Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

The examples in this video (picture wise) are bad.

A big point in 'the prince' was that one needs to appear as a good person, regardless of whether or not you are or are not good.

Hence the best examples would be people who were perceived as virtuous, when they behind the scenes were sometimes not [when they needed to be not virtuous in order to achieve their goals].

Showing plenty of examples of people historically perceived as villains, is actually not the point. In fact, Machiavelli makes a point of how being perceived as bad runs a high risk of ending your reign.

One example in the book is of a ruler who assigns a man to ruthlessly crush disorder in a city. The man ruthlessly crushes disorder, and earns the hatred of the citizens. The ruler comes to the city, kills the man (cuts off his head and takes it out to show people), and claims to have liberated the people from this abusive man. In doing so, he both swiftly eliminates the disorder, demonstrates his authority, and ends up appearing as the good guy (one who cares for the suffering of the people and earns the people's appreciation).




The prince is a historical case study of different rulers throughout history, their circumstances, their intentions, their actions, and their success/failure, and what functional elements interconnected these factors. It's a game theory analysis for monarchs. Primarily technical (morality outside of its scope, morality being neither promoted nor admonished).

(The prince was not Machiavelli's personal opinion of how one should act - he personally preferred virtue and the republic. Personal preference was not the point of 'the prince'.)

-scheherazade

Most airliners have wings designed to be used in low transsonic. They can't effectively go faster. They would literally lose lift if they went faster. Their wing shape is made to only delay the onset of shockwaves on top of the wing (flat-ish top), allowing it to safely creep closer to mach1 than otherwise, but not to operate within/past mach1.

Fan/propeller blades themselves are also mach limited.
(They can be designed to be supersonic, but then you end up with something like this... which in hindsight nobody wants : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H)
A subsonic airfoil in a fan/propeller, operating near/at supersonic speed, loses the ability to move/redirect air, due to shockwave disruption of the airflow.

Fans/propellers with subsonic blades that spin at subsonic speeds are effectively speed limited. They lose efficiency above ~500 mph, where they begin to stop generating thrust as they travel faster. Their pitch has to increase higher and higher, until they are no longer much of an airscrew and more of a 'feathered' configuration.

Supersonic jet engines use intake devices (such as shock cones) to decelerate incoming air to subsonic speeds, so the compressor (itself a fan, i.e. a highly multi bladed propeller) can operate on that air to compress it and feed the engine combustion chambers.
Airliners have no intake devices to decelerate incoming air, and they would lose engine compression when entering near mach1 speeds.

Furthermore, their bypass fans (which are glorified propellers) would stop providing thrust.

You would need to design different planes (like the concorde). You can't just throttle up a modern airliner and go faster [than X limit] - like you can in a modern car.

-scheherazade

I think it's a matter of degree. Prior to WW1 (Or to say, around the turn of that century), the Jewish faithed presence was quite small. Roughly ~90% of the population was non-Jewish faithed. There was very little conflict prior to WW2, because prior to that, the immigrants purchased their land from the locals. As per the nature of humanity, the only conflict-free methods for transfer of property are : inheritance, trade/sale, or gift.

The League of Nations was inconsequential. As a result of WW1 Britain captured the territory of Palestine from its previous occupiers (Turks, by one title or another, dating back to the Roman empire), and by right of conquest could do as it pleases with it.

I refer to religious insularity, not genetic.
Yes, they are quite accepting of anyone with Jewish faith. Almost the entire Jewish faithed population in Israel, regarding this last century, is either immigrant, or born of said immigrants. The Jewish faithed population rose from around ~600k to ~7 million between 1947 and today. Even taking into account the rule of thumb 'population doubles every ~40 years', that would leave the population roughly 85% immigrant or children thereof.

Which in turn elucidates many of the issues at hand in modern times. Land prices are extreme, with more people than there is room for, so expanding for living room is a necessity. Hence colonial expansion into greater Palestine is inevitable. Further, the dramatic division in income equality puts a lot of social pressure on the government, which the government can further alleviate by expansion. A, because it can relocate those that can't afford to live in more expensive areas, and gives those people a place to busy themselves taking care of, and B, because the inevitable tensions that come from displacing the previous residents causes the government to serve as a protector from those unfortunates that were offended, which serves as a good distraction from other problems that the government isn't doing well to fix. Essentially, the same formula that nations have followed throughout history (Heck, Australia can thank its current existence for similar policies in Britain).

