Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

> You are correct, but my opinion about it differs, methinks. How do you
> define a "working" law enforcement system? And when does the law
> enforcement system get itself a "conscience" when it comes to unjust laws
> that it must enforce? The police is the servant of the state - it does what
> the state tells it to do. There is NO guarantee that the state will always
> have your rights and safety as its primary concern.

You don't have to tell /me/ - I'm a German. But two six-shooters at our 
sides per person and a semi-automatic gun in each closet wouldn't have 
stopped that government. Because my grandparents let him in through the 
back door. Or maybe even the front door. With a hello and a greeting and 
a fresh coffee and cake.

Experience in Germany tells me that guns don't prevent governmental 
oppression.

Being prepared to act with civil courage may, and you don't need 
ordnance to fire /that/.

Heck, our East German brothers even got /rid/ of an oppressive 
government without firing a single round.

 > A state wants to
> safeguard and perpetuate its power (look at Communist Russia, for example,
> or Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe). Interestingly, one of the very
> first things Mr. Mugabe did when coming to power in 1980 was to make all
> private firearms illegal. Once the citizenry was disarmed, he got Korean
> training and assistance for his Army, and then proceeded to murder tens of
> thousands of members of the Zimbabwean Matabele tribe (Mugabe is a Shona).

Did I mention before that the European/American and African situation 
cannot be compared?

Everyone here /knew/ that Zimbabwe was far from being stable. There's 
not /too/ many hints about any instabilities in the US, Germany or 
whatever. Even Northern Ireland has become comparatively quiet.

> Surely no country on earth has a policeman for every citizen, every hour of
> every day? That is where a citizen must take responsibility for himself. I
> find it completely anathema to completely depend for physical security on
> the state - you MUST take -personal- responsibility for yourself too,
> BEYOND what the state can, or will do for you.

The question is, do you need an automatic rifle for that, or will the 
baseball bat or the large kitchen knife do?

> Granted, but then again Germany is a highly-advanced, first world country,
> with world-class social services, extremely low unemployment (compared to
> SA, for example), an very homogenuous population both racially and
> culturally,  and a deeply entrenched respect for human life. I can
> understand how, in such a society, it is not necessary to have firearms and
> be ready to defend yourself and your family. But as you say above, a
> comparison is difficult to make.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I don't believe in the German 
government going all oppressive anytime soon, at least no more than I'd 
believe in the society going all nuts and falling into a routine of 
daily anarchy.

At the same time I can quite well imagine that the situation in many 
African countries may be unstable enough to expect the next corrupt 
government to take over with just a few months', weeks' or even days' 
notice. And yes, personal firearms to defend against an unjust 
government don't sound like a bad idea /there/.

> Again, it begs the question - will Germany ALWAYS stay like that?

History especially of Germany teaches the lesson that a permanent "good" 
government cannot be guaranteed, but it also teaches that a bad one may 
well come as something nobody will point their gun at even if they have 
one - and also that there are other ways to effectively oppose a bad 
government even without any other weapons than pure courage.

 > Those old geezers who wrote the US constitution decided that
> each free man should have that same capability on a personal level, and
> thus should have weapons.

They, too, lived in different times. They had just rid themselves not of 
a corrupt government, but of foreign rule; and it was civilians that had 
formed the army for that fight. Granting every civilian the right to 
bear arms meant being prepared for a potential return of the Brits.

US America isn't going to fight hard against foreign occupation anytime 
soon I guess.


> Good point. You are suggesting (if I read in context with your statements
> below) that ethnic unity was a factor? The "common enemy" idea which Hitler
> used to such good effect?

Yes, precisely.


> Ok, that makes sense. Still, for me, it does NOT make sense to say that the
> rational, 99% segment of your society who are law-abiding, should be FORCED
> (as you are in Germany) to -completely- depend on a state funded and run
> police force for their safety, IF such a person decides to target them in a
> killing or shooting spree.

The German law doesn't forbid me to grab whatever weapon I can get hold 
of if there's someone endangering my life - or that of others, for that 
matter. Whether it is a baseball bat, a kitchen knife, or even a dead 
policeman's firearm (IANAL, but I guess the latter is covered as well). 
It is sure to come with a lot of legal trouble, but I /do/ have the 
right to employ any adequate means for self-defense.

