A vastly over simplistic view. and almost wrong.

I described a major conflict in two sentences…the intent was to be simplistic!.

You’ll probably find the truth is that poodle Blair sent us in there to keep his mate GWB happy and we all know that the American political system is financed by armaments manufacturers, so they have to have a shooting match going on to keep the manufacturers in business.

Idiotic drivel.

The sooner the coalition realise Afghanistan is not winnable and get their forces home the better.

Of course Afghanistan is winnable. We stay there for long enough that the concept of the homogenous nation-state with a centralised political leadership takes hold with the populace then we’ve won. It will take two generations or so to happen, but, to say its unwinnable is plain wrong.

Besides what hope have we got against people who, in the absence of anyone else to fight, will fight among themselves?

See above point – we need to get them to a position where they develop their own authorities and institutions to reach a better standard of living. The alternative is that we pull out, tail tucked firmly between the legs, leave the same leadership vacuum that the Soviets did and watch while history repeats itself. The Taleban come back, declare a victory over NATO that eclipses the Mujahadeen’s defeat of the Soviets, and throw the door open for Al Qaeda to get back in the terrorist training business full time. Who do you think pays the price when that happens Mike?.

Not wanting to drag this out, but once again, just because the UK has not had conscription for many a decade does not mean that the ordinary civilian in other countries (ie Yugoslavia) were labouring under the same constrictions.

OK no-one else is taking up the original point so I’ll continue the departure-from-controlled-debate and beg the courts indulgence for just one more point!.

Willhelm you have to accept that what you are actually saying here is that IF the armed populace has had military training and can get access to military weapons then it is a threat to its governing regime. In otherwords that if the insurgents are soldiers and armed like soldiers then they can be successful!!!.

That is far removed from a point about a general armed populace presenting a threat to its political leadership. The discussion I was having was addressing an American citizen making an observation based on his right to bear arms. In that context the status of the population as armed or not is insignificant when compared to the loyalty of the armed forces of that country. On a local level, where the terrain favours the irregular, holdout pockets would doubtless survive but, in any strategic sense, no civil insurrection in the US could be anywhere near successful without the support or, at least, apathy of the armed forces.

There will be nations where that is different…some states in Africa the only difference between the army and the public is the clothes they wear. In some nations the civil populace are the constituent parts of the standing infantry etc. The point generally holds though where the Army holds loyal to the regime in power then an untrained civil opposition will not succeed armed or otherwise.

I edited my original post as It was too long, but it actually addressed that which is my whole point:

Jonesy … do you know how they appropriated that military weaponry?;):dev2: (They weren’t armed with plastic picnic spoons…;))

The fact is that they fought against oppression, and had the means to do it by being armed at the beginning with hunting rifles, pistols and shotguns, allowing themselves to initially fight back and raid military depots to arm themselves better.

Hence why I think your post was in error IMHO.:)

Hmmm I tend to think the general concept of, untrained, civillians with pistols and shotguns storming military depots that are defended by military personnel with heavy weaponry is one of those things that is best left as a delusion for those who support the notion of the ‘armed citizenry’.

My beliefs on how military weapons reached circulation in those instances where civillians have engaged military forces do not include 12-gauges going up against armour, but, are rather less dramatic. My view is that, in the main, sympathisers simply passed weapons out of depots to any bands that appeared organised enough to use them. That in itself being nothing to do with the presence or absence of ‘armed citizenry’.

This thread is probably not the place to discuss that though so I’m happy to draw a line under this noting our difference of opinion!. 🙂

Not wanting to go off topic but that’s quite a simplistic generalisation IMHO.

Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s is just one example off the top of my head that show that you are mistaken in this regard.

A generalisation to be sure but I did say “your armed populace will do nothing more than die in hideously large numbers in the ensuing confrontation” and as a statement goes I think that the Yugoslavia example you note proves the point quite adequately. I’d further make the observation that it wasn’t members of the general public with 12 gauges and .38 specials that caused an impact in the actions in the FRY, but, civillians with appropriated military weaponry.

Sorry to carry on the off-topic tangent for everyone else!.

It wouldn’t be a toll bridge, would it? 😀

In an outrageous fit of irony I used to use that bridge twice a day last year taking my eldest girl to school!. Always thought it seemed a nice little earner for someone!. Used to be 20p a go to use it!.

Why are we there ?

