7 ms·

While that threat maybe real, a man in his car with his partner and 4 year old child, is not likely to be a threat on the same scale. What is a threat is gun o

by junto 10y ago

While that threat maybe real, a man in his car with his partner and 4 year old child, is not likely to be a threat on the same scale. What is a threat is gun ownership. British police do not expect to be threatened with a firearm, or shot on a routine traffic stop. In the US, the police have to expect that as normality. Now I know there are a lot of US citizens who believe in the right to bear arms, and many more militant NRA members believe that is more about defending themselves from the state, but if you take a step back, they've already lost that fight long ago. The state already tramples over their rights, and there are no armed militias matching on Washington to overthrow the corrupt and over controlling state. I truly don't understand that argument.

konschubert 10y ago
Exactly. In most parts of the world, law enforcement has a power leverage because officers are armed, and the public is not. (Yes, even criminals are usually unarmed unless they are intending to commit a crime. This is because wearing a weapon outs them as criminals, which they naturally try to avoid.) If you want to deescalate the war between law enforcement and the public, you must not only change the way the law enforcement interprets its duty, you must also disarm the public.
- a_humean 10y ago
  In the UK the vast majority (don't know the hard figure, but guessing something like 95%) of police are unarmed with the exception of maybe pepper spray or the occasional blunt stick (I think even that is less common now). Only a small minority of police in the UK are even trained in firearms, and they are meant to be the elite (physically, psychologically, and morally) with years of experience and countless hours of recurring training. UK police, in principle, try to operate via a community policing and policing by consent principle that assumes cooperation and negotiation as the norm of police work with coercive force as only a very last resort. UK police don't use the threat of force as leverage as explicitly as you are suggesting, and they very very rarely have guns. Our police force isn't perfect, and is far from having a spotless record with minority groups, but they do represent an alternative model of policing that doesn't have to be about the threat or show of force. Police are meant to be about enabling civilian self-policing; not military occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
  - throwaway049 10y ago
    UK police almost always carry a collapsible metal baton and pepper spray.
  - boot82050 10y ago
    YES indeed also UK police does this for years no problems no civil executions.. I hope this will someday become the standard in my country as well.
- geggam 10y ago
  Disarming the public works so well in Mexico, Belgium, France and other places where shootings happened recently... just like making drugs illegal stopped that ... or alcohol * sarcasm* ... what actually does work is fixing the social problems which cause people to want to shoot others mental health being #1 lil chart for you http://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/ http://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-...
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Most of the people shot and killed in the US were not killed by someone with a mental illness. On the other hand, about half the people shot and killed by police in the US had mental illness, which suggests US police need better training.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Mass shootings make up about 1% of the annual firearm homicide rate in the US per year. Arguing by using mass shootings as your base is almost exactly the wrong way to go about it. Even in the context of this thread - police having to fear a citizen being armed - it's not appropriate. A cop fearing a citizen with a gun is fearing for their own safety, not that the citizen will go on a mass shooting spree. It's also worth noting that France's homicide rate is about 30% that of the US's, and the US homicide rate is 75% due to firearms. US firearm homicide, per capita, is significantly larger than France's homicide rate from all causes.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Did you ever watch Oldboy? Did you notice that the criminals in it- are armed with hammers, knifes and wooden clubs? That is because of a very tight weapons control in south Korea. If a society has weapons not wildly available- criminals don't have them wildly available. And you can sit in your car, waiting for the officer to ask for your papers, only to live in fear that you might be shot for scratching your head, because some poor guy in the trenches prefers coming home at night with lots of paperwork and his face on national TV to not coming home ever again.
corin_ 10y ago
Just because people currently don't hate the government enough to match on Washington with guns, it doesn't mean that if things get worse they won't ever do it, so the argument for keeping that as an option is still valid. (N.B. I'm not American, and am entirely against gun ownership being a right, so I don't think the argument is a worthy one regardless)
- pjc50 10y ago
  No, people hate the government (or at least the police) enough to start sniping police officers at random. I don't think the people advocating guns as a check against the government have thought for a moment what it actually looks like in practice. It looks like Dallas at the moment, only more so.
  - vacri 10y ago
    I think a lot of them think that it will be "militias in the woods against the national guard, winning through guts and woodsmanship" or something, conjuring up images of units v units battles from two centuries ago, rather than the pattern seen all over the world for the past couple of decades - urban guerilla strikes. The people won't fight the army, because it's not the army that's directing their lives. The police are the most visible authority of the government to the domestic population, so if the 2nd amendment is to be used in it's original intent, it will look like Dallas as you say, and not some paintball woodlands adventure on steroids. Two centuries ago, the government sent units in ships over the sea from a foreign land. In the modern era, the government is composed of the same citizens that dream of fighting it. Nothing will change, though. Unless a rash of copycat crimes happens, there'll just be the same speeches by the same talking heads, and it won't make a lick of difference.
  - splintercell 10y ago
    > I don't think the people advocating guns as a check against the government have thought for a moment what it actually looks like in practice. It looks like Dallas at the moment, only more so. I am pretty sure they have. I don't think you understand how serious situation will be in America if there is a serious threat to gun rights. I believe this is in part because both the groups (pro-gun and anti-gun) are segregated. So anti-gunners don't comprehend how serious things could turn out. However they(mostly whites) expect this kind of scenario to happen if there is an Australia style gun grab. Also don't forget that there are black militia groups in America too (esp in Texas) for instance Huey P Newton Gun Club[1]. At least one black militia group has taken responsibility for these attacks[2], and made a call for more people to get guns and join them. 1. https://hueypnewtongunclub.wordpress.com/ https://hueypnewtongunclub.wordpress.com/ 2. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooting-black-power-8378177 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooti...
cmiles74 10y ago
