distro trimmed to rec.crafts.metalworking

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:02:18 -0800 (PST), Dom
wrote:
snip
Don't get me wrong, I think guns are cool. I like them, don't own any
and don't want to. I understand hunters, farmers, collectors, but its
not necessary in Australia for citizens to arm themselves. Thats what
the police are for. I think it is a sad state of affairs that
American society has declined so much that you feel so threatened and
carry weapons to defend yourself.
snip
==========
Chairman Mao was largely correct when he observed "political
power grows out of the barrel of a gun," although not in the way
he meant it.

INMSHO the real question is the ability and desire of the people
to act decisively on their own behalf as required when the
government either can't or won't.

For one example of how this works in practice click on
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/623597.html


for the downside (and liberal view) click on
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/637985.html
Note that again the emphasis is on the "tool" used and not the
root causes, which makes perfect political sense because it is
easy to blame the "tool" and pass legislation but hard/expensive
to address the foundational problems of no employment, social
dislocation, and illegal immigration status, especially as any
foundational changes would disrupt the "business plans" of the
large corporations (i.e. reduce their profits) resulting in
reduced or no corporate campeign contributions for the next
election.

To see the futility of "gun control" [as opposed to
criminal/crime control] review the UK papers for "gun crime."

Indeed, things have reached such a sorry state there that a
Scottish homeowner was just imprisoned for longer than the
burglar after he awoke and beat the crap out of a burglar he
discovered in his and his wife's bedroom when he was awakened.

These problems will continue to grow as long as the
socio-economic groups that generate most of the criminals
continue to increase as a percent of the population, whether due
to mental capacity/lack of education, and/or immigration status,
and/or "luck of the draw" in the economic sweep stakes.

A metric called the GINI index or coefficient measures the
distribution of wealth [and the method is often used to measure
the distribution of other items such as health care.] The range
is 0 indicating perfect equality to 1 indicating perfect
inequality, i.e. one person has everything.

The US has the highest GINI of any of the OECD nations, and it
continues to rapidly increase approaching third world levels in
the national aggregate, and is well in to 3rd world values in
many large urban areas such as Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Statistically, quality of life metrics such as the rate of crimes
against persons and crimes against property are *HIGHLY*
correlated with the GINI income [inequality] index. IMNSHO the
US is dangerously near the "tipping point" as indicated by the
experiences [and GINI indexes] of Brazil, Argentina and Columbia.
Their situations took generates to create and will most like take
generations to correct.