Barman said:
It's the anti-guns government of 1936 (the Front Populaire) which disarmed the people...
Didn't the Vichy government restore some of those rights?
Picard said:
...It's all about independence. Much of Europe is dependent upon the government and I think that it will be to their downfall when the government does go bad, not that it hasn't already in many regards...
In the country where I reside, it's gotten to the point where we are better off when the government officials attended parliament and did absolutely nothing, before going home at night. Any time they do anything, they weaken the nation even further. Germany only functions within a manufacturing plant where they have good government. Outside of the plant, it has become a catastrophe.
However, the government will back off from unpopular legislation, when certain groups show force. For example, as the government set a date for a moratorium on paying subsidies to miners of brown coal (Although, I think that the government should have done this immediately, instead of setting a date some 12 years in advance), the miners organized a bus trip to the capital for protest. The government felt uncomfortable with answering thousands of miners with thousands of riot policemen. So, they backed off. Therefore, an armed citizenry should make a unpopular government think twice
ErikS said:
...More or less everyone living in the countryside here had a gun of some sort, mostly for hunting. There were no gun cabinets or anything like that, the gun was usually kept inside the door, or hanging from a nail in the kitchen. The kids knew not to touch it, ever...
In fact, I last saw a hunting rifle as I lived in Sweden. It seems that more restrictions are legislated concerning alcoholic beverages than concerning guns. Of course, this person had bought a house in the countryside and drove to work daily, rather than living in an urban area. Scandinavians are rather disciplined enough not to hunt off-season and not to use guns for arbitrating family disputes. It's somehow ingrained in their heritage
ErikS said:
...There are hardly ever any problems with the hunters guns, the homeguards guns (yes, they do have "assault weapons" at home) or with the sport shooters. It's so rare, that if it ever happens it makes national news, and creates a new debate of more control...
As I was last there, some 20 years ago, already, criminals weren't interested in sneaking up on farm houses to break in. Instead, there was more profit in breaking into warehouses and emptying them. Most crime was commited on a massive basis. Probably, because Sweden was so sparsely populated that criminals had a vast area of which they could hide their loot. The presence of police probably helped to make domestic break-ins undesireable. Almost everybody had a cell phone, back then and I've never seen so many police cars in any country like I've seen in Sweden. I used to think that I was in a police state.
the Viking said:
...that police station that got an entire mag from an AK47 through one of its windows...
That incident took place in that southern Swedish town of Södertälje where refugees of recent middle eastern conflicts are now housed. Not to mention the rise there of sexual- and violent crimes, raising the question of perhaps thinking over initiating RKBA in Sweden. Since, Russia isn't taking in any refugees that I've heard of, even though they have more land per resident and the Swedish government refuses to contain them in compounds. But, instead turns them loose on society
, commecial interests, grass-root activist activity or whatever.
