David Honig wrote:
At 09:58 PM 11/23/00 -0500, Anonymous wrote:
Apparently because businesses do not use guns.
They are missing the fact that majority of people never encounter/use guns in their life, and that the principal way of behavioural control is propaganda/ideology. Most of the people in the industrial world are directly and tightly controlled by corporations, not governments.
But the threat of coercion is not so abstract: you *do* see guns on the hip of every cop or park ranger you run into.
You might. It's not like that where I live. I don't think I'd ever seen a handgun other than on TV until I was over 20, & that was in a foreign country. I've still never held one. Shotguns yes, people kill birds with them. Rifles - very occasionally with the military or armed police, but most people don't live near military bases & most police don't carry rifles in public. I doubt if I see more than one or two a year (*). Heck. I've had more to do with moonrock than revolvers. Not everywhere is as gun-obsessed as the USA. (Ducks & waits for flammage...) Ken Brown (*) Contrary to popular belief British police *do* use guns, quite a lot, but they don't carry them openly (but check out the patrol cars), they tend to be rifles rather than handguns, they only issue them to specially trained officers (about 1 in 5 in London I think, fewer in other forces), & they always try to ensure that the "first contact" with a suspect is an unarmed police officer. If they think the suspect is armed they tend to try to have a sniper out of sight. Fewer cops get killed that way - 17 in the last 35 years I think. The USA can lose that many in a bad summer.