>>Brian D Williams wrote:
>> "A country that wants to
>> be unarmed and free
>> wants what never has
>> been, and never will be."
>>
>> Thomas Jefferson
> Native Americans. Aborigines. Oh wait. Sorry we already
>killed most of them with our guns. Oops, my bad. :)
Actually we killed most of them with our germs. Sometimes
accidentally, sometimes on purpose. Here in the midwest there are
scores of huge burial mounds, upon investigation we now know that
the people in these mounds died at the same time, many shortly
after their first contact with British and French fur traders.
I was reading an account of fur traders visiting a group of Mandan
here in Illinois, the village population was in the thousands. A
year later they returned to find a few very sick survivors and the
massive burial mounds.
In at least one incident the U.S. Army deliberately sent a group of
Indians blankets from an area undergoing an epidemic (cholera?),
with predictable results.
As others have already pointed out, the Native peoples waged war
against each other long before we arrived, and has already been
pointed out, had they been BETTER armed, things might have gone
differently.
I am in no way going to defend our then governments despicable
habit of signing and then breaking treatys. They will have to rot
in there own graves with their own dishonor.
So to get back on the original subject we can see being well armed
includes a great deal more than mere guns.
I don't know where you grew up, or where you live now, but let me
clue you in to life here in Chicago.
When I was a kid there was plenty of gang activity, production guns
were rare, but there was a plethora of the infamous "Zip Guns"
around. If you got caught with a Zip, the cops usually smashed it
on the spot, and you got dragged into the station where your folks
were summoned and you got the ass-whipping of your life.
In the only two cases I recall where someone was caught with a
production gun, we never saw them again. In other words they ended
up in the justice system and were dealt with very harshly.
These days the average parent denies that there "tatoo ridden, rap
sheet as long as your arm, youngster" has anything to do with
gangs, guns, or drugs. There's a new case in this morning's
newspaper involving a shooting outside a high school. When caught
in school with a gun, it's argued whether or not suspending them is
appropriate!!
In a second case here in the news this morning, a group of these
innocent young men (about 50) from Cabrini green, yesterday staged
a protest at a local CHA (Chicago housing authority) police station
over the arrest of one of there fellow "innocent young men". They
then staged a fight outside and when two CHA officers responded,
they were ambushed with broken bottles. As I type, a team of more
than 400 combined officers are sweeping the complex making arrests.
Want to start reducing handgun crime? Start slapping offenders with
a 20 year no hope of parole sentence, and watch the numbers take a
nosedive.
Extropian value involved? Personal Responsibility.
In the mean time I'll look after my own, and keep a neighborly eye
out for you.....
Peace through fire superiority
Brian