Monte Carlo

^ Gfted, your point about how recent this all is reminds me of why maybe sometimes this conversation goes the way it does between US and UK forumites. It's not like we were sleepily led down this path over many years, it is in very recent history and pretty-much supported by Joe Public. One reason we are jealous of America is it's sheer size. The sense of possibility. The outlaw ethos. You can be Billy the Kid, Thelma and Louise or Bonnie and Clyde. You can run. The UK is small. You can run. Just not very far, even now. I really think that informs the atittude of many criminals to guns. Cheers MC

No, there hasn't been a big history of civilian, urban firearms ownership in modern British history. There was the longbow, I suppose, but that was muscle-powered. Even in WW2 guns were issued to military reservists, not the civilian population. As for post-Dunblane, all handgun owners were given a surrender period. One friend of mine gave up about

The core issue here has been missed. Why do right-of-centre news channels have the hottest newsreaders?

^ A decent person helped along no end by the foreign policy ballsiness of Reagan and Thatcher. They might be left-wing hate figures now, but they effectively helped destroy the Soviet Union *Champagne corks all round* Shame about the nuclear-armed, completely corrupt kleptocracy of Putin, but you can't have everything.

^ Yeah, there were two seminal moments in recent British history concerning gun control. Hungerford - 1987 - Nut-job with a semi-auto AK murders lots of people, including unarmed cop. Ban on rifles, semi-autos etc. Dunblane - 1996 - Gun-nut went on a shooting spree in a Scottish school and murdered 16 kids and their teacher. The gunman, Hamilton, wasn't a Columbine-style teenager but a grown man and handgun enthusiast. After Dunblane the almost total ban on handguns came in - pro-firearms lobby argue that the warning signs were there with Hamilton and he should have been managed prior to the tragedy. Gfted, we are a small country. I remember Dunblane vividly, I live at the opposite end of the country and people were crying their eyes out.

Wrath, the argument is more nuanced than you describe. I'm not actually disagreeing with you, just asking you to consider the alternative. Personally, I can't get too worked up about gun control in the US because I don't live there. In the UK, however, it sort of works. It isn't perfect, our gun laws are too prohibitive and led by urban, left-wing ignorance in my view, but that's another story. Aggravated burglaries (i.e. with weapons) are rare here. That's because the sorts of criminals who use guns don't commit burglaries as a rule. Here, it's drug addicts after easily disposable goods. And, as easily disposable goods get cheaper they tend to resort to robberies so thank the assorted dieties that they ain't armed. Here in the UK you are on offer for five years for unlawful possession of a firearm. Period. It concentrates the mind. Criminals choose, carefully, which crimes they use guns on. And quite often, watching the news, this appears to be against other criminals. That's not an excuse to relax, because innocent people sometimes get caught up in it and that's a tragedy. But we don't have guns routinely used in crime. Our police still rarely carry them. I've probably got about 35-odd years of life left and I expect to die without seeing the cops armed here. I know it's a British mindset, but I find that more reassuring than a sign of leftie, sandal wearing surrender of my liberty. And I love guns. A day at the range = happy Monte. Shame I can't do it in my own country any more. Cheers MC

^ Dunno, but by the tone of this thread I suspect they are the smuggest.

The original Sacred Gold (like the old-skool look and feel) and Codename: Panzers Cold War.

Oh, whoops, look! We've just gone and committed a genocide by accident. Cause and effect. Nazi-sympathisers and holocaust deniers demand the detailed documentation that proves Hitler ordered the Final Solution, allegedly because outside of the minutes of the Wansee Conference the evidence is largely cause and effect. Hitler was, via a sheer himalaya of evidence, responsible. Yet the deniers still want to see how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Is this sounding familiar?

Yes, because you are one of the most effective and strangest alt.accounts I've encountered in all my time on the internet.

