somebody wrote:

> When someone goes on a rampage in a civilian setting, gun nuts are quick
> to point out that had the other people had guns as well, the shooter would
> have been stopped before he could inflict any serious damage. I wonder
> about their angle now.

Isn't this exactly what happened? I. e. an armed military policeman shot
back and stopped the guy?

Here (in South Africa) the week before last and the one before that,
incidents were reported where citizens with private firearms used them in
self defense. In two cases the alleged criminals were killed and no
law-abiding citizens were harmed. In one other case a robbery was prevented
(alleged robber wounded and critical) and in yet another an alleged armed
robber was stopped but the defending citizen killed (his family survived
though.)

Where it is the norm, in the country with the highest murder rate on earth,
that most house invasions include torture by branding, rape, evisceration,
vaginal impalement of females, murder of babies and children, etc. - there
is simply NO way that citizens CANNOT be armed.

Robbers, looters, rapists and murderers are criminals - by definition they
do not abide by the law. If you legislate against a basic human right -
that of self defense - by abolishing private gun ownership, you merely
disarm the law-abiding. No criminal will suddenly obey a new law that says
nobody may have guns. And his "job" gets even easier - because then there
can be no possibility that his law-abiding targets will be able to defend
themselves.

I do believe an armed society is a safe society. I grew up in apartheid
South Africa, were 90%+ of all Afrikaner households had fully automatic
military assault rifles (FN FAL's in the late 80's, IMI Galil equivalents
in the early 90's) in the house, with ready ammunition (just like it used
to be in Switzerland). These were provided to reservists of the South
African Defence Force (or so called "Commandos") - in which all white males
were compelled to serve. This was true from the early 70's right up to
1994. Yet never have I been able to find one incident where a schoolgoing
boy from that era took his dad's machine gun to school and shot all the
teachers and other children. And that was in a militarized society, with
constant threats and propaganda being forced into your brain each day about
how dangerous the world is, how aggressive you must be, how wonderful a
system apartheid was and how worthy of defense to the last drop of blood,
etc.

Yet no Columbine or Dunblane shooting -ever- happened then. Which makes me
wonder about the arguments against civilian firearm ownership. 

The basic fact remains that an unarmed man may be attacked with more
confidence than an armed man - and no government, ever, should have the
power to deny its citizens the most basic human right - to self defense and
survival. 
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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