Short answer is to stop the place being run by the Taleban. This being bad because they, the Taleban, are quite happy to see their territory used as a base of ops for all manner of people who dont like us very much and are quite handy with explosives, airliners and the suchlike.

Chuck

But that’s just here, where gun loving crazy hicks like myself have no fear of an armed populace.

Wonderful American fantasies as usual. We aren’t afraid of having an ‘armed populace’ we just dont like the price that comes with it – at least in the American model.

We also aren’t stupid enough to to think we still live in the late 19th century and that an armed populace counts for anything either. If your government keeps control of the army, while your heroic armed populace raises up to defend its freedoms, your armed populace will do nothing more than die in hideously large numbers in the ensuing confrontation. You have the army on the peoples side and it matters not a whit whether the general populace is armed or not.

Anyway, regardless of this, the point at issue in this case is not UK gun law or ownership. If the UK had permissive gun laws this guy would still have done the wrong thing by ‘picking up’ a ‘dumped’ weapon. We know you have forensics in the US because all the TV that comes from the US these days seems to have a lab, a few halfway attractive scientists and a decomposing yank or two!. I dont think the good folks at CSI Springfield would be too happy at you stowing away a firearm dumped on your property under suspicious circumstances – would they?!.

But we have had similar stories in the states like this one, where law abiding people get snared in some BS laws and it quite frankly really irritates me when it does.

….and thats the problem – you are trying to make this fit a story you recognise and you dont understand that this isnt the situation here. Understand that the important point is as much how the shotgun came to be ‘in the guys garden’ as what he later did with it.

ATFS would have you believe that he was just a poor hardworking, phoneless, gardner struggling mightily to do the right thing and being struck down by the insidious gun-withholding UK beaurocracy. If you want to swallow that…..I have this nice bridge I can sell you!

Wouldn’t that depend on the circumstance? Perhaps he didn’t have a phone to call from? Perhaps he didn’t want to leave the gun unattended as he went to report it.

It sounds like he’d been working in the garden and he may have been hot and tired and his judgment may have been affected so he may have not made the best decision. He may have panicked or been scared or may have been excited by the find and the emotion may have also contributed to him apparently not making the best decision. Do you always make the best decisions? I don’t know of anyone that does.

I’m trying to work out if this is perverse spin or genuinely the most illuminating piece of naievete that I’ve seen in a while.

Perhaps, where you live, shotguns are found casually discarded in peoples gardens regularly. We dont tend to get a lot of it over here….the odd crisp packet, chocolate wrapper etc sure…..12 gauge shotguns not so often though. Finding a discarded shotgun would be considered a big issue to the local Constabulary as the reasons for firearms being dumped in this country are usually few in number. We dont enjoy the ready access to guns that others do so people dont tend to pitch them over the neighbours hedge if they dont quite match the new decor etc. They tend to be dumped after being used in the commission of crime.

So we have a suspect firearm in the possession of someone known to have come to the attention of the authorities and, instead of alerting those authorities so that a proper investigation could be made as to how this weapon came to be where it was ‘found’ it is moved from its ‘surprise’ resting place, transported through a public area and plonked on the desk at the local cop shop. Nothing here is just sounding the slightest bit dodgy to you ATFS?.

By picking up the gun he was breaking the law; however if he would’ve left the gun unattended and it fell into nefarious hands because he left it unattended then wouldn’t that be worse? It was probably a bad decision to pick up the gun because it could possibly be considered tampering with evidence. However to leave a gun and ammunition around unsecured and unsupervised could be considered public endangerment. So there necessarily isn’t no perfect answer.

Perhaps the very simple expedient of warning those neighbours who had access to the garden to prevent their kids entering and touching the bag would be sufficient to ensure security of the weapon for the minutes it would take for plod to arrive on scene. Then having a neighbour make the phone call or even wander off to a local phone box (if no-one in a mile radius had access to a phone – you never know do you?!), while he kept a watching brief over the weapon, would address that issue – anything but the wholly idiotic process of ‘innocently’ carrying the weapon through a public place.

That is, of course, IF the weapon was ever in a bag at the bottom of his garden and wasn’t, in fact, passed to him to ‘innocently’ hand in to the local force as a way of getting rid of a weapon that his associates may not wish to be have been found with!. Cant get much in the way of ballistics off a weapon that has no rifling can you?.