Gun does NOT equal cowboy!

[be-bop]

Having read this post and tried to understand the humour ! It begs the question "Whats the thing you guys across the pond have about guns".
This is a serious question because there is a saying that what happens in the states happens in the UK within 5-10 years.
Is it because you have the right to bear arms? or is it some macho frontier thing.
The UK news now is full of drive by shootings,kids here are buying replica guns as a fashion accessory.Thank God most can't get real guns but an article in todays press give details of guns for drugs swaps by paramilitary's from Northern Ireland and black gangs in the cities of Manchester and London.No doubt Gangsta culture and rap shows guns=power.
Educate me because I'm confused.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by be-bop

It begs the question "What's the thing you guys across the pond have about guns[?]"
This is a serious question because there is a saying that what happens in the states happens in the UK within 5-10 years.
Is it because you have the right to bear arms? or is it some macho frontier thing.

Educate me because I'm confused.

Willingly.

For just one single if overwhelming example: genocide happens to unarmed populations, not to armed ones. With an armed population, a genocide recedes so far from practicability as to be something invisible.

For arms as an expression of power: In a properly constituted republic, political power is sourced in the polity, the electorate. Arms are instruments of the power of life and death. Hence, power, period. If you go around impairing the electorate's power, in time you have something other than a republic -- generally a despotism, as loss of power by one group is generally being engineered by another group, rather than an anarchy. (Parenthetically, an anarchy is no more sustainable than an autarchy.)

So in the end, a republic's electorate should retain, in fullest measure, the power of life and death. It dovetails with the power of the vote. It also guards the rights of anyone in a minority, should the power of the vote no longer suffice. If that should ever occur, ugly things follow.

This philosophy is not unique to the United States. See Switzerland.

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Willingly.

For just one single if overwhelming example: genocide happens to unarmed populations, not to armed ones. With an armed population, a genocide recedes so far from practicability as to be something invisible.

.

In Rwanda, no one was really armed with much more than a machete, and both sides had those. It's just that the aggressors chose to use theirs.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There you go, if they had guns that wouldn't have happened. With machetes, it's hand to hand, where the young, strong, and vicious prevail. But with guns, the old, weak, and frail, can defend themselves from a distance.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

In Rwanda, no one was really armed with much more than a machete, and both sides had those. It's just that the aggressors chose to use theirs.

What tipped the balance into a genocide rather than a hand to hand machete fight was one party had guns and the other did not. Wiki on "Rwandan Genocide:"

The assassination of [Juvénal] Habyarimana in April 1994 set off a violent reaction, resulting in the Hutus' conducting mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus. Primarily responsible were two Hutu militias associated with political parties: the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. The Hutu Power group known as the Akazu directed the genocide.