Gun does NOT equal cowboy!

[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.