[Billthedrill]

I doubt if anyone would advocate this sort of resort off the starting line, but a cursory glance at recent civil wars in Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Darfur, Eretria, Somolia, Uganda, Liberia, and a dreadful host of others will convince you that it absolutely is the resort of a country that has descended into hell. The veneer of civilization is paper-thin. And many of those purportedly innocent civilian victims are the ones who are sending the thugs in and watching the mayhem perfectly happily on the evening news.

I, and I think most reasonable people who are familiar with the effect of firearms on the human body, have no desire whatever to shoot my fellow citizens for differing from my politics (or for any other reason, either). But civil wars don't commonly start with both sides glaring at one another across a No Man's Land with someone yelling "1-2-3, go!", they start with tit-for-tat atrocities and continue to exhaustion. Fueled by hereditary hatred and weapons supplied from outside sources they can last for decades. No, we really don't want to go there but we can be dragged there by people stupid enough to think that a river of blood will magically wash up on the shores of a utopian paradise.

[Joe Brower]

Wow, great post.