SharkD wrote:

> On 11/6/2009 7:01 AM, 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.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> And, since the death toll was fairly similar to previous attacks, one
> might believe that the effects of large numbers of guns on either side
> are in effect canceling each other out. So, what's the difference? The
> gun companies are getting richer.

The difference here might be that even on a military base, not all personnel
are armed all the time. During my time in the military, when on base, you
were usually just armed when going out on a patrol, returning, or on guard
duty. This meant that you could have 400 or 500 guys, and maybe five or six
may be armed at any one time, AND have ammunition. The situation can be
considered to be no different from a civilian situation where only the
perpetrator is armed, and the "gun nuts" have their argument predicated on
this. In this case, from what I read on CNN, a lone, armed, military member
did return fire and stopped the perpetrator, who wasn't killed.

Thus the argument that "if everybody was armed, it would have turned out
differently" still holds true. Merely being a soldier on a military base
doesn't necessarily mean you are armed, no more than being a civilian in a
country that allows citizens private firearms means you are armed at any
given moment.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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