Gun does NOT equal cowboy!

[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.