Both Hitler and Mussolini were extensively trained in arms during the Great War. This training did not, as far as I can tell, deter them from the use of arms for even one minute. Nor was Winston Churchill, who trained at Sandhurst and experienced war as a soldier and a journalist, ever particularly noted as a politician who shied away from the use of arms.
GN: Yet the Swiss and the Israelis are armed to the teeth and I don't think we have many instances of the Swiss going beserk. There was I think a beserker Israeli who took out a bunch of Arabs a few years ago but generally such activity is organized by the state. I read one popular press article which argued that the "threat of return fire" from other armed drug lord students is what kept this sort of thing from happening in urban areas. I don't think so, though. If that were the deterrent the Texas tower guy wouldn't have govne beserk. Though ultimately killed by cops who entered the tower he was supposed already nearly blinded by numerous ricochet chips from below, caused by students who went home, fetched their weapons, and came back to return fire. If the "threat of return fire" were the main deterrent than I think that few would go beserk in the South, in places like Arkansas. -gn.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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