fpb | Shots were fired at the rescuers in the New Orleans superdome

The only thing I can say is an Ed Wood quote:

"You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!"

The truth, of course, is that if the government ever managed to get itself in the position where armed resistance were necessary, there is no way on God's green Earth that any amount of brave civilians, even armed with assault rifles, could do anything against a modern professional army. But these fantasies feed Americans' attachment to their killing tools.

there is no way on God's green Earth that any amount of brave civilians, even armed with assault rifles, could do anything against a modern professional army.

Depends on how fast civilians are able to learn to change into guerrillas. Last decade proved that although they're unlikely to win, they can make hell of a trouble.

A member of my f-list wrote a very angry comment on people who criticized the American attitude to firearms, which I cannot help feeling is not casual just after I published this remark. And to show just how rational and reasonable and open to debate their fondness for people-killing tools really is, he has locked the comments facility.

I cannot say that this further evidence of openness and rationality makes the thought of American "right to bear arms" any more comfortable to me.

You know my stance on guns: I detest them, plain and clear. Put them in the hands of the undereducated and over-egotistical and it just gets deadly. I know people who've died from a mixture of guns and stupidity: a guy in the grade above me in primary school was killed when his girlfriend thought his gun was a toy and shot him in jest. There is no reason why anyone apart from the police, the military and those in rural communities need guns.

Yes, F. I was venting. I wasn't looking for a debate. I was looking to vent. Events here in the country I currently call home are quite distressing enough for me, and that's without natural disasters added.

I locked the comments because I was using my journal for venting, as is the prerogative of those utilising LJ. I use it rarely, but when I do I have reasons. Often those reasons aren't my close-mindedness and wanton desire for killing, torture and violence against others... despite what you may think (or at least intimate to others).

One day we may have an in-depth conversation about firearms, people, stupidity, violent crime and all that, but it's not going to be while I am stressing over friends and family in Louisiana and Alabama. Any rational and resonable person knows that's not the best time to try to. So please lay off the "I cannot say that this further evidence of openness and rationality makes the thought of American "right to bear arms" any more comfortable to me", and let's have agree to have this debate another time. Deal?

No, I'm afraid, no deal. However much it may annoy you. Because the point is that anyone who owns a people-killing tool owns it all the time: when he is happy and when he is sad, when he is optimistic and when he is depressed, when he is angry or when he is calm. And in any mood, in any circumstance, the only thing that the people-killing tool does is kill. Or at least injure. I have said what I have said because I live in another country and there is an ocean between us. If I were in the US, I would not feel very happy about saying it in a country where there are more guns than people and not all the people are quite sane.

And I would point out that if you use your LJ to vent, a right I do not in the lest deny you, you are a bit unreasonable in not expecting me to use mine to vent from my point of view. Those people who shot on the rescue helicopters were not terrorists. They were normal Americans trying to get out - and using force to get their way.

Quite right. That's why I didn't post my vent in your LJ. I knew you were making an observation of your own and may not have been looking for a debate on the matter, only venturing your view. I vented in mine because I knew I wasn't going on all-thrusters logic and reason. I was in a bad mood already, made none the better because people were shooting at rescue helicopters in a disaster zone, and I just had to get it out of system before it made me feel worse. I did it on my own dime, not yours.

Interestinly, is I remember well, the Second Amendment says sth like: "well organized militia should be kept by each state, blah, blah". So far so good: if every gun owner can tell me his squad's commander's name, and whose the platoon leader and company commander, and how often they drill and how often they go for shooting practice, and who's responsible for kitchens and food supplies and cars and fuel and what is their designed network of communication - all of which can be organized using civilian supplies only, but be ready if the "militia unit" is ready, then I'll say, okay man, keep your gun.

In fact this would be exactly what poor New orlean would need right now: well organized militia units, which would tak care of looting, directed searches, provided cover (and fire-cover if necessary) for medics, guarded checkpoints and hospitals and let the police grasp a few hours of sleep.

