Adam Curry made a telling point on a recent No Agenda podcast with John Dvorak talking about guns in the US, and how some say there is less violence in Britain because they have fewer guns. Curry, who was born in the US and has lived extensively in Europe and Britain says that’s crazy. People in Britain don’t kill with guns but they sure do with fists, knives, and clubs. There’s plenty of violence in Britain. It’s just not with guns.
We have a friend who grew up poor in a rough, rural area. She says they were too poor to own guns so people there would use whatever was handy; axes, shovels. They didn’t need guns to kill.
So, violence isn’t just about guns.
I love the image, despite its inaccuracy. I’ve met people, civilian farmers, who were facing an invading force that was armed with full-auto AK-47s, and all they had to defend themselves with were old British Enfield bolt-action rifles, roughly the equivalent of a hunting rifle. The army did not come to help them. What did their government expect them to do, you might ask? It expected them to die. These were people the government didn’t care much about, and if they kept the rebels busy for a little while, they were an acceptable loss.
If you think such a dystopian situation can’t happen in a “civilized” country like the U.S., it already has. Many Korean-American shop owners in Los Angeles in 1992 would have lost their property were it not for so-called assault weapons. For days there was no police presence, and chaos and burning in the streets – with Korean-American businesses a major target. The National Guard finally came in to put down the riots, but not before huge sections of the city had burned. I lived in LA then, and the image of shopkeepers on their roofs with assault rifles and flack jackets is one I will never forget.
In the real world, governments fail, and the responsibility for defending family and property falls to the individual. Our government has been looted and hollowed out by the 1%. “It can’t happen here” is no longer credible.
After the LA riots I asked a Latino friend what happened to the auto parts store his brother owned in South Central.
He said, “We put a sign on the door saying ‘Latino-owned business’.” “That was all it took”” I asked. He grinned and said, “Well, we were standing on the roof with shotguns and rifles too.”
Would you want to face down a mob with a bolt-action rifle that holds five shots? I wouldn’t.
OTOH, if you’re looking to loot a store during a riot and see three well-armed guys on the roof, you’ll probably pick another store without caring too much what kind of guns they have. 🙂