Yep. Apart from Tony Blair, who I suspect was never really a socialist in the way most of us would understand it. But most of the other members of the New Labour project were either members of the CPGB or other extreme left student groups. They did the whole thing, y'know, trips to Cuba, silly beards, marches, advocating nuclear disarmament whilst the Soviets had thousands of 'em and all the other stuff you associate with affluent middle-class students with self-loathing issues. They've done a really good job of destroying the UK as we know it, I suspect the dead-hand of Frankfurt schoolers in there somewhere. Many Neo-Cons were also former Marxists. All I'm saying, LoF, is that unless you are already in your thirties and holding down a state-funded job as an academic, I suspect you'll grow out of the phase you're in. Kiddo. Cheers MC

Can anybody else spot the factual error in LoF's post? I know he specialises in them, but anyway. And thanks for the lecture on my country's politics. The has-beens who run it were all, in their college days, rabid Marxists. That's what happens to them when they grow up.

^ He's talking about the elections in the UK, brainiac.

Calax, you are a modern, 21st Century guy. You wouldn't be expected to pay for the chick's dinner and drinks, right? (Now i'm going to roll around on the floor shooting coffee through my nose with bitterly ironic laughter).

Legitimate law enforcement is anything that is... legal. Look at the emergency powers statutes of most countries. Most of these concern measures that I'm sure most law enforcement and / or military personnel would prefer not to enact. But most of them would, even if it were with long teeth.

Indeed. The US military has an excellent record of obeying orders. It is disciplined and with an aggressive, warrior ethos. It will do as it is ordered by it's CiC. My counter-factual has some real world precedent. The US government had no problems using it's military to quell civil unrest in New Orleans post Katrina. Furthermore, when that wasn't enough, your pioneering PMCs provided extra muscle too. I'm sure plenty of 'security contractors' hail from the 'Flyover' states.

Hmmm I'm warming to my dystopic sci-fi theme which is part JG Ballard and part Mad Max. Eventually, the coastal liberal elites of the USA grow tired of the conservative fly-over states, who have responded to the high-handed way they are governed by turning to the gun, fundamentalist Christianity and the militias. A new Confederacy growls. The Coast Elites turn on the Centre. Forward military bases support civil aid units who attempt to turn the militias away from their supposedly primitive beliefs using hearts-and-minds tactics by day and special forces assassination by night. Militiamen in pickups fight skirmishes with the Government forces, ever watchful of drones. Does this sound familiar?

Nonsense, student budgeting 101: Price of beer (figure it out by the gallon, it's easier) Price of Convenience Food of Choice (let's face it, this means pizza, right?) Price of satellite TV subscription Price of very cheap car (you are in America after all) Honestly, manage everything else with a massive overdraft facility at your bank. It really concentrates your mind on getting a good job when you graduate, it worked for me Oh, and I spent five years in the army reserves on tax-free pay as an undergraduate student, of course this was in the late 80's and there were no wars.

^ With respect, you are missing my point. The 'people' to whom you refer are in my scenario militia-men. Your federal law enforcement agencies followed orders and assaulted the Branch Davidian compound, killing civilians in the process. I make no judgement on the validity of the operation, in fact my sympathies probably lie with the ATF agents in the field on that day if I'm honest. Nonetheless, the US Government conducted lethal executive action on it's own people that day. The state can and will respond to threats, both external and domestic. In my scenario a process of radicalisation allows the armed citizenry to become a de facto insurgent threat, easily presented as a legitimate threat to the armed forces. I'm not suggesting that the US army would be deployed like a blunt instrument, after all even in Iraq there were flashes of finesse. But an aid-to-the-civil-power operation with the army supporting law enforcement against a clearly delienated domestic foe? That operation creeping into something else, like a cycle of low-level insurgent violence, domestic terrorism and the like? I hope not, this is sci-fi stuff, but I;m trying to build some cause and effect into the idea that an armed citizenry is some sort of rose-tinted pressure valve against tyranny.

