Killing Spree in AL

[mrstickball]

terislb said:

mrstickball said:

SamuelRSmith said:
^Just because it doesn't prevent one or two incidents, doesn't mean it hasn't prevented 10.

You are correct. However, if you want to play that game, I'd love to ask you how many countries with armed populace(s) have seen their government impose a horrific, tyrannical government on themselves, and purged the armed populace. If you like, I can start with Mao, Lenin, and Hitler's purges of an unarmed populace.

Also, if Mr. Brown was able to suspend parliment and institute a dictatorship in England, what would you prefer to be? Armed, or unarmed?

ok are you suggesting that

a) said "tyrannical" regimes could have been avoided if people had guns?

b) you are comparing your own situation to that of a opressed citizen of said regime because someone wants to take your guns from you?

i can assure you it wasnt the lack of arms that kept those people in power.  after a long civil war in both russia and china ,and the chinese fight against japanese occupation.  there was surely no lack of em

as for germany there have been 42 attempts to assassinate hitler.. many of them included explosives.. i would say if one can get explosives.. one can also get a pistol or rifle...  there simply was no motivation to do so

so why did those people in china and russia fight the old regime of loyalists to the czar and of the natiolalists of chai kai sheck.. but not mao or stalin?

I'm suggesting option A.

The issue is that without firearms freely distributed to the populace, as they are in Switzerland, the US, and other countries, it's easy to keep in power once the regime has been implemented. If there were/are dissidents in the country, how are they going to fight the government once guns are outside of the general populace? I understand the argument that firearms were available due to the actual revolutions themselves, but what about after that? Once the communists got into power, they sought to remove firearms from the general populace, thus severely reducing their ability to revolt.

I wonder, what would of happened at Tiannamen Square had the pro-Democracy group been allowed to defend themselves from the army? What about all the repression in Tibet? I agree if there's no motivation to revolt, then guns may not matter at the time (because the bad regime is popular at the time of it's rise to power - be it Hitler's Germany, Lenin's USSR or Mao's China), but as we know, after awhile, the tyrannical regime is found out for what it is, but by the time the populace realizes, it's too late to do anything, since the populace has had it's weapon(s) taken away.

Also, it's very easy for the media to over-report and demonize firearms, as they rarely report the good that they do on the crime prevention side of things. Firearms are used to safely defuse robberies, attempted murders, and rapes against citizens. For every 650,000 crimes that involve firearms, 1,000,000 crimes are prevented due to the employment of firearms. I don't think that's a very bad return, do you? You can find this study here. Again, 1,000,000 instances of a armed US populace using firearms to diffuse a crime, with under 1% of incedents resulting in the injury or death of the criminal.