"Doug Winterburn" wrote:

Well, to be country specific, the U.S. has a little thing in our
Constitution called the Second Amendment. Our citizenry has been
(mostly) armed for the last 300 years or so.

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Dave wrote:

I'd suggest that your point was valid those 300 years or so ago.
Society has change quite a bit on 300 years. The firearm is not
necessary for survival, at least not in a food sense. And
considering
the close confines of people in cities, a gun can be a dangerous
thing
to have around.
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"Doug Winterburn" wrote:

Perhaps if you lived as close to the Mexican border as I (and
millions of other legal US citizens) do, you might re-assess the
need for self defense - no matter what our current homeland security
head says about border security. I'm 90 miles north of the border,
and I see signs 3 miles from my house warning me not to venture into
the desert because of human and drug smuggling. This is supposed to
be public land! We have had running gun battles between coyotes
vying for each others smuggled illegals kill innocent travelers on
Interstate 10. We have had ranchers killed on their own property by
drug smugglers. I'd be negligent without a personal firearm to
protect my family and myself!
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Some things are abundantly obvious.

The war on drugs has been an expensive and total failure.

If you want to take over the USA, having an armed citizenry is not
much
of a deterrent.

You don't need firearms to conduct cyber war, hell, you don't even
have
to be in the USA.

You don't need firearms to contaminate the nation's water supply.

You don't need firearms to totally disrupt the transportation systems.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

The days of the Lone Ranger are history.

I don't have a good idea to completely solve the "drug problem";
however, taking the profit out of the "drug problem", is a good
starting point.

It is abundantly clear that the firearms and ammunition
manufacturers are playing the public like a fiddle.

Time to wake up.

Off the box.

Lew