But I can't see any militia. Armed mobsters, yes, but that's very poor substitute.

You are exactly right. What the second amendment describes is a citizen army of the Swiss kind, where the public is entrusted with guns only for the public good. And while in general I oppose reading of Constitutions that are time-specific, it is all too clear that the context of this Amendment is very local and transient - the experience of the use of foreign British and mercenary troops to defend American soil, a defence which soon turned into pressure against the Americans themselves. The whole notion has no place in modern America, and indeed it was never really set into action even in the earliest days: the Continental Army was shaped by Washington into a standing army - not perhaps the most effective of its time, but a regular army capable of being sent wherever Congress and Washington needed, from New England all the way to Yorktown, Virginia. And so it went; for most of its history, America did not have much of an army, but in so far as it had one at all, it was a regular, professional army. The concept of the militia was stillborn, leaving behind only a citizenship armed to the teeth to little constructive purpose.

Indeed, until at least the end of the Civil War, gun ownership in the US was extremely low. Have you read Garry Wills on this?

Yes, but I did not want to quote something where I did not have access to the specific figures. It does seem that Americans now own more guns per head of population than at any time in their history.

Each state actually does have a miltia. They are under the command of state commandants/generals (I can't recall the precise terms. I think they vary state to state.) and the governors. They are frequently blended into National Guard forces that are sent into their respective states, usually after natural disasters.

We must at any rate not forget that NO has always been notorious for some of the most corrupt local government in the United States - which is saying something. There is in all this - understaffed and overworked police, inefficient civilian protection, a city sprawled across flood areas - something of the chicken coming home to roost.

Very true. Luisiana in general has almost always been "on its own", much to thje envy of its neighbor, Texas. The Napoleonic Code is still the order of the day, to a large extent (and the only place in the US), and the corruption and graft in NO government is legendary, to the point Chicago and New York (and even Washington, DC) are jealous.

Poor planning, very bad civilian attitudes and a lackluster local government caused this catastrophe -- which was a long time coming. The hurricane only made it apparent.

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The media are only giving part of the truth. All race and social groups are stuck down there in a bad way.

The notion that the poor and the non-white can't leave a city is flatly ludicrous. Two of my neighbor's have relatives had sense to leave New Orleans two days prior to landfall. They're black. They're elderly, too. And they're poor. Latonya said they told her they remembered Hurricane Camille, pawned some of their gold, and Greyhounded out of there for <$100. The bad civilian attitude I'm talking about has nothing to do with the post-storm situation. It has to do with the pre-storm one.

My brother-in-law lived down there for 10 years, and has remarked on it often. The term he uses is "provincial". Lots of folks there (and other places, to be sure) don't want to leave for anything, not even giant hurricanes.

My friend Liz, whom neither I nor her family have heard from since, stayed down there, in the Garden District. She told me on the 28th that almost no one from the area was getting out. She had car problems, but instead of spending $150 to fix the car and leave they stayed to "wait it out". (And it's not like they couldn't afford it. They just didn't want to.)

A friend of mine in Southport, NC, his family did the same thing years ago when Hurricane David blew over the NC coast. He was at his grandparents' in Raleigh, NC for a week, and his mom and dad stayed at home and died. They stayed at home because "it was there home", as if the hurricane was just some kid trying to get into their house to steal stuff. It happens every hurricane, no matter where it hits. People just refuse to leave because "it's home". Well... in the face of what might as well be the Wrath of God, I'm afraid that's just asinine.

The government could've at least tried to force some districts to evacuate. The citizens porbably, from what I know and have heard of the place, would not have paid much attention. And the citizens could have heeded the week's worth of warnings and hype. It's not as if they didn't KNOW a C5 was on the way to blow everything to hell. Instead, folks just bought an extra loaf of bread and gallon of milk (like they always do for inclement weather), and they waited for the inconvenience to pass.

