Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

> Here (in South Africa) the week before last and the one before that,
> incidents were reported where citizens with private firearms used them in
> self defense. In two cases the alleged criminals were killed and no
> law-abiding citizens were harmed. In one other case a robbery was prevented
> (alleged robber wounded and critical) and in yet another an alleged armed
> robber was stopped but the defending citizen killed (his family survived
> though.)
> 
> 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 don't think the situations can be compared in any way.

In "Wild West" times, the situation was possibly somewhat similar in the 
US. Nowadays, they appear to have a working law enforcement system, 
which should reduce the need for personal firearms. (After all, that's 
exactly their job, isn't it?)

> Robbers, looters, rapists and murderers are criminals - by definition they
> do not abide by the law. If you legislate against a basic human right -
> that of self defense - by abolishing private gun ownership, you merely
> disarm the law-abiding. No criminal will suddenly obey a new law that says
> nobody may have guns. And his "job" gets even easier - because then there
> can be no possibility that his law-abiding targets will be able to defend
> themselves.

Here in Germany, we live quite safe, despite(?) private gun ownership 
being  subject to severe restrictions, and being far from common.

I guess the situation in the US is closer to Germany than to South 
Africa. I do concede that in a country where gun ownership restrictions 
cannot be enforced successfully, any restriction to gun ownership will 
only hurt the law-abiding. But is the US such a country?

> I do believe an armed society is a safe society. I grew up in apartheid
> South Africa, were 90%+ of all Afrikaner households had fully automatic
> military assault rifles (FN FAL's in the late 80's, IMI Galil equivalents
> in the early 90's) in the house, with ready ammunition (just like it used
> to be in Switzerland). These were provided to reservists of the South
> African Defence Force (or so called "Commandos") - in which all white males
> were compelled to serve. This was true from the early 70's right up to
> 1994. Yet never have I been able to find one incident where a schoolgoing
> boy from that era took his dad's machine gun to school and shot all the
> teachers and other children. And that was in a militarized society, with
> constant threats and propaganda being forced into your brain each day about
> how dangerous the world is, how aggressive you must be, how wonderful a
> system apartheid was and how worthy of defense to the last drop of blood,
> etc.
> 
> Yet no Columbine or Dunblane shooting -ever- happened then. Which makes me
> wonder about the arguments against civilian firearm ownership. 

I dare to ask how many shootings of black people committed by white ones 
happened during that time.

In a society where there is a consensus about a common "enemy", it is 
easy to address any aggression against "the others" instead of your 
fellow people.

American society does not have such a common enemy, so a person under 
strong diffuse psychological pressure will, in a desperate attempt to 
"defend" against it, just kill any random target.

In a society where the blacks are the bad guys, a person under similar 
diffuse psychological pressure will blame it on the blacks, and have at 
them. And nobody will bother because all he killed were some of "the 
others". And he may not even go as far as to kill, because he can just 
kick a black ass anytime he feels like letting off steam, and all his 
fellows will pat him on the back for it.

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