Macbeth wrote:
I'm thinking in terms of your government (or rather its medical facilities) have decided you are mentally unstable enough to be a risk (maybe to yourself, maybe to others) with a firearm. This is the general area that I was driving at. Some people ARE unfit to be in control of a gun (or a car, or a hot poptart on a sharp stick even.) You may or may not consider yourself to be in that position, but the feds certainly do, and unfortunately, i imagine that a LOT of said poptart owners would never admit or believe that they were dangerous with their gun or car or whatever. Most dangerous drivers think they are gods gift to driving, and uber-skilled as f**k on the road. Likeiwse i imagine that a lot of irresponsible gun owners think they are Wyatt Earp or Annie Oakley.
In the case of the Uk, the government has decided that we are ALL potentially dangerous with guns, so pretty much no-one gets them. However, we do have various safeguards against a government military crackdown, both deliberate and accidental.
I believe I cited earlier in the thread the case of some nutjob hijacking a tank from a national guard armoury, and the difficulty the authorities had in stopping him from killing people. (as luck would have it, he failed to do so.)
Putting aside for the moment the belief that the government WILL do something unlawful and need stopping by the people, surely ensuring that the general populace have access to serious hardware is just asking for the same thing to happen, but possibly on a bigger scale? I think the problem here is the difference between the realities of day to day law enforcement, vs the possibility of revolutionary action.
If memory serves, the Swedish all do national service, and are by law made to retain their assault weapon in case they are called upon to fight for their country. they also have private gun ownership, but what little gun crime they have is usually done with privately purchased weapons.. This suggests to me that a population can be armed well, without an increase in gun crime. However, it does require compulsory training and experience of a high level. This seems to be where america falls down, as the population can acquire weaponry without the guarantee of training and responsibility added.
In this particular thread, the clash seems to revolve around your distrust of the government, vs others distrust of the people.
The question is, could your civilian militia be trusted with that level of firepower, and be trusted to have the correct degree of training and experience to use it? What safeguards would you have that they wouldnt just take the piss with it? What safeguards are there against non-legitimate attempts to overthrow the government?
Well I'm not exactly the type of person who is just gonna pick up a gun and go Va. Tech or something. I came from a military family so I know responsible gun ownership. I went through boot camp before I was diagnosed with AS.
What sorts of safeguards do you have in England? Are they reliable?
I do think the citizen militia would be good for America. It would bring people up more disciplined. Safeguards from them overthrowing the government, I'm sure something could be worked out to where the national military and the militias could keep each other in line. If the government did still get out of hand and become oppressive, the militia would be within it's rights and duty to overthrow such a corrupt system. I know the militia never overthrew the government back during the conial era when militia service was compulsory. But that does not ensure that it wouldn't. They'd likely have to create some independent go-between board that would be made up of both common citizens and government people. Of coarse then the government could entice the citizens with wealth to sell out the rest of the citizens..... Something would have to be worked out though that can guarantee both the security and freedom of the people, and that of the government.
17 Sep 2007, 3:53 pm