I am terribly sorry for the fate that has befallen so many thousands of my countrymen, but I can't help but also be just a little irritated at the indignation being flung about now by them, when quite a lot of the 'human tragedy' that fell into their laps could have been lessened. And any prevention of death on such a scale (screw the property damage) would be so worth it, in spades, the say after. I know. I've lived through them myself -- over eight major hurricanes. I've lived without electricity for a nine days. I've lived with having to boil water for two weeks. I've had to rummage throughthe wreckage of the family home to help salvage what we could. I've cried over the height of floodlines in the living room. I've even seen the cars washed out to see and deposited onto the barrier sandbars a half-mile out. I've seen the creeks and rivers swollen -- and the bodies of hundreds of cows, pigs, goats, deer, cats floating downstream. (Though I've never seen a human corpse like that.) I've seen the six-lane interstate highways that have been washed completely off the mountainside, driven the six-hour detour that turned the five hour drive into a day-long ordeal. I know hurricanes quite well.

No. I do not know destruction and death on the scale as the folks of New Orleans. No, I do not, but I'm much less a stranger to the storm and the destruction and everything else it does than 90% of everyone else in this country.

Not everyone currently residing in the Houston Astrodome or the crime-ridden and anarchic streets of New Orleans had to have it happen to them. Most of them, probably -- I suppose. I am just frustrated that after having seen so many hurricanes people just don't seem to take them seriously, and the human cost every time just keeps going up.

I'm sorry for the rant. I'm not really an unfeeling bastard. Not usually anyway. I'm just very upset and very concerned.

if every gun owner can tell me his squad's commander's name, and whose the platoon leader and company commander, and how often they drill and how often they go for shooting practice, and who's responsible for kitchens and food supplies and cars and fuel and what is their designed network of communication - all of which can be organized using civilian supplies only, but be ready if the "militia unit" is ready, then I'll say, okay man, keep your gun.

You lost me somewhere in there. I own several firearms. I go out target shooting/practice quite often. I am not part of a militia but that term has a much different modern usage than that used by my constitution.

of which can be organized using civilian supplies only,

Not true at all. In fact, quite the opposite is true in the country. There is a fair amount of cooperation between civilian and federal/state military assets but they also are often quite separate from each other.

It's not surprising you were lost, giving my poor grammar. And you've answered yourself in the post below.
Right, my point was:
There are people, who support their arm ownership with the "militia" argument. Well, I ask, are thy militiamen? By merits of training and structure, not by some long forgotten badge in some dusty drawer (if they bother to get one at all)?

Now, I suppose you wouldn't claim "I have right to get a gun, because I'm a militiaman" if you were not one. You want a gun, 'cause you're a target-shooter.In every country, also with rather stringent laws, there are provisions for people like you - e.g. they can join the shooter or hunters club, lots of tedious paperwork and such, but they'll got their licence and can have their weapon. The idea is of course, that some less stable ones will be helpfully denied a weapon; and to keep the number of weapons at generally low level (thus helping to lower accident/suicide by firearm level; also crime-inflicted death/harm level).

Not true at all. In fact, quite the opposite is true in the country. There is a fair amount of cooperation between civilian and federal/state military assets but they also are often quite separate from each other.

You're right, but it doesn't make my comment untrue - only badly expressed. What I meant is that the things I listed as possibly necessary for militia unit can be organized without using any military equipment/state help. Only using the resources of the militia members themselves. E.g. transport by cars (the owner of a minibus gets to be a squad driver and he's reguired to provide transportation if the unit needs to go somewhere), the owner of a food shop is required to organize food supplies, when two other guys, who camp often, are to look after accomodation (tents) and cooking equipment (gas stoves) etc.

Of course the state, if it so wishes, can make some of its surplus equipment available to militiamen, if necessary, or even provide some for them from the beginning. But that's another matter.

Sorry, the above was me, of course, forgot to log in.

Shots were fired at the rescuers in the New Orleans superdome

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Re: bad civilian attitude

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