>I cannot speak to the accuracy of the perception, since
>I wasn't there in Hungary in 1956; but the person whose
>opinion I related _was_ there, and _did_ believe that
>even small arms would have made a difference, perhaps a
>crucial one.
>
>In response to Brett's perception that not having guns
>may have actually saved Hungarian lives: that was one
>of the reasons Mihaly was so bitter: even a rock got a
>bullet in return, and a Molotov a fusilade; he lost a
>very large number of friends that way; only a
>half-dozen of the boys from his neighborhood survived
>without scathe. The Soviet military were taking no
>chances.
I would not take very seriously what immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe say about persecution in their old countries - they tend to exaggerate profusely (and for a good reason, since they are rewarded for doing that). Moreover Eastern European immigrants tend to be fanatically anti-Soviet and anti-communist, they often espouse the most reactionary causes in the US as a means of symbolic revenege against "communism." This is not speculation, I am talking from experience.
In short, tell you gun toting Hungarian friend to chill out, smoke some weed and stop rumminating on something that may or may not have happened some 40 years ago.
Wojtek