I do think there is a segment of gun owners who see themselves as part of some loosely knit "militia". Reading posts on Facebook or comments on stories on my local newspaper's website, there definitely seems to be a belief that if the federal government (or state) goes too far, they will all ban together to "defend their rights". IMHO, even things like "pry my gun from my cold dead hands" plays into this idea. I agree with you that they have lost that battle. I don't think this is something that, on average, they realize or acknowledge or maybe even understand.
- splintercell 10y ago
  > I agree with you that they have lost that battle. Considering the group which has taken the responsibility for this attack[1], is a militia organization, I'd say that 2nd amendment is already being exercised by a minority which feels that they are being targeted systematically by the same group of people who are sworn to protect them. The only difference is that they don't tout second amendment, but founding fathers envisioned precisely these scenarios when they advocated for 2A. > Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes.< - James Madison, Federalist Papers 46[2] 1. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooting-black-power-8378177 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooti... 2. http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm
untog 10y ago
It's a triumph of rhetoric over facts, something the UK has shown itself to also be adept at lately. At this point I don't see how it can ever be solved. Even if the US banned gun sales tomorrow there would still be so many firearms out there. Best case, they can try to limit the sales of assault weapons (though there is no definition of that) and closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc.
- GVIrish 10y ago
  > closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc. It's not that buying a gun at a gun show magically means you don't need a background check. It's that buying a gun from a private individual rather than a dealer doesn't require a background check. Any dealer selling firearms at a gun show has to perform background checks. I do think at the least the law can be changed so the police require background checks for all transactions at gun shows. But the bigger problem is person to person gun sales and transfers outside of the easy view of the law. How do you require a background check if someone buys a gun from a guy they know or a relative gifts a gun?
  - skybrian 10y ago
    A first step would be to make it easy for private sellers to verify that a background check has been done. It should be as easy as getting a credit report.
    - GVIrish 10y ago
      Yeah I think if you gave private sellers a way to do that, many would do it voluntarily. I just don't know how you require it. Maybe you could hold someone legally responsible if they commit a crime with a firearm you sold them if you didn't perform the check. But to do that you'd need a national registry of firearms which many vehemently oppose.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > Best case, they can try to limit the sales of assault weapons (though there is no definition of that) and closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc. The problem with both of these proposals is that they're ridiculous. Around 95% of shootings in the US are with handguns. Prohibiting some rifles based on cosmetic characteristics is not useful. (But still very irritating since they're quite popular with non-murderers.) The "gun show loophole" has nothing to do with gun shows. Anyone in the business of selling firearms is required to do a background check. What it's referring to is that a private person can e.g. sell a rifle to a hunting buddy without a background check. Which keeps coming up because the statistics make it easy to mislead people. A significant percentage of firearm transfers end up not requiring a background check because they're private, but it's because there are so many transfers between friends and family, not because there are so many criminals buying firearms at gun shows. The problem is fundamentally this. Most of the people who commit the mass shootings that make the news would actually pass the background check. The people who don't pass are the drug dealers but the drug dealers get their guns the same way they get their drugs. Canada has a lot of guns but very few homicides. Mexico has strict gun restrictions and twice the firearm-related homicides per capita as the US. The solution isn't gun laws.
reitoei 10y ago
> British police do not expect to be threatened with a firearm, or shot on a routine traffic stop. In the US, the police have to expect that as normality. Why? It doesn't happen.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Eh, saying this right after Dallas might be the worst possible time.
GVIrish 10y ago
> Now I know there are a lot of US citizens who believe in the right to bear arms, and many more militant NRA members believe that is more about defending themselves from the state, but if you take a step back, they've already lost that fight long ago. The state already tramples over their rights, and there are no armed militias matching on Washington to overthrow the corrupt and over controlling state. I truly don't understand that argument. Taking up arms against the government is a measure of last resort. The human cost would be extraordinarily high if people decided to solve political and legal problems with violence on a national scale. Right now there are a number of problems with citizen rights getting trampled in the US on but we're not at a point where working through our political systems is totally worthless, nor are we at a point where the whole system should be burnt down and started over. The existence of the 2nd amendment means that those with power have to respect the fact that they are vastly outnumbered and outgunned (100 million gun owners vs. maybe 2-3 million law enforcement and military combined). Would be tyrants would have a lot more to think about with an armed populace, than an unarmed populace. Now of course Americans pay a high cost for the 2nd amendment and that shouldn't be discounted. But it is a last ditch deterrent against an abusive government.
- junto 10y ago
  > Now of course Americans pay a high cost for the 2nd amendment and that shouldn't be discounted. But it is a last ditch deterrent against an abusive government. I still think this is a fallacy. Most people are willing sheep in a system where they can be controlled and manipulated. It will never come to the last ditch deterrent. A great example was the Nazi propaganda machine. During the Nuremberg Trials, Gustave Gilbert the American psychologist, talked to many high ranking Nazi's including Hermann Göring. In his Nuremberg Diaries, he outlines a conversation with Göring, that shows just how any population can be propelled to accept almost anything as long as they perceive that their own freedom and well-being is under threat. Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. This last comment is so apt to the world we live in today. The war against terrorism. The militarisation of our police forces. If you take this further, the 2nd Amendment, regardless of the actual threat of an abusive government, can easily be neutralised by effective propaganda. Joseph Goebbels said much the same: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." He also said this about the press: "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play." The Nazis enabled an entire nation, with but a handful of dissenters, to go to war with the rest of Europe. At the time the German public believed that they were doing the right thing to protect their own sovereignty, however warped those reasons might seem today. The thought that the American public could ever be persuaded to rise up against their own government, with the vast array of tools that they (the government) currently wield, is a false hope (in my opinion).

