I want to respond to Margaret first, and then to Jordan from a post he sent out a week or two ago.
>Then the Hungarians tried to break free of the Soviet
>hegemon. My erstwhile colleage spoke bitterly of
>having to try to overcome tanks and infantry with rocks
>and a precious few molotov coctails. He seemed to
>feel, rightly or not, that a more general availability
>of even small-caliber firearms might have allowed them
>to make the game not worth the candle, as in
>Yugoslavia. But, of course, they didn't have them
>because they'd all been confiscated in the name of
>civil order. A similar thing happened in Praha in
>'68, I believe.
This is a delicate topic. I agree that having firearms would have raised the costs of intervention for the Soviets. This may have made them let Hungary go (although I doubt it). Assuming I'm right, that the Soviets would have paid the higher cost, then this would have made the crackdown even more bloody. It escalates the conflict. You shoot someone with a gun, but maybe not if they just have a rock. It could have merely made the situation worse. A prolonged guerrilla war would probably have provoked more hostility from the Russians, and perhaps even a more ruthless government than the one they had.
Maybe not, but I don't think arming the Hungarians automatically would have made things better.
>Weapon-free societies are very good for the ruling
>class, but perhaps not so good for the rest of us.
>Instead of advocating confiscation of weapons, perhaps
>leftists should be focusing on the socioeconomic
>disparities that give rise to weapons use?
I think this depends on the society. Arming the public may create a public safety problem. This has to be measured against any counterweight to government authority which guns provide. This counterweight might be substantial in some cases and virtually useless in another.
If we restrict the discussion to the US, a society which is responsive to public opinion, I'd have to say the balance tilts (heavily) in favor of gun control - that is, guns are more detrimental as a safety hazard than any benefit they provide as a brake on gov't authority.
Of course, this argument is rendered moot when you consider the number of guns floating around the country. Its staggering. We'll have lots of guns around for a long time, no matter what.
Secondly, I want to respond to Jordan who said I should buy a gun, learn how to shoot it, etc., before making any pronouncements on the gun control issues.
First, I think this is malarky. My opinion doesn't become meaningless just because I don't own a gun.
Secondly, I made a deliberate decision NOT to own a gun. I was thinking about it at one time until I actually fired a gun at a gun shop with an indoor shooting range (interesting story - this was on one of my trips to Vegas, and in Nevada they are pretty lax about guns. You could literally rent a machine gun by the hour at this place. This was about 10 years ago.
I haven't seen anything like that since, and I wonder if they were allowed to do it back then, but it was definitely eye-opening).
I decided there was no way I'd ever buy a gun for myself, at least not for defense. Perhaps after a good training course I'd feel differently, but I was a _LOUSY_ shot. And we were in a very controlled environment - straight shots with all the time in the world to take aim, at fairly close range. I can't imagine trying to hit someone in a chaotic situation, say if an intruder is in your house (its dark and there's lots of furniture) or in a public area where someone is going berserk. Besides, they might be a better trained than me in any case. No thanks.
Brett