pouët.net

But ee, many of those countries have had to "clamp down" their gun ownership laws in order to combat the rise in homicides and firearm violence. For example the Brady Bill is only 18 years old.
It's also worth noting that Switzerland has compulsory national military service and that

I think you would find that even officers in the military in the states are only allowed to take home their sidearms and they have to be registered (as well as any guns they own personally).

I agree in full. I want to ad. Violence is escalating, guns or no guns. Not so much the amount as the severity of the attacks. That is the real problem to be dealth with. Atm, we have so many knife attacks in Copenhagen it has become almost trivial. We didnt used to. But we (our politicians) cant seem to figure out why that is, or atleast agree on why.

The reason switzerland still is a fair example is that obviously education and training goes a long way. Once you are familiar with guns and exactly how dangerous these things are, sane people get a healthy respect for them. And thankfully, most of us are sane to the point that we dont randomly attack others and are mostly unwilling to attack even the situation requires it.

We have the weekend soldiers here who are also allowed to have their guns at home. the national guard I think the english equalent is called. Not the army, but local militia.

My point got kind drowned out by my own blattering. the "clamp down" is as desperate a measure against a real problem as the "war on drugs" is. It never gets to the root cause and since this is largely left unadressed by the policy makers, things can -observably- only get worse.

Why do people feel the need to display deadly force, what happened to our idea of "respect" as something you get when people are in awe about how cool your are or how well you perform. Respect seems to be a new word for "mortal fear".

Why do so many people feel the need to poison themself into oblivion? etc...

This is what needs to be adressed and if we find sensible solutions that actually work, then it will be largely irrelevant if either guns or drugs are accesible, because the drive to use either are being dealt with.

I'm quoting myself from the Norway thread here but..

In agreement with what you said about deadly force, respect and mortal fear.
Wow. The world we live in. Fuck.

There was mean't to be a "WINNING!" underneath that quote. X]

Disarmament: giving more power to the ruling class. The USA are not far from amending their Constitution on this point: this is only a means to render the mass more malleable. While I'm at this, how could NATO picture Gaddafi as a blood-hungry dictator when he actually gave arms to his people (so that they could defend their selves against the TNC). If truly hated, surely, he would not fare quite well with so armed a population.

"The masses" are more dangerous with guns, but not to any "ruling class" or whatever you want to call an elected government. You see, they get rifles and shotguns, and the state have a military. Your semi-automatic carbine is not match for my tank, attack helicopter or jet fighter.
The masses might be more capable of killing themselves, but a local militia still don't got shit on an armored division.


By giving the population small arms and yourself tanks and jet fighters. Not really that hard.


And no, I do in no way at all believe that the answer to this "problem" is to give the general population access to armor and air force.

Civilians : Military,militia = Alot : Where-am-I?. Is it only about who can cause more physical damage? There's that other thing: uncertainty. Even permitting civilians to go around with cutters so much jeopardizes Elite's control that the same did not deem flatly droll to charge the alleged 9/11 attackers to be so armed.

?????????????????????????

I wasn't making an argument of any sort. I was simply pointing out the poster's claim that Canada has nearly the same rate of gun ownership as the US was wrong.

I fail to get any meaning out of this, might be a language problem.

Also, what's this undefined "Elite" you are talking about all the time? And where did 9/11 enter the picture?

I am sorry for the abbreviations. By `Civilians : Military,militia = Alot : Where-am-I?' is meant `the ratio of civilians to military is about 120:1, in the US, that is'. The Elite are those who govern us. Of course, the elected officials are hardly more than an interface to that Elite. 9/11 was brought in because the alleged (and I insist on `alleged') attackers were charged with perpetrating their unprecedented mass-destruction with nothing more than a few cutters. Now, in view of the *facts* that such a report is utterly laughable and that what media do feed us is a product of what that Elite wishes, this makes one suspect that un-restrictively allowing people go around with mere cutters is already Elite-unfriendly.