-scheherazade

That's true for a post industrial POV.
When machines already exist, and you just need energy to get things moving.

The energetic concerns of bygone eras were :
Whale oil, and later kerosene. For lighting. (note: back then, a day's work would only buy minutes of light)
Firewood, and later coal. For heating.
Manpower was the only energy user when it came to food production.

Early machines such as the combine were horse drawn, and did not need an energy architecture in place. (ignoring "food" as an energy)

Later machines used steam power, and hence could piggy back on the already existing wood/coal energy architecture (in turn stimulating it to grow larger).

Once the machinery industry was established, and the revenue generation was in place, it was possible to invest in improvements and alternative energies - ultimately leading up to oil burning machinery being common.

In any case, historically, industrialization drove the energy industry. (As it should, why have an industry to produce a product (energy) that isn't needed?)
And industrialization depended on a conducive society. A place where an inventor could own his invention, and could sell it, allowing things that were no more than ideas or garage trinkets to transition into products - which in turn place demand on other resources such as [forms of] energy.

In the past, there was nothing, so everything was build from the ground up. Industries grew out of nothing, they weren't established up front.
Modern times are different, where you have investment capital from entities who's entire existence revolves around investing, and you can front the establishment of an industry in the calculated hope of future demand.
(Granted, lords/aristocrats had a hand in industrial investment. Just not the kind or scale that you can see today.)

What you say applies a bit later, when industrialization was already well under way. Like when Thomas Edison used investment capital to fund power plants and an electrical network, in order to power the first [practical, but not 'first'] light bulb in New York.

-scheherazade

The industrial age is part of 'economic liberty'.

People were free to make inventions that use coal, or use oil, and were free to market them either as products or services.

That differs from the earlier times/case where folks were obligated to participate only in activities sanctioned by their local lords. Often where they couldn't even travel freely.

Much of the math and chemistry we have comes from centuries worth of largely superfluous [essentially hobbyist at the time] higher education of the privileged classes. (eg. Boyle's/Charles' laws being a foundation of modern internal combustion engines, not used in said form for centuries after written down).

(Note : Which still continues to be the case, what we come up with in a purely theoretical form today, ends up being used in practical application much later. Although maybe it's speeding up. eg. Relativity is used in making GPS work, and that time delta isn't quote as large.)

Once the idea of economic liberty took hold, and people were free to come up with ideas that use the universes natural/physical properties to replace 'manpower', you had the industrial revolution.



The 'honor' part plays a good role too. You can witness this still being an issue today.
You can go to parts of eastern Europe, and talk with people about jobs and respectability.

There are plenty of places where a laborer is scum, and a businessman (eg. owner, who does not himself work, but has people working for him) is highly respected.
In these places, you don't see much work getting done, as a large portion of the typical western service sectors just doesn't exist.
For example, there are ~no house painters. Showing up with paint buckets and overalls would just get you strange stares and mumbles from people around you, and parents would be saying to their kids "See, this is what happens if you don't get good grades".
If you want your house painted, you gotta do it yourself. Few self respecting people are willing to do that job.
In contrast, ask people around the U.S. about who painted their house. Odds are, they hired for it.

The effects on small business are visible too. Lots of shops, the moment the owner can afford to not come in himself, that's exactly what they do.
And on top of that, they take every chance they can get to point out to folks that 'they don't work anymore - people work for them'.

It's a culture where the people responsible for productivity are looked down on, and it has a chilling effect on productivity.

-scheherazade

Unfortunately "arrested" affects you almost as much as "convicted".

Eg. The police automatically notify your employer when you are arrested.
It's a common story where someone is let out soon after their arrest, then shows up at work only to find out they're no longer employed.

I was surprised that they left out the overall figure of 1 in 18 men in the U.S. is in jail / parole / being processed / in the system, whatever.

Also, roughly half of people in jail are in for a victimless crime.

Keep in mind that there are ~5000 federal laws, plus a wad of state laws (per state), county laws, city laws, etc.
Practically all laws are limits on behavior, and they do not involve any victims.

An exhaustive inventory of any given person's daily routine turns up multiple offenses per day. Everyone is guilty. Anyone can go to jail.

-scheherazade