Still, I think it makes sense to limit items designed for the sole 
purpose of killing or severely injuring other people to a subset of the 
people, who are specially trained to use those tools adequately and 
efficiently, and to quickly assess how much force will be adequate to a 
particular situation.

> As I referred to in my Mark Steyn vignette to Invisible, in the EU mostly
> you might WANT to have a weapon, but you CANNOT. In the United States you
> mostly can, as many as you might want, even automatic ones in certain
> states or principalities. This, to me at least, is being "more free" than
> if you are a citizen of the EU, and it is decided FOR you what you may, and
> may not own, or do.

Following the road to the very end, that definition of freedom leads to 
anarchy as seen in South Africa (and probably worse). Well, it may not 
be /legal/ there to do whatever you want, but what the heck, you /can/ 
do it if you have a gun...

Not that I argue against going even a single step along that road, but 
the point I want to make is that there must be /some/ limitation to 
freedom as defined this way.

If the government tries to restrict my freedom of shooting my neighbor 
in the head... well, is that a bad thing for a government to do?

Again, I don't intend to liken shooting my neighbor to merely possessing 
a firearm; my sole point is that there must be a limit, and I personally 
think there is no clear-cut answer to whether this does or does not 
include the individual right to bear firearms.


>> 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.
> 
> This is blatantly not true. Sure this did happen, but it is just like the
> criminal / law abiding element comparison, or the "any guy who likes guns
> is crazy, and a potential murderer" argument referred to in my other posts.

I did exaggerate there of course, to outline the principle that may have 
been at work even without becoming that obvious in practice.

How many highschool shootings do occur per year in the US? How many more 
people live there as compared to South Africa? Translated to South 
Africa, the number of similar shootings would have been rather small I 
guess.

It would suffice that all those blown-fuse people rather preferred to 
shoot black people than white people. And I wouldn't be surprised if the 
South African media would have made not much fuss of it. After all, why 
should the whites bother about the blacks?

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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

> coming back in. Properly trained soldiers will also NEVER just fire back,
> if fired upon - it depends on what orders they have been given. Granted, a
> soldier that has got no orders might just take cover, instead of
> automatically returning fire. I vividly remember how it was hammered into
> our skulls, over and over until I could VOMIT with it, that you NEVER fire
> without clear orders, a clear target, and when you know what is BEHIND your
> target. The sequence was always "wait for my command" - especially if you
> had loaded weapons and a properly trained officer.

That's what I'd expect. Be sure of the situation first. Though I guess 
some armies would accept /some/ kind of personal initiative if fired 
upon by a "friedly" who doesn't comply to "cease fire!"

> A civilian might have been of more use, not subject to military discipline
> or trained to wait for orders - he'd have had to use his own judgement,
> which is often VERY badly regarded in most armies. You do what you are
> told. If you are not told to do something, you don't do it.

Well, to some degree there's a reason to this discipline, isn't there?

If I'd be in a shopping mall with someone starting a shooting spree, I 
wouldn't want other people to make it worse by shooting first and 
checking later whether they might hit some innocent bystander.

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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

>> Can you imagine someone trained in firing guns doing this?:
>>
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7091904.stm
> 
> You can't fix stupid.

No, of course. But if you cannot deny him access to tools in general 
that /might/ kill if used wrong, you can at least deny him access to 
tools that /do/ kill /especially/ if used according to the handbook.

 > If you're stupid, you can injure
> youself with an ice cream cone! :)

Duh - that would be a stunt indeed... :-P

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Darren New schrieb:

>> then the first reaction to someone drawing one is probably "gee, 
>> what's happening here? Is there any danger? Damn, this is serious - 
>> he's having a real firefight with those guys over there! Man, if only 
>> I knew who's the good guys here!", rather than "*OH SHIT, HE'S GOT A 
>> GUN! HE'S GONNA KILL US ALL! DUCK AND COVER! RUN! GET THE FREAKIN' 
>> HELL OUTTA HERE!!*"
> 
> Uh, on a military base? I think not.
> 
> You think if a cop pulls you over for a traffic stop and you pick up a 
> firearm, he's not going to draw on you, but rather run away? No.

