War sucks, I've heard and I believe. But peace sucks, too, when it's based on intimidation.

Once upon a time, more white people carried knives than owned television sets and computers. Now, it's the other way around. You can take a computer or a TV practically anywhere and no one will blink. Carry a pair of scissors or nail clippers into an airport or a school yard and you'll be Public Enemy #1. A knife is a tool, a useful tool. So, is a hammer. Tradesmen or craftsmen can carry them practically anywhere, but take one to work in your purse, and someone will get a little upset. Yet, you can open up your cellaphone and access any little bit of propaganda that you wish, from shopping networks to pornography. You can carry around an MP3 player and listen to anything, from stage musical favorites to Rage Against the Machine. You can listen to the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, the S*ck F*cks, or George Formby. There is no such thing as "subversive" music or entertainment anymore. "The Guitar and the Pen" (one Who song that hasn't been bought for television, yet.) are the weapons of choice.

Smoking is considered a bad thing, as is Global Warming. Drinking is crawling up the list of really big no-nos, right next to Diabetes and mercury in kid's innoculations. Personally, I think poorly designed footware should be a major crime, but people would rather put more thought into their packets of crisps purchases than into what they put on their tootsies. Automobiles and trucks and buses are bought and made by people who pretty much march in lockstep with four or five million others. Not a whole lot of innovation. Not a whole lot of safety, either. Run a vehicle made last year into one made a hundred years ago and you will see which one survives and which driver gets to limp away to tell about it. They used to make the damned things out of metal. Now they make them out of soy by-products, with ceramic heads...

Now, let's get to the condescending part of my little rant. Once upon a time, children, there was a thingy called The Industrial Revolution. Nevermind why it's called that or who chose to call it that. That's what it's called in the history books. It was an economic disaster that obliterated thousands of home-based and village-centred crafts and allowed Revolting Industrialists to treat human beings like cogs in a machine. Basically, the Industrial Revolution revolved around manufacturing stuff more efficiently, more copiously, and more cheaply. This included pots and pans, dishware, silverware, shoes, clothing, and firearms. Eventually, it spread to involve household appliances, sea-going ships that held more people than a rural county, buildings, bridges and bombs.

The White Man's Way of War changed with the Industrial Revolution, also. The soldier's got more money, more clothing, more cartridges, more food, hospitals, and even old age homes, as well as something laughingly called a pension. Equipment for soldiers was soon applied to the newly minted concept of the Policeman, who was created to protect the merchants and their customers, because if you can just steal stuff (without a license, which the merchants and manufacturers had in spades from the governments they'd bought), then the whole economic health of the country takes a bit of a downturn and... well, enough of that for now.

The difference between the Police and the Military has always been a trifle murky. I'm not talking about your stereo-typical banana republic or Eastern Bloc satrapy or Middle Eastern exercise in the Dark Ages with Mercedes-Benzes and Cellaphones. I'm talking about the pasty-faced mutants who once upon a time thought they ruled the world by Divine Providence. Y'know, Portugal and Belgium... ROFL This would be funnier, if it weren't true. And the UK and Francine and Italy and Yermany and, what's that other place called? Oh, yeah, Spane. Anyway, if you ask your average child of five what the difference between a Pulishmin and an Sholdier is, he's likely to tell you that they aren't postmen. In many parts of the white world and in most of the world inhabited by the less-white, the only difference is that the Police are in the market square wearing nice uniforms and carrying selective fire weaponry and the Military are out in the boonies harassing the rural citizenry wearing ugly uniforms and carrying selective fire weaponry and grenades. The Police are also less likely to carry knives than the military but more likely to carry batons or PR-24s.

So, Police persons and the Military carry firearms, in full public view, except in certain countries where this is considered bad form and not likely to be very conducive to public relations. Or, the politicians don't trust the rank and file with firearms, because they are poorly trained and badly hampered by an odd web of strange laws.
In these countries, if a firearm is needed at the scene, you have to call out for a specially-trained and psychologically fit for the purpose individual, i.e. a gunfighter. Some times they wander out from their bastions of authority alone, troding the mean streets with purpose and a lawyer on speed-dial and some times they travel in packs, a gang of black-clad balaclava munchers carrying every personal defense device known to man and descending upon a trouble spot with all the subtlety of a bulldozer cracking a walnut.
The difference between the Police and the Military in these such situations becomes a weird one. The Military attacks foreigners in their own lands, and the Police does the same thing, only right here in my front yard.

There are some countries where there is practically no military compared to the Police presence. The Police are centralized in the capital of the country, and the courts are part of the government, which is part of the official religion. The Police serve as the reminders and the enforcers of the Conscience of the People, a sort of Thought Police, if there were any thought involved.

Firearms are what separate the populace from the Police/Military in many of the instances mentioned above. Unless you are a bad person and you are engaging in a little Industrious Revolution of your own and you skulk about clutching your contrabanded weapon of individual destruction, planning to overthrow the Great Protector of the Unarmed and the Merchants, Lawyers, and Manufacturers in order to institute your own little economic mind-fornication of a government that will probably not change much but your own access to other's bank accounts, but that's not germane to the kernal of this little rant.

Every human being, of any colour, who can read, owes it to themselves to read everything they can about firearms. If you can't own one, read about it. If you don't want one, then you need to read even more. If you don't like them, then you definitely need to learn about them, every nut and washer. If you think they are the most loathsome thing on the planet and should all be melted down for tube tokens, then you really need to educate yourself so you will know what you are talking about.

Don't read what other firearms-haters and confiscators write. They have already expressed their intent and their ignorance. Read encyclopedias, particularly from somewhere around fifty years ago. Read books about firearms. Pick up a hunter's magazine or two. Demystify yourself. Any technology you don't understand becomes magical to you and the magic of "firearms" is surprisingly mundane.

Why should you learn about firearms? Because they are the most protuberant modern product of the two hundred year old Industrial Revolution. They are also the most menacing. Because there is no government without them. You can sit around and babble about the government making all it's offices non-smoking and the government instituting programs to cut down on obesity and alcoholism and domestic violence and bullying amongst it's employees. Knock yourself out. But you never hear about your government wishing to make itself more bereft of firearms. Because, tikes and toddlers, there is no government without them. And you cannot really know the government you live under or how it works and why it almost works without studying the tools of it's existence.

Your government exists because of little metal and plastic things that go bang and put forth little metal and plastic things that make holes in things and people. Your government thinks it's existence would be made a bit more certain if you didn't have any of these things, because if enough people have them, then the certainty of their existence becomes a little less sturdy. And if you don't think about these metal and plastic things and leave all the thinking to the government, and if you don't want to think about them, because the government has told you that it is a very bad thing to think about them, let alone actually possess one or two, then they have done their job and you have helped them, all without a shot being fired. Intimidation works best when the victim isn't aware of it.
There's a good reason why they use anesthesia before surgery and an equally good reason why they use propaganda before the tanks roll.