X-Ftn-To: Bill Twist 

cj697@bfn.org (Bill Twist) wrote:
>Do you know why there was a problem with "ethnic cleansing" in that area
>of the World?  Could it be that the serbians had most of the weapons, and
>an arms embargo prevented muslims and croats from obtaining weapons to
>defend themselves?  

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, 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.

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Homepage: http://www.danijel.org