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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rackhir" data-source="post: 5712905" data-attributes="member: 149">You seem to think that TV and movies are a basis for how people should handle things. It's possible that I am misunderstanding your position, but from my point of view you haven't really thought through the implications of what you are advocating.A number of years ago, I finally realized why a particular scene in the Dan Akroyd/Tom Hanks "Dragnet" parody, never set well with me. Tom Hanks is torturing this criminal to get a confession, now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's a bad guy and Tom Hanks, is well Tom Hanks. So you KNOW he's a good person. The scene is played for laughs, but it always bothered me and I finally realized why. In movies or TV shows, you almost always know who's the good guys and the bad guys. The camera often shows you the bad guys commiting their crimes with gleeful evil and terrifying the hapless innocent. The good guys almost always do the correct thing and resolve the situation successfully.Real life does NOT work like that. You simply don't always know who's the bad guy and have absolute and unambiguous proof of wrong doing. People do the best they can in a situation and that isn't always the correct thing. Sometimes it makes things much, much worse.Think of all the stupid things you've ever done or seen a friend do. Think of all the people you see every day doing stupid things or driving recklessly. These are the people you want to place absolute faith in the judgment of and in life and death situations.Depending on the average citizen to be ready and able to respond with violence in a threatening situation means that you are almost certainly going to wind up with much more violence and people who will use violence in many more situations.Roger Ebert has a great story that he often tells. About this guy who was bragging about how tough he was and that he carried a gun because "it was a dangerous neighborhood". To which one of his neighbors replied "It would be a lot safer if you moved."You need to sit down and watch the classic Akira Kurosawa movie "Rashomon". There is a reason cops like nice hard evidence like DNA and fingerprints over "eye witness" reports.Also situations where you have 20 reliable witnesses who can all clearly state the guy was a criminal performing a criminal action are generally dealt with quite easily and quickly by the courts. What do you do when it's two people on their own in the middle of the night with no witnesses. One of them is dead and the other says "He attacked me. I was defending myself." That happens a LOT more often.My example was actually Afghanistan, not Iraq. Since they do have a tradition of exactly what you are advocating. They are almost all armed and used to defending themselves. They fought tenaciously against the full force of the USSR and have had a tradition of doing so for hundreds of years.None of that has made it a better place to live by any stretch of the imagination.My point is the weapons and a willingness to use them don't make a society safe. Israel has much of the population armed, trained and willing to use them, but until they and the Palestinians are finally willing to at least tolerate each other, it is never going to be "safe" no matter how ready everyone is to defend themselves or how many weapons they have.Though Iraq also supports my point of view. They had a conscript army so almost all males served and got at least some military training. Households are permitted to have as many pistols as they like and one fully automatic AK-47. In many respects it's NRA fantasy land.None of that made it any more peaceful.Canada has more guns and a lower crime rate. Japan has almost no guns and is extremely safe. In short, its the society that makes people safe. Want to minimize crime. Get potential criminals jobs, a stable family and a decent education. People with a good life and a future aren't typically out there murdering and raping.I've long thought we should have the death penalty for frauds and other economic crimes. I figure over a billion dollars is a nice round number. By that point I figure you inflicted at least as much damage as a murder.</blockquote>

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