The NRA, on the other hand, are fully part of that Elite. OH WAIT-

Tarmil: If the NRA is indeed a part of the ruling class, then [civilians'] disarmament is by now (they are big enough) to be expected. The beginnings of the USA were arguably disorderly. That mess made the elite less visible (because the people had more pressing things to do), they were far less target-able. Hence, making profit by arming that struggling majority was a safe business which, moreover, on the short term would just make more chaos. If you access http://www.nrahq.org/history.asp you will see that a particular amendment's protection is not their sole preoccupation (more like a made-up ground for their otherwise suspect business).

P.S.: Your argument is pretty good, and short.

My point concerning guns, their scare factor etc.:

Yes, I concur that one of a firearm's purpose is to "scare the daylights out of a person".
But there's a deeper fear than just the "loud & deadly" issue.
When our Ministry of the Interior (BMI) launched a "hightened security situation" last year on the notion of a "likely terror attack", Federal Police (as it is present on railway stations, airports etc.) ran around with HK MP5 submachineguns.
People didn't quite seem to look as if they felt "safe" among those parading policemen. The sheer presence of an assault weapon scared the shit out of the "normal every day people" who never in their life handled a projectile weapon of any kind.

And that's my point. I own a tiny collection of air-rifles (power ranges from shooting gallery type to what is possible to own w/o a license in Germany - 7.5 Joule) and participate regularly in several inofficial, that is privatly organised, target-shooting compos ("Fernwettkämpfe"). What I've learned from that is, that I got rid of this "diffuse fear" of weapons and replaced it with respect and responsibility - since the same measures of safety apply to such weapons, when they are handled, as they do for firearms. Only difference is the purchase, storage, ammo and transport.
The most information about firearms which is passed through the mainstream media to the "standard citizen" is biased and often flat out wrong because the journalists themselfs seldomly have enough knowlege to give a clear picture. That goes especially for that infamous term "semi-automatic".

In time, one gains knowlege about the own type of weapons as well as firearms because the basic principle is the same, and instead of fearfully staring at this certain "cop who wears a gun" or don't caring at all, I take a quick look if saftey measures are observed (i.e. is the holster snapped, is the weapon put on safe, etc.).
Should such a situation occur someday, I wouldn't hesitate to approach the police officer and point out the fact, that he/she is not obeying safety measures.

The philosophical question:

We don't know how a world without guns/weapons would look or feel like because we can't dis-invent the invention of the firearm and the weapon in general.
The only thing to overcome the "peace at gunpoint" issue is to gradually evolve as mankind.
Yet, this issue would now lead to further philosophical debate and the age old "war of the ideologies" what society model is the best, when all popular models have the distinct fault of being from "top to bottom", whereas my wish would be an evolvement of mankind from bottom up.

...and now I'm off for the monthly short- range compo with my HW 77 ;)

As evident in places like Afghanistan, where the best fed, the best dressed, the best paid and the best armed military and its nearly as well of friends are being bitchslapped by a bunch of illiterate cavemen with rocks and old russian semi automatic rifles. Man we are kicking ass with all our hardware in Afgha.....oh wait...

wrong. again. tanks and general heavy armour are by-and-large used to level and obliterate regions (or specific targets). it's used for macro-scale destruction. the last thing the "ruling elite" of Norway or America would want to do is to use tanks and 500bl bombs on on what they regard to be their own property and infrastructure. the way you deal with rebels on your own turf is with small arms (micro-scale). you pick-off "undesirables" with pistols -basically.

and it's not a good idea to allow your peasants an equal fighting chance, by allowing them to fight on equal terms.

i can assure you, 300 million armed peasants in America (when the shit really hits the fan for their economy, and they try rationing the people while maintaining their own luxurious lifestyles - of course) is sooner or later going to be a major threat to authority.

they couldn't give a crap if a bunch of drug dealers are shooting eachother to pieces and/or the occasional nut goes postal once every 10 years and shoots 90 peasants in some school. more people die crossing the damn road each year. but it's a nice excuse to emotianally blackmale the public into feeling guilty about owning their only real form of defence against potential authoritative bullyboys. that's the real goal, that's the prize. and it has nothing to do with your safety, quite the opposite.