France threatened by Islamists

aye i bet he was really greatful.

Shoulda started the bombing quicker n wasted those prats too.

I've got no problem with not protecting their rights. You want to go hunt down bin Laden for some personalized .308 caliber retribution, go ahead, I've got no problem with it. However, if you want to turn my country into a police state to make a handful of cowards feel better, I and many others will stand in your way.

Adrian

getting tooled up incase of an emergency is far from being a police state. In fact the population being armed is probably a bigger detterent to a police state than anything.

the way some people go on, you'd think the relevant agencies were just sticking pins in names on a phone booka nd lifting them hoping to get it right

You're absolutely right, that an armed population is a huge deterent to a police state. Think how long the Nazism would've lasted if every Jew and German had've had an M1 Garand (the standard weapon of the day). My guess is Hitler would be a footnote in the history books.

And you're pretty close with the pins in a phone book analogy. People (mostly Arab men) have been arrested and detained for months for "crimes" as heinous as using a library computer (check out James Bovard's Terrorism And Tyranny) and having pictures of national landmarks, still undeveloped, in their cameras. You might remember Ashcroft and Rumsfeld crowing about arresting hundreds of terrorists in late 01 early 02? ALL of those were people who were working despite having expired VISA's. The net that is supposedly being thrown around terrorists really only hurts the people. As it is, the 9/11 hijackers could've been caught with ordinary detective work.

And by the way, how long do you think the people's right to keep and bear is going to last if the rest of their rights disappear?

Adrian

Admittedly, a gun wouldn't be much use against bombs left on trains. However, it is very safe to use a handgun on a plane (though I've heard it recommended that one use pre-fragmented ammo, perhaps we could eliminate TSA altogether and have little bins of pre-fragmented bullets for travellers carrying concealed), why else do you think the airmarshals are allowed to go armed? I am of the firm belief that if there had've even been a handful of armed passengers among the hijacked planes, we wouldn't have lost the Twin Towers and the Pentagon wouldn'tve become the Quadrilateral. Indirectly, the federal regulations put in place to disarm passengers are at fault for the 9/11 tragedy.

Firing a gun on a plane isn't as dangerous as the police would have you believe. Planes are built to withstand collisions of much greater force than several bullets, even up to the scale of in-air collisions. In the worst case scenario, that a bullet penatrated the skin of the plane, the pressure loss would be miniscule (I've read up on this).

The terrorist-deterents we have now are pretty worthless. You can flunk out of police academy for any reason, ranging from disobedience to mental illness, and you can get a job as an airmarshal. The mandated reinforced cockpit doors are easily broken, and the screening you receive at the airport (while invasive and a direct violation of your rights) is very cursory (my uncle works as a screener). In response to the terrorist attacks we created what is arguable the second largest make-work program in the country, took away citizens tweezers (and in one odd instance, made 80 year-old Senator John Dingle disrobe because his hip plates set off the metal detector. The guy's a Senator for crying out loud!), and violated tons of rights, all in an attempt to thwart terrorists, when all we needed to do is extend the proven crime deterent of concealed carry onto the plane. Why would people behave differently at 30,000 feet than they do on the ground?

Adrian

There are too many nutcases allowed to carry guns on the ground to allow them on planes.

What is the percentage of people that own guns that are talented, trained and cold blooded enought to shoot a terrorist in an highjacked airplane without any risk of collateral damage?

Ponrauil

High.

Adrian

My younger sister's just called me because she wanted to tell me she's fine ....... before i will watch the news in the evening, because i might see her university (she lives 400 kms from me), she's doing a DESS, don't know what it is in english, (maybe Ponrauil can explain), anyway she was in exams and they were obliged to stop and evacuate the uni because of a bomb scare.
It's the region of the prime minister, maybe it's the cause .... we don't know yet.
But she had the same fear when she left Barcelone last week, in the train at Limoges, same again when she arrived in Paris and then, last weekend when she was in Bruxelles

I hope it's only a bad joke .....
She says she won't be back to uni before next week .... because she feels it's constantly behind her, and each time she's more and more scared, she says she feels she might not escape again next time. I'm feeling so bad, but there's nothing we can do ...

It's about time the whole of Europe along with America and Canada get together and go to town on these bastards.

Whether you asgreed with the war in iraq or not is irrelevant, you're all still targets and with us fighting amongst each other, it just makes their job easier and easier.

The sooner we come together in a massive union and sort this out, the better.