CDR: Re: Jim Bell arrested documents online

Ken Brown k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk
Mon Nov 27 06:23:24 PST 2000


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.






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