Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

> Of course our society isn't safe - while the government is constantly
> enacting stricter and stricter gun ownership, background checks and
> purchasing laws. Thousands of legally owned, privately held firearms have
> been handed back to the SA government. Contrary to various arguments, this
> intensive disarming of society has not curbed gun crime - quite the
> opposite. More people are getting killed with firearms now, of all races,
> than the times in my country when you could almost guarantee that if you
> have a house, and there is an adult white male there, there WILL very
> likely be fully automatic weapons and ammunition... and he'll know how to
> use them.

Of course that's doing it wrong: You have to /first/ establish a 
comparatively safe society, by addressing crime arising out of habit or 
dire need (the former by force and punishment, the latter by trying to 
improve the economic situation), and /then/ take away privately owned 
guns to reduce the acts (or the lethality thereof) of spontaneous "blown 
fuse" type violence (or accidents).

I think gun restrictions can effectively prevent the latter, as well as 
helping to reduce the costs of a /functioning/ law enforcement system. 
With a /non-functioning/ law enforcement system, however, they only make 
matters worse.

> 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...

But as you can see they can get away with quite a low level of armament 
/even/ in the police force. Which I guess is /only/ possible due to 
severe restrictions on privately owned weapons. Which in turn date back 
long ago, to times when the law /was/ enforced primarily by armed men, 
who helped sort of "tame" society.


South Africa isn't "tame" at present, and that's why it wouldn't work 
there yet. Great Britain got there over some hundred years of time.

North America, OTOH, /is/ a somewhat tame society by now.

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