Vulcan,
The average American police officer owns at least two pistols - his service pistol and his back-up. Additionally all patrolmen, sheriffs, and deputies, have a pump-action or semi-automatic shotgun that is carried in their car. The situation in Europe isn't too radically different, although a stroll through any rail or air terminal will also indicate that many European police are actually more heavily armed than their American counterparts. The average American generally reacts negatively to the idea of police officers openly carrying H&K SMGs on patrol.
Few law-enforcement officers are going to store their daily working gear in the kind of gun safe that would be necessary to defeat a determined homicidal teen.
Also, comparing NZ to the USA is beyond even Apples and Oranges. NZ is a tiny, mostly agrarian, socialist leaning, still-fairly homogenous society which also still has the husk of the values of 100 years ago in place (actually a bizarre mix of small town "small c" conservatism contrasted with the radical ecco-socialism of the big cities - personally I think you'd be better off with the worldview of the Sheep Farmers than the University Profs, but that's just me). And yes, if every place in the USA looked like a tiny town in New Hampshire (actually Vermont would be a better comparison to NZ) our cops might not need more than a few shotguns to police the place. America is a vastly different society, and I say that as an expatriate Brit living in the USA for the last 28 years who has been blessed to have visited most of the Commonwealth countries.
REPLICANT: I'd still refer back to my original post - either we self-consciously choose a path of substantial ethical reform and abandon our current "what is truth?" bent or we will find that the socialist police state is an inevitability.
We aren't going to suddenly see widespread morality arise out of the current vacuum, especially when the pop-culture works to ridicule and destroy it and a host of angry lawyers descend like a plague of locusts whenever it is even discussed.
When society actively regards accidently viewing "Thou Shalt Not Murder" to be a threat to children, but having access to Kiddie Porn in the public library to be an inalienable right the result is going to continue to be mayhem.
It's rather like the pubs in the UK. Used to be you could have a pint in most places without fear of being glassed, now we have to have the magistrate mandate that we drink out of plastic because we are becoming a nation of spoiled toddlers apt to hurt one another in the midst of their infantile tantrums. And this indicates that we have progressed beyond the petty morality of our ancestors because now we are all "free" to act like a pack of wild dogs if we wish?
Defang a rat and he's still just vermin.
- SEAGOON
