Invisible wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> I do believe an armed society is a safe society.
> 
> In my humble opinion, a society where you *have* to be armed just to
> stay alive is, by definition, not safe.

Correct. The concept referred to above started to have effect in my country
in the decade after 1994 (non-racial elections, end of apartheid) when the
old SADF was disbanded and all those hundreds of thousands of military
assault rifles I referred to where withdrawn from each and every house
where they had been deployed for decades. 

Of course our society isn't safe - while the government is constantly
enacting stricter and stricter gun ownership, background checks and
purchasing laws. Thousands of legally owned, privately held firearms have
been handed back to the SA government. Contrary to various arguments, this
intensive disarming of society has not curbed gun crime - quite the
opposite. More people are getting killed with firearms now, of all races,
than the times in my country when you could almost guarantee that if you
have a house, and there is an adult white male there, there WILL very
likely be fully automatic weapons and ammunition... and he'll know how to
use them.
 
Of course, due to apartheid, all this was predicated on race. But the fact
remains, and this is simple history - when the entire Afrikaner society
here was armed virtually to the teeth, -extremely- little violent gun crime
was perpetrated. House invasions with concomitant rape, murder, robbery and
torture as is common today here were virtually unknown when I was a lad -
when almost every adult white male had several guns in the house, including
fully-auto military assault rifles.

>> 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.
> 
> That's right. Because you can't defend yourself without weapons. Oh,
> wait...

Not true. It is possible to turn almost anything into a weapon - the thing
about handguns especially though is they are -easy-. It takes years of
intensive training, not inconsiderable physical strength and dexterity to
become, for example, a high level Judokan, or Karate artist. This is
completely out of the question for many groups of people - the elderly,
single mothers, etc. These types of people should NOT be restricted and not
allowed to have access to firearms. Of course, the ease also makes it
usable for criminals - but as I said, criminals are by definition NOT law
abiding... so would making a law against firearm ownership disarm the
criminals?
 
> (In the country where I am right now, even the *police* are usually
> unarmed. And it's fairly rare for them to get killed...)

I know bobbies are unarmed, but surely you're aware of what's called in
quaint British terms "Armed Police"? As far as I know, London apparently 
has fifty or so "Armed Police" vehicles on duty at any one time. The police
officers who crew these are very definitely armed, and they are deployed in
such a way that they can reach any area of the metropolitan whole of the
city in minutes. So the police aren't "unarmed" as a whole, even in
Britain...

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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