X-Ftn-To: Michael Dix 

Michael Dix  wrote:
>> You are diverting the issue into matters of national defense, and as I
>> already said, the police should have weapons in order to be able to
>> oppose the violent criminals, and the army should have weapons in
>> order to oppose the hostile forces. This is necessary. However, the
>> general population has no need for guns, because if they need
>> protection from the criminals, they have the police,
>
>How do the police protect you from criminals, in your country?
>In this country, by the time the police arrive, it's too late
>for the victims.

Here too, sometimes. But, very often the police comes very much in
time and when they do, the criminals are in serious shit. Also, there
are professional, uniformed guards, trained in martial arts and
weapons handling, who are hired to protect property - even the
government uses them, rather than the police. Very often it's them who
actually stop the criminals. For instance, a company that owns the
public parks in Zagreb hires the armed guards who patrol there; this
makes the city parks a rather safe place at nights. The gun use by the
police and the guards is seriously limited by the law - they are
allowed to use them only if they're seriously threatened, which makes
things even safer for the ordinary citizen. There were many cases in
which the armed guards incapacitated the villains with pure skill and
strength, without even needing the guns. They are very effective, and
they are all over the place - banks, big companies etc. all use them
to protect their buildings, which makes them strategically distributed
all over the place. The odds of needing help and not getting it are
there, but the odds of needing help and getting it are very good, too.
This creates a feeling of public safety, and removes the need for
guns, as I already pointed out.

>> and if the
>> country is attacked by some hostile neighbor or whatever, this should
>> be the job of the army. And of course, the army _should_ be well
>> trained and equipped with weapons, _unlike_ the civillian population.
>> Otherwise, we would have a militarized society, which nobody needs,
>> because more weapons result in less safety which in turn increases the
>> need for weapons. This is a magical circle that can be broken only by
>> removing the weapons from the civillians and restricting them to the
>> professionals.
>
>So, if you were to give firearms to the normal citizens in
>your country, they would immediately begin shooting each other?

No, but the rate of incidents did raise when this happened, and this
results in less feeling of safety and more guns and less safety, and
after that it the USA, followed immediately by total hell.

>Interesting. This may explain the advantage of restricting
>firearms to professional criminals. 

Exactly. This makes them a perfect target for SWATs. Let them have the
guns, but if they use them, they are dead meat. In Croatia, if they
see you on the street with a gun, you can end up in prison for a long
time, even if the gun is empty. If you keep the gun at home, and you
don't have a licence (which BTW is extremely hard to get), again you
are severely punished. Figure it out.

-- 
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