Gun Control, Controversy, so keep it clean.

apnews.com/a2efaf83c5a64e9ab26526895b36f0f0

The California state government passed a law requiring that new models of all semi-automatic handguns stamp the weapon's information on the shell casings, thereby making it easier for the police to match the casing to the weapon used.

Several gun manufacturers sued, saying that the technology to make it happen doesn't exist and so it would be literally impossible to comply with the law.

The California state supreme court shot the suit down, saying that "impossibility" is not good enough for them to invalidate a law.

Exactly the pint I would try to make from my previous post, how do you ensure "Good guy" with a gun stays "good", under all circumstances?.

it checks that you aren't likely to engage in a criminal act

true.

So you're saying you sometimes basically placed guns in the hands of known violent criminals...?

I can see how military training and discipline might help some of them go straight, but there must have been the odd one in between at times where it turned out to be a bad idea.

Fair enough.

When I first read that, I couldn't help but think of a story one of my old Army buddies once told me.

He was on a NATO mission to Kosovo, guarding the bridge over the Ibar river in Mitrovica. His unit was working with the Georgians who apparently had a tradition of conscripting hardened criminals.

One day, the bridge came under attack by protestors. In the beginning, they were just standing at one end of the bridge, yelling at the soldiers, but it suddenly escalated and the protestors made a run for the checkpoint, throwing rocks, bottles and whatever else they could get their hands on. The Danes were occupying the checkpoint at the time and some of the Georgians were just behind it, carrying out some maintenance on their vehicles.

My buddy was manning a light machine gun (LMG) on one of our APCs, getting ready to fire warning shots over the heads of the advancing mob, when suddenly a bunch of Georgians came running through the checkpoint from behind, holding whatever they happened to have handy over their heads (metal bars, wrenches and so on), screaming insanely and barreling right into the advancing crowd. One of them had apparently started running without a weapon in his hand, so as he passed my friend, without even slowing down, the dude grabbed the replacement barrel for the LMG right off the top of the APC next to my friend and just kept running.

IIRC, no shots were fired that day, but by the time it was over, several protestors were lying on the bridge in a bloody pulp, having been beaten to within inches of their lives by these insane Georgians who actually seemed to enjoy themselves. Once it was over, my buddy's CO went up to the Georgians' commander and started explaining the finer points of NATO rules of engagement to him, but the answer he got was something like (in English with a thick Eastern European accent), "My boys do good, yes? They come from Georgian prison to do war. All killers! You like?"

There was no reaching this guy and his unit ended up being stationed well behind the checkpoints, so something like that wouldn't happen again.

First of all, the Georgian soldiers (or at least the majority of them) didn't do what they did to protect anyone. They just saw an opportunity to fight and took it. Many of them admitted as much to Danish soldiers in the mess hall later that evening.

Secondly, there had been many protests on and around that bridge before this one, including ones where rocks and bottles had been tossed at the checkpoint. What all of them had in common was that very few of the protestors seemed to be aiming for the soldiers themselves, but merely threw stuff at buildings and vehicles to demonstrate their discontent with the UN/NATO presence.

According to my friend, there was sort of an unspoken understanding between soldiers and protestors. The protestors seemed to understand that the soldiers were there to do a job, whether they liked it or not, so they targeted the checkpoint itself, rather than the troops. The soldiers understood why the protestors were frustrated, so they hunkered down and refrained from retaliating as long the protestors didn't hurt anyone or try to force their way through. In the few cases where soldiers did get hurt, their colleagues tried to single out which of the protestors were responsible and only detain those specific people if they could.

This way of handling the situation kept the protestors "on the right side of the bridge" and kept the situation from escalating for about 8 months.

Less than a week after the incident with the Georgians, protestors gathered at the bridge again, but this time they were not only deliberately trying to hit the troops with their rocks and bottles, but they also brought homemade clubs, truncheons, flails and even molotov cocktails, which hadn't been a thing since the checkpoint was first established years ealier. When it was over, a few of the protestors who had been detained openly admitted it was a retaliatory strike. The Georgians had broken the unspoken agreement of "we won't hurt anyone if you don't" and now the protestors wanted blood for blood.

More soldiers and protestors were hurt in that one incident than in every protest combined in the 8 months before.

well, in that, case, the georgian method failed.

Different cultures have different ideas how to properly handle things...