Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Even the Nazis would have slowed down a little bit in dragging
> people from their homes if enough of them had guns and fought back.
> Do not underestimate the deterrent value of armed people fighting
> for their lives and their homes.
[I just quoted the final paragraph in your message, although the rest of
your message also delivers a good point.]
Your rationale is quite convincing. I would tend to agree with you, with
little restraints, on the arguments you delivered.
On the other hand, there is still the argument of people dying and of
society being a slightly more dangerous and definitely less friendly place
because of a widespread attitude like yours. I've talked with several
Americans who have been to Europe, and I've talked with several Europeans
who have been to America, and we basically agree on the same thing: the
living environment in the US of A is definitely not friendly. It's a country
much more rough than we have here, and everything I've seen, read and heard
agrees with that. I would guess that attitudes like yours help significantly
in reinforcing the non-friendliness and coldness of your society. I would
like to make a strong point of this: I definitely think that a widespread
presence of individualist, society-fearing attitudes continuously reinforces
a society that is indeed to be feared.
In the end, it all comes to a tradeoff: quality of living (of which I am
quite convinced you have less than we do) versus the ability to defend
oneself. As appealing as your arguments may be, I still think the ability of
defending oneself with firearms is not as important as you may think.
Despite of our much-alluded-to history lessons, we decided to opt for the
quality of living instead. You, on the other hand, continuously decide for
the ability to defend yourself. That's fine with me, but I don't think it's
a smart choice.
At the bottom line, you're a bunch of scared people. You seem to think that
conflicts matter; I think they don't. You seem to think that who wins
matters; I don't. And most of all, you probably don't see how this attitude
of yours reinforces a cold, adversary society.
I think your attitude is the original reason why you have a police you need
to be afraid of; not the reverse.
> And if in the end we still disagree then come around yourself
> and try to take my guns away. Don't send some poor underpaid
> flatfoot to do it for you.
I apologize if this is what my original message looked like. Under no
circumstances would I try to push a ban on anything where a non-trivial
number of people disagrees with it. It's a decision a society has to make
with a vast majority of votes, and I don't see you making that decision
anytime soon.
Which is fine with me.
- denis
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:21 MDT