Invisible wrote:

>>> 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.
> 
> [Insert joke here about burrying meat and eating it once it's rotten.]

s'true! When I still was in the fire brigade here (I was the local
equivalent of a 911 dispatcher) I once had to dispatch an ambulance to a
guy who shot his brother over a R1 coin (i. e. he killed his brother for
about 10p). Another time some old geezer raped a 3 year old girl 'cause the
witchdoctor told him it would cure him of AIDS - not only that, he then set
fire to her to try and "hide the crime" - burning her to death. So my
remarks are really, really not far from the mark (for Africa).
 
>>>> 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

> If your police force is corrupt, then yeah, you probably need guns...

That's the whole point. There is no guarantee that in any given country in
the world, this kind of situation cannot come into being, by whatever
means. If it comes into being while citizens are armed, they at least have
recourse to arms to protect their lives and freedoms from a blatantly
unjust and / or corrupt oppressor.

This is why the United States constitution has the much quoted, maligned,
fiercely debated, hated, passionately loved Second Amendment or so
called "right to bear arms". The drafters of that amendment understood that
freedoms are fragile, and can never be entrusted to a government's care -
it must be each and every citizen's personal responsibility. Logically,
each and every citizen, if he has personal responsibility for his own
liberty, must be armed in order to defend that liberty against any
conceivable oppression of it.

What would the recourse be of British citizens, for example, if your
government slowly, by degrees, enacted new, oppressive laws (take a look at
the BNP, for example...!) so that at the end of the process it is illegal
for a British Citizen of Pakistani descent (or those who even LOOK
Pakistani!) to live in certain areas (for a start), and maybe later not
being allowed to work, or own his own business...? And later being expelled
from the UK or interned, or eventually put into a gas chamber?

It happened in Germany, Italy, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Argentina,
Rwanda, the Congo... and its called ethnic cleansing.

Surely you'll say that will never ever happen. But -WHY- will it never
happen? If somebody is not interested in talk or debate, HOW do you change
his mind, or defend your way of life if it doesn't happen to suit him,
you've got the wrong color of skin or eyes, or whatever? What is the
absolutely -final-, backs-to-the-wall guarantee that you can keep living as
you have lived, and that you still have the basic freedoms you enjoy? On
what basis is the preservation of your liberties and freedoms built?

In the United States, this base is that there are millions and millions of
guns in private hands that can conceivably be used against an unjust or
oppressive state or federal government in an insurrection or secession.

Armed citizens give a government (or an invader) pause. Or a corrupt police
force. 
 
> I guess the key is to not have a corrupt police force.
> 
> It's worth remembering that firing a gun makes a hell of a lot of noise,
> and it likely to attract attention to you real quickly.

True. But the mere presence of weapons can often times defuse a situation to
such a degree that actually firing a shot is not needed. This happened to
me once or twice, and if I had NOT had a weapon, things might have been
very different. Being clearly and capably ready, and armed, can have a
deleterious effect on somebody who means to do you harm.

>> "gun nut", a severe danger to society and can't wait to shoot the
>> neighbours' little 3 year old girl.
> 
> I don't think all people who want guns are automatically crazy.
> (Although I think plenty of crazy people want to own guns.) I just don't
> think owning a gun should be necessary.

In a perfect world it would not be. But the world isn't perfect. It is a
inalienable fact that there will always be people who mean ill to others,
or who want to take, and kill, and rape. There will always be politicians
who eye absolute power, no matter how "democratic" their countries are
supposed to be. As long as people remain people, there will be
acquisitiveness, envy, hate, religious jihad, etc. And there will always be
weapons - hopefully in the hands of law-abiding citizens as well, vs. just
in the hands of criminals.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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