Wow. You must lead a sheltered life. Friends of mine have been raped,
robbed, and assaulted in many so-called civilized countries and, in most
cases, the police were of no help. It seems that this might be what
"pacified public space" really means. Many state institutions do monopolize
violence when "they" deem necessary. Of course, we all know that the most
efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. Unfortunately
most are not benevolent. I'm preparing to go to Peru and Bolivia in the
spring and the list of warnings about dangerous criminal assault potential
is quite long. As always, you are entitled to your opinion. If you lived
where grizzly bears or wolves might jump your bones, you might carry a
weapon too. /jmac
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Christos Stavrou
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 7:32 PM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: What's up with the OM list? It's gone strange and
insular.
There is no doubt that the humanity imagines a civilised and
democratic society as one where citizens do not carry guns..
After all, this is one of our greatest achievements (in western
societies), to have historically managed to pacify our public space,
just during the last couple of centuries, and to have create state
institutions which monopolise violence when necessary.
There is also no doubt that the whole issue is dangerous and
shocking... By the way, any achievement of humanity can easily be
reversed and we need to safeguard the traces of our progress.
I think all these nonsense about guns better get back to where it came
from... I understand that all this is a very serious social problem of
one particular country, but it's not welcomed from the rest of us,
especially when appears as flippant and arrogant as it gets so far. I
hope that I express the views of the majority here.
Christos Stavrou
<< snip
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