by junto 10y ago

konschubert 10y ago

Exactly. In most parts of the world, law enforcement has a power leverage because officers are armed, and the public is not. (Yes, even criminals are usually unarmed unless they are intending to commit a crime. This is because wearing a weapon outs them as criminals, which they naturally try to avoid.) If you want to deescalate the war between law enforcement and the public, you must not only change the way the law enforcement interprets its duty, you must also disarm the public.

a_humean 10y ago
In the UK the vast majority (don't know the hard figure, but guessing something like 95%) of police are unarmed with the exception of maybe pepper spray or the occasional blunt stick (I think even that is less common now). Only a small minority of police in the UK are even trained in firearms, and they are meant to be the elite (physically, psychologically, and morally) with years of experience and countless hours of recurring training. UK police, in principle, try to operate via a community policing and policing by consent principle that assumes cooperation and negotiation as the norm of police work with coercive force as only a very last resort. UK police don't use the threat of force as leverage as explicitly as you are suggesting, and they very very rarely have guns. Our police force isn't perfect, and is far from having a spotless record with minority groups, but they do represent an alternative model of policing that doesn't have to be about the threat or show of force. Police are meant to be about enabling civilian self-policing; not military occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
- throwaway049 10y ago
  UK police almost always carry a collapsible metal baton and pepper spray.
- boot82050 10y ago
  YES indeed also UK police does this for years no problems no civil executions.. I hope this will someday become the standard in my country as well.
geggam 10y ago
Disarming the public works so well in Mexico, Belgium, France and other places where shootings happened recently... just like making drugs illegal stopped that ... or alcohol * sarcasm* ... what actually does work is fixing the social problems which cause people to want to shoot others mental health being #1 lil chart for you http://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/ http://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-...
- DanBC 10y ago
  Most of the people shot and killed in the US were not killed by someone with a mental illness. On the other hand, about half the people shot and killed by police in the US had mental illness, which suggests US police need better training.
- vacri 10y ago
  Mass shootings make up about 1% of the annual firearm homicide rate in the US per year. Arguing by using mass shootings as your base is almost exactly the wrong way to go about it. Even in the context of this thread - police having to fear a citizen being armed - it's not appropriate. A cop fearing a citizen with a gun is fearing for their own safety, not that the citizen will go on a mass shooting spree. It's also worth noting that France's homicide rate is about 30% that of the US's, and the US homicide rate is 75% due to firearms. US firearm homicide, per capita, is significantly larger than France's homicide rate from all causes.
Pica_soO 10y ago
Did you ever watch Oldboy? Did you notice that the criminals in it- are armed with hammers, knifes and wooden clubs? That is because of a very tight weapons control in south Korea. If a society has weapons not wildly available- criminals don't have them wildly available. And you can sit in your car, waiting for the officer to ask for your papers, only to live in fear that you might be shot for scratching your head, because some poor guy in the trenches prefers coming home at night with lots of paperwork and his face on national TV to not coming home ever again.

