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How can the media support calls for general disarmament on one hand (e.g., Libya’s militias) and decry state-sponsored slaughter (e.g., the Qubair massacre) on the other? How hard is it to make a link between the two? “The central Syrian community of Qubair was the scene of the latest massacre, where between 78 and 100 men, women and children died. Details began trickling out Thursday . . . of how the village of only 140 people was surrounded in three directions by pro-regime militants known as Shabiha, and a contingent of government soldiers in tanks and trucks equipped with antiaircraft guns,” myfoxny.com reports. Tanks! Truck! Anti-aircraft guns! What’s that got to do with the right to keep and bear arms? “A barrage of shell and gun fire was followed by door-to-door shootings and stabbings, witnesses said.” When will armchair analysts learn that a balance of power is as good as it gets? Period.

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23 COMMENTS

  1. “When will armchair analysts learn that a balance of power is as good as it gets?”

    When will they care?

  2. A handgun per household with one full magazine would have made it at least a little dangerous for the killers. “Assault weapons” with “high capacity clips” might have given them a decent chance at survival.

  3. Okay. So, the site ate one of my posts. Anyway, not analogous but relevant IMO:

    “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

    I hope the Syrians start killing Assad’s nasty little butchers.

  4. You need to understand something about the self-styled “intellectual” poseurs in America since the days of Woodrow Wilson:

    These people inhabit a world of make-believe, where talk, talk, talk and more talk “solves” problems. Since these people are so terribly well educated, they fancy themselves as the people who will be “solving” problems by talking.

    Admitting that masses of people should have access to arms is the same as admitting that talking doesn’t solve problems, which also assumes that the jaw-flapping intellectuals will be out of loop when decisions are made and problems are actually solved.

    And we can’t have that, can we? What would the graduates of Ivy League schools do for a living if they can’t flap their jaws?

    • +1

      Read a commentary on this issue many years ago. America is divided into two classes: (1) Bedrock America, which consists of people who take responsibility for their own safety, own guns, and see guns as freedom.
      (2) The Chattering Classes, which consists of people who “don’t like” guns and expect the government to make them safe, and believe that their afternoon conversations in chic little Manhattan bistros represent the highest form of civilization.

      • Count me in the bedrock – olde school values, and new school firearms would have leveled the field.

        I’ve yet to see a massacre a t gun range for exactly that reason.

        • Disagree, I do not think that living in an urban setting and eating in bistros and drinking wine is mutually exclusive with taking personal responsibility, gun ownership and freedom.
          My life is cae and point and I’m gradually wearing down my friends and acquaintances with this point of view. I think their fears fall apart when they meet a reasonable and responsible person who owns a gun. I think pure ignorance and xenophobia is at the heart of many staunch anti-gun fears.

        • I know these terms are referring to individuals who represent certain political philosophies. I assume that “Wilsonian” refers to Woodrow Wilson and his style of progressivism, right? Which person and which political leaning does “Jacksonian” refer to?

        • Andrew Jackson and his presidency. This was an era of extension of power and influence to the common man, away from the concentration of power among property-owning elites and bankers.

          Want to see something interesting? Go read up on Jackson’s battle with the bankers. In so doing, you will find out that history really does repeat itself… bankers, left to their own devices, will bankrupt a nation for their own gains. Jackson didn’t agree with this, at the same time he didn’t agree with meddling in the private economy as a policy.

  5. Millions have been killed by governments for the past few hundred years, it’s why they prefer to disarm the people. Saves them money if we don’t fight back. The UN is getting into the game since they see removing the ability to fight back against their despots frees them up for global warming issues and creating new taxes.

  6. If you were to confront those same media people pointing out the massacres and genocides committed by governments or rebel political groups of their own citizens the media types would probably respond with “but we’re not talking about Syria, Cambodia, the Congo etc as we are the violence in America”.

    They can’t imagine America’s government ever evolving so immorally or another sadistic group taking power. Some people just cannot see tomorrow becoming radically different than today and that applies to violence occurring in a first time home intrusion and a massive social-economic collapse.

    • According to my grandmother, my grandparents and great-grandparents felt exactly the same way. My great grandfathers were war vets, they were living in a smart, sophisticated and technical society, and were running successful businesses that were even weathering Great Depression. Whereas Poland, Hungary, the Baltics and even France were rife with anti-Semitism, Germany was seen as much more accepting, and there were many prominent Jews in science, the arts and business – including Nobel prize for Fritz Haber, the man who kept Germany from running out of ammunition in WW I. The new Berlin Neue Synagoge was an architectural triumph.

      Things can change faster than you’d think.

      • “Things can change faster than you’d think.”

        #1

        Back in 1933, I wonder how few had the clear vision to foresee the world ten years later in 1943.

  7. Kind of puts recent events in Venezuela in a disconcerting light.

    Only upside I can see is that it can’t be terribly difficult to get a firearm in South America if you really want one.

  8. what those countries need are social and economic stability. Once that is a given, gun ownership becomes a non issue. Prime example: Switzerland. A country the US should take as an example in quite a few respects.

  9. Islam makes de-escalation rather challenging. Keep in mind that Assad is of the smaller Alawite tribe clamping down on a larger ethnic majority. Syria presents a clear case for majority rule, and mass conversion to something besides Islam.

    • The longer Assad remains in power, the stronger the Islamists become, especially the radical islamic jihadists. Assad should usher in a graceful regime change, before his country explodes around him.

      • Who would he devolve power to? There’s no other significant power in Syria other than the Islamists.

  10. It is sad.. Yet like many other times in history as soon as the populous is unable to stop them the government goes nuts.

  11. I think I see the real point of this article, although it’s well hidden. What happens if Baraq Hussein Obama loses the election? True, the people are well armed, but then so are the police. We’ve all seen how the police are up arming with armored vehicles and military hardware of every description. It’s a kind of silent arms race that should be troubling to every patriot.

    For those who say “it can’t happen here” (which doesn’t describe the armed intelligentsia), I say think again. As for the intelligentsia, armed or otherwise, they are always the first ones to be put against the wall after any revolution.

    • Take some comfort from the fact that hundreds of thousands of active duty military and veterans are deeply patriotic, and most feel the same way you do. Which is one reason a certain political party has been trying for decades to reduce their numbers.

      As for the police, I haven’t met one yet, at least in the rank and file, who favors gun control.

      It would be foolish to say it could never happen here. But realizing it could is probably the first thing that would prevent it.

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