Every time I see a TV news report of a seizure of an illegal arms stash, I find myself being amazed at the attitude of the reporters who seem to build up the idea that the public is being relieved of a tremendous threat to their safety. But never do these reporters ever try to answer the question: "Why do these stash of arms exist?"
To me it seems that the reasons criminals accumulate arms is because they want to be prepared for a possible confrontation with armed opposition, which quite often might include those people who legally have the right to have extensive arms ar their disposal ... that is to say law enforcement agencies.
What I'm thinking is that if authorities in any country did not possess extensive and powerful armed weapons, then those who oppose them, or who might wish to, wouldn't go to the bother of building up their firepower.
This line of thinking is an extension of the idea that violence begets violence, and while it might be argued that the legitimate arms holder only have their arms in order to do their jobs and protect the public from anti-social elements, it might also be true that if they weren't armed in the first place the criminals wouldn't be as violent as they appear to be.
I don't claim to have the answer to the elimination of violence in the world, but I do believe we need to start looking for ways of stopping the bullies without resorting to the same tactics which the bullies use so that our "good" bully beats up the "bad" bully. Sooner, or later the good bully is going to be tempted to abuse his power and when he does he will be the bad boy.
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