corin_ 10y ago

Just because people currently don't hate the government enough to match on Washington with guns, it doesn't mean that if things get worse they won't ever do it, so the argument for keeping that as an option is still valid. (N.B. I'm not American, and am entirely against gun ownership being a right, so I don't think the argument is a worthy one regardless)

pjc50 10y ago
No, people hate the government (or at least the police) enough to start sniping police officers at random. I don't think the people advocating guns as a check against the government have thought for a moment what it actually looks like in practice. It looks like Dallas at the moment, only more so.
- vacri 10y ago
  I think a lot of them think that it will be "militias in the woods against the national guard, winning through guts and woodsmanship" or something, conjuring up images of units v units battles from two centuries ago, rather than the pattern seen all over the world for the past couple of decades - urban guerilla strikes. The people won't fight the army, because it's not the army that's directing their lives. The police are the most visible authority of the government to the domestic population, so if the 2nd amendment is to be used in it's original intent, it will look like Dallas as you say, and not some paintball woodlands adventure on steroids. Two centuries ago, the government sent units in ships over the sea from a foreign land. In the modern era, the government is composed of the same citizens that dream of fighting it. Nothing will change, though. Unless a rash of copycat crimes happens, there'll just be the same speeches by the same talking heads, and it won't make a lick of difference.
- splintercell 10y ago
  > I don't think the people advocating guns as a check against the government have thought for a moment what it actually looks like in practice. It looks like Dallas at the moment, only more so. I am pretty sure they have. I don't think you understand how serious situation will be in America if there is a serious threat to gun rights. I believe this is in part because both the groups (pro-gun and anti-gun) are segregated. So anti-gunners don't comprehend how serious things could turn out. However they(mostly whites) expect this kind of scenario to happen if there is an Australia style gun grab. Also don't forget that there are black militia groups in America too (esp in Texas) for instance Huey P Newton Gun Club[1]. At least one black militia group has taken responsibility for these attacks[2], and made a call for more people to get guns and join them. 1. https://hueypnewtongunclub.wordpress.com/ https://hueypnewtongunclub.wordpress.com/ 2. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooting-black-power-8378177 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooti...

cmiles74 10y ago

I do think there is a segment of gun owners who see themselves as part of some loosely knit "militia". Reading posts on Facebook or comments on stories on my local newspaper's website, there definitely seems to be a belief that if the federal government (or state) goes too far, they will all ban together to "defend their rights". IMHO, even things like "pry my gun from my cold dead hands" plays into this idea. I agree with you that they have lost that battle. I don't think this is something that, on average, they realize or acknowledge or maybe even understand.

splintercell 10y ago
> I agree with you that they have lost that battle. Considering the group which has taken the responsibility for this attack[1], is a militia organization, I'd say that 2nd amendment is already being exercised by a minority which feels that they are being targeted systematically by the same group of people who are sworn to protect them. The only difference is that they don't tout second amendment, but founding fathers envisioned precisely these scenarios when they advocated for 2A. > Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes.< - James Madison, Federalist Papers 46[2] 1. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooting-black-power-8378177 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dallas-police-shooti... 2. http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm

untog 10y ago

It's a triumph of rhetoric over facts, something the UK has shown itself to also be adept at lately. At this point I don't see how it can ever be solved. Even if the US banned gun sales tomorrow there would still be so many firearms out there. Best case, they can try to limit the sales of assault weapons (though there is no definition of that) and closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc.

