On 02/26/10 04:52, Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>   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.
> 
>> Except that a couple of dreaming idealists with pistols and shotguns 
>> aren't going to last 7 seconds against the entire might of the US 
>> military, the largest army on the face of God's Earth.
> 
>   Yeah, sure. The US Army is going to attack its own country and its own
> citizens, especially at a large scale, resulting in thousands and thousands
> of casualties, millions and millions in property damage and a full-fledged
> civil war, plummeting the economy of the country so low that the current
> crisis is paradise in comparison. I don't think so.

	That's one scenario. Another is that few will die, and most will
comply. I doubt it, but I doubt it will be anywhere near as bad as your
scenario were this to pass.

	Remember: *Many* people in the US are against guns, and want them banned.

	I think you're assuming that the ban will be sudden. Make it happen
slowly (over, say, 2 decades), and the outcome may be quite muted. The
people did lose certain rights with the PATRIOT act, and for all the
"anger", no one really did anything about it. Heck, probably most people
who claimed to be upset by it ended up re-electing their congressmen.

	Now of course, these weren't freedoms people felt about as strongly as
the 2nd amendment, but a lot of people did have really strong feelings
about some of them (library monitoring, questionable detentions where no
charges are filed and no access to lawyers is given for years - although
not sure if the PATRIOT act was directly responsible for this one...).
Then you have a ridiculous amount of surveillance - some even illegal
despite the PATRIOT act, but no matter: Retroactive immunity was given.
People were upset, and then elected as president one of the people
responsible for the immunity (someone who said he opposed it, too).

	Follow the PATRIOT act model. Sit around till a bunch of events happen
that scare everyone (e.g. terrorist attacks). Pass laws that allow the
forceful removal of guns from *certain* individuals who seem to have a
high risk profile, and the rest is much easier.

	(Just saw that Patrick pointed this out).

	Americans can get quite upset if they think the government will go
after them. But there's no uniform "us" in the US (no pun intended) like
there may be in some European countries. If they push legislation with a
lot of sweet talk about how this is mostly for Mexican origin folks to
keep drugs and its violence out of the US, or Ali who seems to make lots
of calls to weird people in the Middle East, I think most Americans,
given the right circumstances, would be fine with it. (The exact
argument *was* given regarding the telephone monitoring - "If you're not
calling Afghanistan, you don't need to worry"). After all, it's not
_that_ rare that you get a congressman publicly stating that it's OK to
remove certain civil liberties (I think even freedom of speech) from
Arabs/Muslims. Wouldn't surprise me if they got re-elected as well.

	To be honest, when it comes to the effectiveness of protests to change
policies, the US simply sucks. I don't know about Finland, but in some
European countries it works a lot better (perhaps France would be an
example...).

	I also get the feeling that at least in some European countries, when
politicians do things that are wildly unpopular, they often get replaced
quickly. How often do you guys pass laws just to ensure crimes already
committed by the government or corporations don't get punished, or pass
laws simply to avoid having to follow rulings meted out by the courts? I
don't really know - perhaps it's common and doesn't hit the news here often.

-- 
If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?

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