To get back on topic, although I'm not sure that an armed citizenry prevents tyranny, I'm bloody convinced that an armed citizenry could cause one. Albeit by accident. How, I hear you ask? My source material here is, variously, Waco, the Militia movement in the USA, Iraqi insurgents and the cause-and-effect response of liberal democracies to crises. A US militia group, fired up by what they perceive to be a clear and present threat to their civil liberties by the current government (my personal view is that they are misguided, but that's not important right now) gets involved in a minor conflagration with local law enforcement. We can then easily imagine a Branch Davidian / Waco scenario developing, with ham-fisted attempts to resolve the situation. With tanks. Imagine a heavily armed, militant America with lots and lots of these militias. In acts of defiance that aren't unlike Middle Eastern insurgent tactics they react. This brings in of itself a counter-reaction by the Federal Government whereby innocents are hurt, albeit by accident (collateral damage probably looks a bit different if it happens on your own street). Those who were sympathetic to the aims of the militias but who would never lift a finger against the state are galvanised. That is to say, Radicalised. The government enacts emergency legislation. The Media weighs in. An escalating cycle of violence by the aggrieved leads to the mobilization of military units and the further suspension of civil liberties. Whack-jobs like Timothy McVeigh wanted this outcome. Happily, it is unlikely to happen. But my point is that the assertion that a heavily armed populace prevents tyranny is nonsense, the state will always have the monopoly on the tanks and helis and hardware. But it could provoke it. Several thousand insurgents armed with small arms locked down most of Iraq from 2003 to the Surge, the Surge being a massive, well trained military putting a serious smackdown on them. Firearms ownership as a civil liberty? Sure. Firearms ownership to support a wider principle of self-defence from an aggressor. Absolutely. But today isn't the 1700s and the Redcoats this time will be flying helicopter gunships. The 2nd amendment is pretty much bunk as constituted today.

Favourite bumper sticker, seen in Texas in the early 90's. "An armed society is a polite society" For the benefit of Americans here, the Europeans aren't all 'unarmed' by their governments. Firearms ownership is legal in most European countries, the UK being a notable exception. The UK has the strictest firearms legislation in the world, with replica guns now even under scrutiny. The UK still has firearms crime, which supports the contention that (like all commodities) prohibition doesn't necessarily eliminate demand and supply. However, a lack of ammunition does hamper firearms crime in the UK. Criminals can point unloaded guns at each other all day. The main reasons why folks in my country are fascinated by Americans and their Second Amendment is that; 1. Difference: we don't see guns here often 2. The liberal media has has created a meme where an interest in firearms = sinister 3. We aren't bothered by guns and gun ownership, Americans are. We find that fault line interesting. Personally I think the Second Amendment is your business and, FWIW, pretty appropriate for your country. I drove from The Gulf of Mexico to El Paso once and twice wished I were armed, can Avis do you a decent self-loading pistol and a mossberg pumpgun nowadays? It's not a biggie for me. It certainly makes me careful in America - I think some of you are trigger-happy, and that a tiny minority of Americans would love to shoot me for no other reason than they like shooting things and trespass is a groovy excuse. As for the Second Amendment and the sanctitiy thereof. I saw a dude on Fox news (I actually like Fox news) arguing that Muslims need to see parts of the Koran in a 21st Century context and that too many Middle Eastern folks were stuck in the 7th. It's not a bad argument, actually, to discuss theology of any organised religion. I'd turn that around and view the Second Amendment the same way. What did the Founsing Fathers envisage? What has America achieved since then? Does your Second Amendment now mitigate for more gun control, or less? Just an honest POV from a critical friend of the US.

As Gun-person above rightly suggests, the correlation between strict firearms ownership and incidences of firearms crime isn't consistent. You can have strict firearms laws yet a fair bit of firearm-enabled crime. Conversely, everybody in the country can have an assault rifle and almost no firearm-enabled crime (q.v. Switzerland). But this thread is about the notion of a load of firearms-toting citizens staving off oppression. I'm undecided. Here in the UK, if everybody is hacked off with something there is a 200-year old tradition of the Mob descending on central London for a ruck with the forces of law and order. No guns allowed, Queensbury rules (truncheons, bricks, etc). After that everybody harrumphs for a bit in Parliament and the law gets changed (Poll Tax, for example). It's not perfect, but it's better than armed insurrection I suppose.

^ Calm down, most people on this thread have been exceedingly open-minded about firearms ownership. I was just suggesting that perhaps we should draw the line at anti-aircraft guns or .50 cal machineguns. Or does that make me some sort of Volvo-driving hippy?

Hey, it's the Codex.

Virumor wins already with that astonishing piece of esoteric CRPG knowledge!