Note how
some US contributors to this thread have changed the argument (and I have summarised rather than respond to specific posts because there are so many):
- The main point at issue has been whether restrictive gun laws,
in the UK, are, on balance, a good thing, given the context of the recent youth riots.
- Generally US contributors have said that the UK laws are not a good thing, since they mean that good citizens are limited in their ability to defend themselves against bad citizens, or against tyrannical government.
- Generally UK contributors have said that the UK laws are a good thing, since they prefer to be unarmed, which is an increasingly untenable position in an armed society, and they believe that the threats of crime and tyranny are better addressed through the normal workings of constitutional monarchy.
So far so reasonable.....
- There has been no comment from Euro contributors (that I have noticed), about the right of US citizens to decide their own gun laws, own guns in the US, or the desirability or feasibility of the US moving to a gun law system similar to that of the UK.
- In contrast, some US contributors have held up the specific premises of the US political system as though they were universal truths: in particular the premises that disarming the people must necessarily lead to tyranny, and that democracy is always just mob rule.
In my view this point of view fails to take into account the specific history, culture and background of different societies. Just because something is "self-evident" to you, it does not make it "self-evident" to everyone else, or for that matter " a fact". But at least these issue should be capable of being addressed by rational discourse with a minimum of rhetoric.
- And yet some US contributors (if the cap fits, wear it) have reacted angrily as though their own rights are under attack in their own country, and resorted to extraordinary vitriol, questioning the age, motivations, courage and and knowledge of those voicing contrary views through a barrage of ad hominem attacks and smears by association. Shame on you!
