There's quite a brouhaha going on in Ontario over hand guns...A young innocent white girl was shot and killed (as opposed to previous deaths which were black youths) while shopping with Mom; now the glad handing begins while they try to suggest a hand gun ban. I don't personally want a gun but those legal owners already comply with a great number of regulations. The gun violence results from societal problems and comes to a head with the use of firearms. Suggesting the ban is putting the cart before the horse and likely won't solve any problems.

 

true.

we have hardly any guns here but there is still a problem with knives

 

I have seen that argument for guns as well. Like you said, when everyone has muskets, then guns are a defense against an oppresive government, but when the gov. has big guns, it doesn't make much difference.

I don't own a gun, but lots of people here do. I don't have a problem with it so much in rural areas but in cities I think at least all hand guns should be banned.

 

I think Nukes are really too big to be very effective tools of repression. However, fear of being nuked by other nations will cause people to put up with a lot of absurdities from their own governments.

As for hand guns, I say ban them, but then require all citizens to have a semi-automatic rifle at home whether they want one or not. A rifle, at least, is something you can't hide in your pants while walking down the street.

 

Michael nice post and it is in fact a tough question. Orwell fought in Spain, didn't he? So his attitude toward weapons must have been at least somewhat more pragmatic than those of us fortunate enough to not have to use them.

I am always opposed to all guns, but then, I am also always opposed to national governments and corporations which can and with big smiles do produce instruments of death and destruction.

A famous Einstein quote goes something like "I don't know what weapons World War Three will be fought with, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones."

 

Briefly,

The American freakout over terrorism is not anything new, it's just now been focused on terrorism. Americans have been iraationally frightened, something in our culture, since near the countries foundation.

And interestingly, alot of that fear has been historically focused on the US black population. Whether it's the presented black face of the "war on drugs" that was coming to get suburban kids, race riots, the evil "jazzmen" in the 20's or even slave revolts pre civil war.

The US has been gripped by fear for centuries.

I do think that part of the current gun craze comes out of the westerns that were made in the fifties and sixties when alot of these guys grew up. Cause if you look at people in the who were at adulthood at 1950, before the westerns became big, their attitudes towards guns is totally different.

Mike

 

Add the US to the list of countries where the police don't carry "guns." You see, we carry cannons (guns are for sissies.)

 

I don't own a gun, but I think everyone else should own one. Guns provide comfort and happiness. Especially when the barrel's hot. I think there's even a song about that.

 

keir - i love that einstein quote.

mike - as for US citizens being irrationally frightened...as i am sure u know, first hollywood taught US citizens to fear russians, now it is training them to fear arabs. there is a fantastic award-winning short about it here. its the one called planet of the arabs

 

No guns on our cops here in New Zealand mate

Aaron

 

cheers

i wasn't completely sure of those countries. more power to NZ (my dad lives there too)

 

Gun rights inspire irrational emotions in the minds of the gun advocates in the US. I have this sneaking suspicion that no matter what their legal or philosophical justification, they just want guns because they love them.

Orwell's statement about what society would look like if the atom bomb were cheap sort reminds me of a fiction by Vernor Vinge. "The Peace War," which was a cold-war era novel to be sure.
In it, the cold war is ended by a group of scientists who learn to cast impenetrable, apparently eternal stasis "bobbles" around just about anything they can accurately locate.
The resulting civilization, in which the scientists outlaw any large government while remaining aloof and uninvolved, matches what you were saying would be a possible society should atom bombs be cheap and plentiful. Ultimately, the repression imposed by those scientists is painted as being just as bad as the world before it.