myk
Super Charge
Posts: 13106
Registered: 04-02 |
Dr. Zin said:
I don't think the availability thing is nessecarily valid.
Indeed, and I'm judging the case in relation to US (and to a degree other places in the West) culture. Switzerland is a very odd little place, for instance. It has been militarily neutral and noninvolved for a long time. It's as if violence could only be little more than a hobby there if it were to occur for any reason; it could hardly serve any function.
I also think you might be reading a bit more into this than I really mean.
Yes, I am, and to a degree it's necessary, since I'd say gun related policies can be pretty unpredictable, beyond what one may pretend or envision.
I don't think the economic theory is truely valid either.
It depends on other measures taken and policies adopted. Look at the ammassed power the authorities gathered, and its deployment. Poor people can arm themselves pretty cheaply, but the wealthy can do so better, and can prepare themselves more effectively and conveniently. What's more, they generally don't even use guns themselves, but basically buy the poor who hold the weapons, through other means.
A perfect example of this was South Vietnam. The Diem regime labeled anyone who stood against them or their beliefs as a communist sympathizer. People resisted. Eventually the U.S. started to intervene. Even though the Vietcong were vastly outgunned by the U.S. forces they were able to succeed by fighting only on their terms.
Remember sargebaldy's examples of anarchy and how they didn't really fit in our civilized Western context? I doubt the Vietnamese revolutionary fighters fit, either. Plus the US was ousted also due to other factors, not merely their ressistance, however crucial, and the Vietnamese suffered horrendous casualties. And all in all we're talking about a revolutionary (military) movement there battling a foreign invasion.
Anyway, and armed populance isn't there to always be trying to overthrow the government or whatever.
I know you mean that, but try convincing the authorities when in principle the demand for more liberal arms possession is tied to a distrust in the power of the government.
Look at the U.S., where until the mid-20th century civilians were able to freely arm themselves with military hardware. How much governement versus population strife was there?
I'm not surprised things changed then, since that was a turning point for American culture and foreign policy, before an imperial scale military was really built up.
Just because people are armed doesn't meaning there is going ot be violence erupting. Resistance is like medicine, you don't use it unless there is a serious problem that isn't going away.
Yes, but there may indeed be a serious problem in that respect, and civilian gun control laws, either way, won't change it, just alter some effects. Private gun possession is a commodity, because the authorities and the elite would be wroth to allow it to be a check on their power. Most educated and peaceful gun owners are relatively well off, while illegal and violent gun users belong to poor or "escalating" circles without access to various social benefits. It would be very hard to develop (more) liberal gun laws that do not in the end go in line (in philosophy and effect) with the "free market" economic trends present in society, where distribution and advantage are polarized towards groups that wield more power, amid the competitiveness and disparity.
Although maybe you're sort of right if indeed this could lead to some sort of civil war or revolution. But we'd be talking of something pretty extreme, that must be demanded by extreme circumstances and would have drastic effects, and not merely a policy for social improvement. None of that seems likely or visible in the foreseeable future.
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11-27-06 20:02 
