Armed police stood by and did nothing while people were being shot. The photographer expressed a wish to have had a gun rather than a camera.
I think he has the right idea. The nice, reasonable, civilized people of the world have, to far too great an extent, played along with the notion that legally owned guns in private hands are a vice to be restricted or banned, rather than the great (I would say indispensable, in a democracy) force for social good they actually are.
It is a mark of the genius of the criminal and dictatorial classes of the world that they have managed to convince millions that the instrument of their individual freedom and security is actually something to be feared. Freud would undoubtedly have had something to say about this.
In those few countries that permit wide legal ownership of guns (which does NOT include India), crime rates tend to be low and shootings rare. In the US, shootings are frequent and crime is high only in those few jurisdictions (such as NYC, Chicago and LA) where guns are tightly restricted. In those jurisdictions, as in Mumbai, criminals have free reign to abuse and shoot whom they please, with a high likelihood of getting away with it.
There has been talk, long before John McCain mentioned the idea, of an international League of Democracies. I would say that a requirement for membership should be that those countries grant their citizens the legal right to gun ownership and carry (pending a background check, as is the case in most US states), and to bring those weapons along when traveling between those countries.
The initial membership would be small. It would include Norway, Switzerland, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, the USA, and perhaps a few others.
It would be nice to think that England, and perhaps India, might someday aspire to be full members. It's a bit sad to reflect that England would once have led the club, in days when gun ownership in the UK was wide and crime numbers a tiny fraction of today's.
If just a few UK and Indian victims of the Mumbai shootings had been armed, many lives might have been saved.
And perhaps the terrorists might never dared to have mount the attack to begin with. The best crime is the one that never occurs, because of quiet deterrence. That deterrence was not permitted to operate in Mumbai, and we have seen the results.
Until and unless the reasonable, civilized people of the world demand their governments get the hell out of the way of their right and means to effective self-defense, I fear we will see more cases like Mumbai.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article14086308.ece
But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
"What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/30/asia/hotel.php
The Oberoi Group employs many plainclothes security officers in its hotels, but these are unarmed, Oberoi said. Obtaining a license for even a single officer to carry a gun is extremely difficult in India, which has tight gun control laws.
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http://www.abhijeetsingh.com/arms/india/
Gun Ownership in India, by Abhijeet Singh
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." -- Mahatma Gandhi
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When will we see someone like Dr Susanna Gratia Hupp on the international stage?
http://www.wmsa.net/gratia-hupp_1992.htm
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