>> In my humble opinion, a society where you *have* to be armed just to
>> stay alive is, by definition, not safe.
> 
> Correct.

It seems we agree on something.

Of course, the questions of whether you need a gun and whether you can 
get a gun are not necessarily strictly related I suppose...

> criminals are by definition NOT law
> abiding... so would making a law against firearm ownership disarm the
> criminals?

Because if guns are illegal, it makes it that much harder to get hold of 
them. Not impossible, surely, but very much harder.

>> (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...

London is the capital city of the entire country, and since 9/11 and so 
forth the government has gone all paranoid about there being terrorists 
absolutely everywhere. Anybody who looks Islamic could be a terrorist. 
(Because, obviously, only Islamic people are evil. Right? ...And then 
they wonder why these guys want to kill us. :-P )

Certainly there have always been a small minority of armed police. You 
don't see them very often, however. (Even back when it was legal to have 
guns in this country.)

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