Well made film, When you have gun control....

Agarici,
All I ment in this topic was to try opening the eyes those who doesn't want to accept the fact that massacres like that take place only where civil population is unarmed.

Back in 73 ,the Yom Kipur war.
A Irakian tank brigade,armed ith the latest soviet tehnology,entered Israely border facing a reserve israely tank brigade ,armed with...WW2 Shermans.Yes upgraded ,but without night vision.
After a short battle most Israeli Shermans were either distroyed or without fuel and amunition.
Historians say that the Iraqi comandant was afraid of an ambush.(What ambush? no other Israeli tanks were available).
I belive that he didn't pushed his luck to cover another 70-80 km till the sea shore (and cutting Israel in two) since he knew that he's gonna get bullets from every window and every streat corner.
And examples are endless.
You take population weapons-you can do to them whatever you please.

Not very much on the subject,but the Mondial guy,who was arested for almost killing a rival familly member,had a licence for 2 fire arms.He has endles accusations for violence.....

C, I recently saw a History Channel documentary on that subject, but weren’t the attackers Syrian with T 62 (thermical night vision included), aiming for the Golan Heights, and the Israelis using British Centurions? The Centurions were also outgunned (105 vs. Syrian 115 mm tank gun). The rest of the story was identical, and many veterans (and actually Yom Kippur combatants) were interviewed for the movie. And the Syrian thrust was indeed stopped during the night by order form the Syrian commanders.

But then what about the example of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Wasn’t that one an example in the opposite sense, since (at least initially) the fact that the noncombatants/irregulars owned guns triggered, or at least justified, the high level of Soviet violence and abuses against civilians?

This post has been edited by Agarici on March 06, 2011 02:54 pm

I wasn't talking about the fight at the Golan hights.
The Iraqi tanks invaded from south of the sea of Galilei.

I'm sure 100% about what I wrote.
The conflicat on the Golan hights was indeed as you wrote.

About the situation in Afganistan,we all know from own experience about Soviet troops.

According to what I saw in "Greatest Tank Battles" (The Military Channel) the Israeli tanks were able to fire at further distance than their Syrian counterpart. (The average tanks, not some occasional WW2 Shermans.) In plain English, they could kick off Syrian tanks from distances where the Israeli crews were out of reach. However, the Arabs had advantage in numbers.

Now, drifting the subject a little, we should not forget that during Yom Kipur war all available fleet of Hercules planes belonging to the United States (22 planes, or something close) supplied Israel with military equipment 24 hours of 24, non stop. Of course, I don't claim it was from the very first day of the war, but it was neither too late. That was the root of the "forever war" between the Muslim world and the U.S.
Sorry for drifting the subject, but it already slid away from the original topic shown in the starting message - before my input.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 07, 2011 07:30 am

I had read all these posts about the historical impact of civilians having personal weapons en masse. I am not that sure if this is deterrent for atrocities or crimes against civilians. It works only if the armed groups of civilians are able to keep the other force completely out of their controlled land (most recent example: western and eastern halves of Lybia).
If the occupying force is still in control of the territory, armed resistance from some civilians can turn into a disaster for all civilians.

Examples:
- The Germans as occupiers in Yugoslavia, Poland, Soviet Union, France, Italy

Later, after 1945, in Allied occupied Germany:
- for one Soviet soldier shot dead, the Soviets rounded up and executed 200 German men, all in the same city
- for some shots in a French occupied German town, the French shelled the town (yes, they really fired with canons against the German town - and it was 1946...)

This post has been edited by Florin on March 07, 2011 03:28 pm

The whole of Dobruja was part of the "Vilayet of Rumelia" between 1420 and 1878. During that period, the whole of Dobruja was part of an administrative region called "Bulgaria".

I agree, there was no "Bulgaria" as a state before 1878. But the same applies equally to "Romania".

Radu

I never heard about this. Can you tell more about this examples, please?

Welll in Libia we have gun control.
So it was in the Soviet Union.
I belive that in Italy there also was a gun control.
Poland and france never had a tradition of armed population.
And I fell missunderstood here...
I'm not talking about some civilians starting killing invading soldiers as guerillas.
I'm talking about an ocupation force that starts from aparently no reason killing unarmed ,undefended civilians.

This post has been edited by C-2 on March 07, 2011 08:06 pm

The habit of killing unarmed undefended civilians is as old as known history, and unfortunately it seems humans cannot evolve to a higher level.
It is pointless to mention certain nations here: it happened so often, and in every nation live together good apples with rotten apples. Unfortunately, quite often good guys falling prisoners to the other side are subject of revenge for what their bad comrades did.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 07, 2011 09:19 pm

I never heard about this. Can you tell more about this examples, please?

I had the chance to learn this from a recent documentary on the Military Channel. They even mentioned the name of the French occupied town and the Soviet occupied city. Like you, I did not know about this until seeing the documentary.

They mentioned that the British and the American did not go that far. Let me believe it, until we may learn something else. The subject of the documentary was exactly this: German resistance against occupiers after May 1945. The Soviets filled with German civilians the Nazi concentration camps conveniently found already built. The Americans arrested whole categories of population as a first step, and then they started to filter the arrested people to see who is going to be freed. The detention place: former Nazi concentration camps.

It is interesting that the German resentment against Allies was widespread, regardless the fact that they were anti-Nazi or pro-Nazi before. Eventually the mass resistance took an interesting form: the refusal to denounce the people they knew they were pro-Nazi or SS before. This was quite effective, because it stopped the Allies to build prosecution cases for many people.

Not anymore, it seems.
Every news report from Libya shows that an awful lot of weapons of all calibres are now in the hands of civilians. And the number of civilian casualties is growing every day. I guess there must be a link...
Radu

radub
Sorry Radu I must disagree... even if I'm not a fan of military weapons (automatic or semi-automatic rifles or machine-guns and so on) in civilian hands, I think it is legitimate to revolt against such a demented and criminal leader as Gaddafi is! Sure I deplore the victims of this revolt, but the responsibility belongs not to the revolted people, but the crazy dictator and its mercenaries...
It is my opinion of course, but I don't think the situation is due the civilians posess weapons, but due to the criminal nature of the regime, and the and violence unleashed by him...

Absolutely! I have no qualm with revolution.

But there are many reports on TV showing people firing the guns in "celebration" or firing them just "to look good on camera" at all kinds of angles, vertical, oblique, anywhichwhere, with crazy abandon while posing in Rambo stances. Those bullets have to come down (gravity always wins ) and they maintain their lethality.

Such misuse of lethal weapons is a serious problem and has nothing to do with dictatorship.

On Euronews this morning there was a doctor from a "town held by rebels" saying that he had been treating wounds to the head and shoulders "as if someone was shooting from above".

Radu

I totally agree with your statement! I was always disturbed by this kind of scenes... that I remember I've seen on TV by albanese, iraquis, palestinians and libanese "warriors" participants in various conflicts... young people who show off, probably without much of military training (maybe none), sure victims in the case of a serious fight...

They will die if a fight with trained people occurs. Because they have also guns, the first victims will be innocent civilians...