The point was not really about what /exactly/ to do, but about the 
problem of properly assessing a fucked-up situation. A cop pulling 
someone over knows for sure who's the good one. A soldier witnessing 
some other "friendlies" shooting each other probably doesn't - nor does 
someone witnessing random people shooting each other at a mall. The 
difference is that a soldier is probably trained to assess a situation. 
That gun-crazy Texan happening to sit next desk at the local steakhouse 
likely isn't.

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"Stefan Viljoen" <spa### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
news:4af415c0@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > When someone goes on a rampage in a civilian setting, gun nuts are quick
> > to point out that had the other people had guns as well, the shooter
would
> > have been stopped before he could inflict any serious damage. I wonder
> > about their angle now.

> Isn't this exactly what happened? I. e. an armed military policeman shot
> back and stopped the guy?

I don't have any statistics, but death toll of 13 seems rather on the high
end for shooting rampages, and I much doubt he'd be killing 50-60 people had
he not been shot. Besides, well, it *was* police.

There was another such shooting in USA today:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/06/orlando.shootings/index.html

resulting in only one death, in spite of there being no armed citizens (nor
police, not that that's the point) to stop him during the act.

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"Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
news:4af42f16@news.povray.org...

> Thus the argument that "if everybody was armed, it would have turned out
> differently" still holds true. Merely being a soldier on a military base
> doesn't necessarily mean you are armed, no more than being a civilian in a
> country that allows citizens private firearms means you are armed at any
> given moment.

And you trust civilians will be so much more diligent in being armed *and*
better trained? If someone can kill 13 in a military complex in the blink of
an eye, what chance do grandma and Mr. CouchPotato stand? If we are going to
believe in a utopic society where every citizen is armed, trained and
sensible, why not believe in a utopic one where nobody needs a gun?

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"Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
news:4af439d2@news.povray.org...

> But what is the difference between making guns, and making medicine?
Either
> serve a purpose or fills a need. You could probably say there is no
> comparison, since guns kill people and medicine heals people. That's the
> old hackneyed "guns don't kill people, people do". Misuse medicine and it
> could kill or make you sick. Same with firearms. Misuse it and it could
get
> you killed.

Medicine is regulated too, for that very reason. In fact, it can be more
difficult to obtain certain medicines and drugs, and while gun ownership may
be legal, there may not be any legal avenues for medicinal drug use.

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"Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
news:4af44d5c@news.povray.org...

> A civilian might have been of more use, not subject to military discipline
> or trained to wait for orders - he'd have had to use his own judgement,
> which is often VERY badly regarded in most armies. You do what you are
> told. If you are not told to do something, you don't do it.

Well, maybe armies have some common sense after all. If firing willy-nilly
is not a good idea for an army, nor is it for civilians, who will have even
less training, experience and discipline. And if civilians are not supposed
to open fire either, what's the point of arming them?

> Or they had to wait until they could get hold of somebody with a LOADED
> weapon, ready to fire. And then that person too, if properly trained,
would
> have first made an assessment and not just blindly started firing back,
> which can cause just as much harm.

Exactly.

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"Sabrina Kilian" <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote in message
news:4af4836d$1@news.povray.org...

> This wasn't a case of someone wandering on to a base without security
> catching them. He worked there, he was probably authorized to carry a
> gun on to the base if not carry it around with him. So the first guard
> on the scene sees someone he works with firing at someone else he works
> with, and may have had no clue which one was the bad guy. And if he
> opened fire, would the next guard to come along mistake him for the bad
> guy as well?

All valid argument as well for a civilian setting where everybody/majority
carries.

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On 11/06/09 07:49, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Ever heard of Mark Steyn? (He's a right leaning blogger and writer in the
> US) He wrote on his blog that when he was in France once, a high-ranking

	Canada.

> French Gendarmerie (Police) official approached him and boasted that in
> France "People want guns but can't get them! But they're still free! So
> there!" He merely replied "In Texas people want guns, and they CAN get
> them. Texans will ALWAYS be free."

	Yes, and neither statement is worth anything. It's simply a case of 
eloquence over any actual substance. Which is, after all, what most of 
those writers/commentators are about.


-- 
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

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