GVIrish 10y ago
> closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc. It's not that buying a gun at a gun show magically means you don't need a background check. It's that buying a gun from a private individual rather than a dealer doesn't require a background check. Any dealer selling firearms at a gun show has to perform background checks. I do think at the least the law can be changed so the police require background checks for all transactions at gun shows. But the bigger problem is person to person gun sales and transfers outside of the easy view of the law. How do you require a background check if someone buys a gun from a guy they know or a relative gifts a gun?
- skybrian 10y ago
  A first step would be to make it easy for private sellers to verify that a background check has been done. It should be as easy as getting a credit report.
  - GVIrish 10y ago
    Yeah I think if you gave private sellers a way to do that, many would do it voluntarily. I just don't know how you require it. Maybe you could hold someone legally responsible if they commit a crime with a firearm you sold them if you didn't perform the check. But to do that you'd need a national registry of firearms which many vehemently oppose.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> Best case, they can try to limit the sales of assault weapons (though there is no definition of that) and closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc. The problem with both of these proposals is that they're ridiculous. Around 95% of shootings in the US are with handguns. Prohibiting some rifles based on cosmetic characteristics is not useful. (But still very irritating since they're quite popular with non-murderers.) The "gun show loophole" has nothing to do with gun shows. Anyone in the business of selling firearms is required to do a background check. What it's referring to is that a private person can e.g. sell a rifle to a hunting buddy without a background check. Which keeps coming up because the statistics make it easy to mislead people. A significant percentage of firearm transfers end up not requiring a background check because they're private, but it's because there are so many transfers between friends and family, not because there are so many criminals buying firearms at gun shows. The problem is fundamentally this. Most of the people who commit the mass shootings that make the news would actually pass the background check. The people who don't pass are the drug dealers but the drug dealers get their guns the same way they get their drugs. Canada has a lot of guns but very few homicides. Mexico has strict gun restrictions and twice the firearm-related homicides per capita as the US. The solution isn't gun laws.

reitoei 10y ago

> British police do not expect to be threatened with a firearm, or shot on a routine traffic stop. In the US, the police have to expect that as normality. Why? It doesn't happen.

kuschku 10y ago
Eh, saying this right after Dallas might be the worst possible time.

GVIrish 10y ago

> Now I know there are a lot of US citizens who believe in the right to bear arms, and many more militant NRA members believe that is more about defending themselves from the state, but if you take a step back, they've already lost that fight long ago. The state already tramples over their rights, and there are no armed militias matching on Washington to overthrow the corrupt and over controlling state. I truly don't understand that argument. Taking up arms against the government is a measure of last resort. The human cost would be extraordinarily high if people decided to solve political and legal problems with violence on a national scale. Right now there are a number of problems with citizen rights getting trampled in the US on but we're not at a point where working through our political systems is totally worthless, nor are we at a point where the whole system should be burnt down and started over. The existence of the 2nd amendment means that those with power have to respect the fact that they are vastly outnumbered and outgunned (100 million gun owners vs. maybe 2-3 million law enforcement and military combined). Would be tyrants would have a lot more to think about with an armed populace, than an unarmed populace. Now of course Americans pay a high cost for the 2nd amendment and that shouldn't be discounted. But it is a last ditch deterrent against an abusive government.

junto 10y ago
> Now of course Americans pay a high cost for the 2nd amendment and that shouldn't be discounted. But it is a last ditch deterrent against an abusive government. I still think this is a fallacy. Most people are willing sheep in a system where they can be controlled and manipulated. It will never come to the last ditch deterrent. A great example was the Nazi propaganda machine. During the Nuremberg Trials, Gustave Gilbert the American psychologist, talked to many high ranking Nazi's including Hermann Göring. In his Nuremberg Diaries, he outlines a conversation with Göring, that shows just how any population can be propelled to accept almost anything as long as they perceive that their own freedom and well-being is under threat. Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. This last comment is so apt to the world we live in today. The war against terrorism. The militarisation of our police forces. If you take this further, the 2nd Amendment, regardless of the actual threat of an abusive government, can easily be neutralised by effective propaganda. Joseph Goebbels said much the same: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." He also said this about the press: "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play." The Nazis enabled an entire nation, with but a handful of dissenters, to go to war with the rest of Europe. At the time the German public believed that they were doing the right thing to protect their own sovereignty, however warped those reasons might seem today. The thought that the American public could ever be persuaded to rise up against their own government, with the vast array of tools that they (the government) currently wield, is a false hope (in my opinion).