whole *street* had vanished.

I don't pretend to have total answers to the problems that these matters
present, but I can see clearly enough that the theosophical ideal
requires the promotion of the means of peaceful co-existence, and
opposition to the means of violence which work against that peace.

Sincerely,

Alan
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