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I'm not aware that there was an "armed public" in Russia. It was the soldiers and sailors who were armed.

Mart

Bimmercat : Your view of history a perverse and distorted one ; it's also simply wrong in more places that I can bother to illustrate. Whether you are using historical precedent to back up your arguments is often unclear. But your examples I find a mixture of ludicrous/hilarious.

Your view that historical change however violent is due to public ownership of guns something that you'd probably find on websites run by people who live in rural Montana. It is nonsense and I think you know it. You keep distorting things to make them fit. And you make yourself look increasingly foolish. Perhaps you should very carefully read your posts before you send them. In particular your implication that the IRA are freedom fighters and the 9/11 terrorists just nihilistic murderers so typical of American thinking. Whatever the cause they are still the same type.

I hope you don't mind me saying this but your argument is stronger if you merely state that gun ownership is what you want and believe in. It is an emotive issue as can be judged by the thread. You cannot rationalise the need for guns away ; you and millions of other Americans believe it your fundamental right. Fine ; but please don't ask us to be persuaded or convinced. Most of us are British and have a hugely differing view ; for myself I do not want to own a gun (I don't even shoot the foxes, rabbits and squirrels on my land) and I am afraid that gun ownership and crime will become part of our society. We see what it does in America.

Perhaps part of the enmity you raise is the fact that several times you state that you are 'right' (ergo anyone with a different view is wrong) and then lecture and bully us with inept historical reference and cant about not trusting your institutions and being ready for some form of social apocalypse. Your hectoring stance fits perfectly with the modern paradigm of dislike and distrust toward the US.

Similarly, you seem to embody that American who sees anyone on the left as some heinous bogeyman out to ruin your country and change your way of life for the worse ; Michael Moore is a polemicist. He is not always 'right' and has a similarly carefree approach to history as you display but he is often very accurate with his targets and at the very least raises important questions about your country. Or perhaps you think that he will just go away if he is vilified enough. Surely the 'Land of the Free' can withstand a little soul-searching now and then.

Maybe I'm being too simplistic here, but surely the only reason to hold firearms is to be able to fire them.
If you dont have a gun, then you cant go round shooting people.
As for law abiding people - on how many occasions is it possible to shoot at someone and remain law abiding ?

-waffster

...'I am betting that you'd be surprised how similar we all are'.

I would not be surprised. Amazed, more like.

Forgive me if I've mentioned this before:

A number of years ago, a Scot on business in Texas (Houston, I think, rather than Dallas) was out for the night with a work colleague. They ended up in a car with a couple of people the Scot felt uncomfortable with, and he managed to get out of the car before anything awful could happen to him. Stuck in an area he didn't know, he did what anyone in this country would do and knocked at the door of a house pleading to use the phone to get a taxi back to his hotel. The panicked householder, fearing what he might be up to and after telling him a few times to go away, shot him dead. Yup, an ordinary white middle-class area where someone seeking help lost their life.

No doubt the man who fell among thieves in the biblical parable would have been frisked by the Good Texan, or shot in the head to make sure he wasn't trying anything. . .

Oh, and no charges were ever brought against the householder. Tony Martin, take note.

I'd forgotten a number of the details, so thanks for clarifying them; but by saying he was on a night out I was certainly suggesting he'd had a few. You also tend not to get into a car with people you don't know and allow yourself to be taken to some unknown destination if you're totally sober.

It was scary for the householder, without doubt, having a disorientated, inebriated stranger banging on your door at that time of the morning. And yes, if you were to do that in this country, BC, you'd expect something to happen; the frightened householder would phone the police. The chances are that if someone tried that on my door at 4 am, I'd go looking for a golf club to defend myself---but I'd phone 999 first.

BC that's 911 to you!!! lol