I read an interesting article (in Finnish) on someone's opinion about
the basic difference between European governments and the government of
the United States.

  This basic difference is that in Europe the government grants the
citizens rights and freedoms, while in the US it's the other way around:
There it's the citizens who grant the government their rights (to govern
them).

  And this is why they have the second amendment to their constitution:
To ensure that that's the way things will be. In Europe, if the government
goes bad, there's little the citizens can do about it, but in the US the
citizens have the concrete power of keeping the government in check, and
this is the power granted by the second amendment.

  Throughout Europe there has been a trend, during the last years, of
governments passing stricter and stricter laws regarding guns. For example
Belgium recently outlawed all handguns and confiscated (or tried to) all
handguns without any recompensation to their owners. (As an ironic but
at the same time sad result of this, where Belgium previously had about
1 million legal handguns accounted for by officials, who knew who owned
them and where, now Belgium has something like 700 thousand illegal
handguns which officials have no idea where they are, ostensibly making
them much more dangerous than before.)

  In Finland there has been talk about a similar law (and I guess similar
results, as Finland *never* learns from other countries).

  If that kind of law (ie. all handguns illegal, confiscated without
recompensation) was enacted in the US, it would most probably result in a
civil war. The US citizens wouldn't submit to such governmental control,
would deduce that the government has gone bad, and would shoot back.

  Some argue that Europe is in grave danger of becoming a totalitarian
government system because the citizens have no way of keeping governments
in check, and they are passing stricter and stricter laws, restricting
more and more liberties, as time passes. Europeans don't shoot back, but
instead they submit.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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