Invisible wrote:

>>> 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.

Tee hee hee! Well at least we're having a reasonably civilized discourse. If
this was Africa I'd have long since burned down your house, castrated you
and then eaten your granny.
 
> Of course, the questions of whether you need a gun and whether you can
> get a gun are not necessarily strictly related I suppose...

Ever heard of Mark Steyn? (He's a right leaning blogger and writer in the
US) He wrote on his blog that when he was in France once, a high-ranking
French Gendarmerie (Police) official approached him and boasted that in
France "People want guns but can't get them! But they're still free! So
there!" He merely replied "In Texas people want guns, and they CAN get
them. Texans will ALWAYS be free."

Besided the point I guess, but here, it is related. One of the basic
principles the government here looks at when issuing a firearms license is
whether you have a demonstrable need for said firearm. Getting one is hard
too, 95% of all gunshops when bankrupt here around 2004 when newer,
stricter laws were enacted. If you listen to often postulated arguments
against private gun ownership (disarm private citizens and have peace) this
sounds like heaven, right? Only, since most people here were disarmed, an
unbelievable orgy of violence, rape and murder has descended - most of it
committed at gunpoint with ILLEGAL weapons... since the citizens have been
mostly disarmed, and have no means to defend themselves - the means
(private guns) having been legally removed by the government.
 
>> 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.

You're right of course, but only partially I think. That's the whole
problem - this "quarantine" paradigm cannot be guaranteed. There's no
difference as regards procurement between guns and drugs. If you make
something illegal but people still want it, sales and procurement of said
items merely moves underground, and turns something which earns tax for you
(all those gun-related sales and services that were taxed here, all the
thousands of tax-paying people who lost their jobs when the new law came
into effect and made possesion virtual impossible) into more work for your
already overloaded, desperately corrupt police force.
 
>>> (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

> 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 )

Haha well put! No, not only Islamic people are evil of course, it is unfair
and oversimplified to state as such. Just like stating that anybody who
likes firearms or likes owning and shooting with them is a "gun nut", a
severe danger to society and can't wait to shoot the neighbours' little 3
year old girl. 
 
> 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.)

Ok, I suspected as much. But I was AMAZED at just -how- heavily armed
your "Armed Police" are... here, every cop carries a gun. Usually its a 9mm
model 92 Beretta or Z-88 (a local knockoff of the 92F Beretta in 9mm.) The
program I saw was on Discovery Channel, they did ridealong with a couple of
armed officers. They had a Ford Sierra (this was quite a while ago when it
was filmed then, eh?) - they both had Heckler & Koch MP5s (submachine guns)
and in the back of the Sierra they had 12 gauge shotguns, and I also seem
to remember they had SLRs (the ex-British military rifle - the one before
the SA-80 Mark 2 your army uses today) for "distance work". That's way of a
lot more firepower than cops here carry as a matter of course.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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