Gun Control in Iraq
One of my favourite moments in recent coverage of Iraq:
"While troops have been targeting suspected insurgent targets, U.S. forces have also carried out dozens of raids aimed at apprehending suspects and seizing weapons and bomb-making materials.
"One such 'cordon-and-search' raid early Monday in Baghdad's middle-class Azamiyah district netted 21 suspects along with 30 Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifles, about a dozen shotguns and 10 handguns. Most suspects had violated a coalition rule allowing only one weapon - a single AK-47 - per house.
"Some 2,000 troops of the 1st Armored Division - backed by tanks, armored vehicles and low-flying helicopters took part in the nighttime raid, sealing off a 20-block area and searching every single building inside it.
"Residents of the neighborhood next to the Tigris River were furious over the sweep. They said those arrested included men who had revolvers or bird guns that could not have presented a serious threat to the security of the occupying forces.
"'Of course everybody has weapons,' said Samir al-Hadith, an engineer who works in Saudi Arabia and had returned to Baghdad to check on his home. 'There are so many thieves nowadays. we have to defend our families.'
"'Under Saddam Hussein there was much more security and we could own guns,' he said.
"Zuheir Ali, 26, was detained after troops found a snub-nose .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in his house along with an AK-47. They left the automatic rifle but confiscated the handgun.
"'I don't understand this, we're not criminals, we only want to defend our homes from looters,' Ali said."
So just to be clear: each household is entitled to keep one (1) AK-47 rifle--presumably for legitimate household security needs. Other guns, as pathetic as they may be, will be confiscated. One would think that if these people were a threat, they would use the AK-47 which is being left with them, rather than the pellet gun which is being confiscated.
This all reminds me of the debate, pre-war, about whether the Iraqis were a heavily armed people--in their homes, not at the governmental or official level--like, say, Texans. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for his amazing Archive search). It turns out they were. Doesn't this undermine the analogies between Saddam's regime, on the one hand, and Hitler's or Stalin's on the other?
When Timothy Noah raised this debate on Slate (follow-up here), he was interested in the question: is a well-armed populace a good hedge against tyranny, as the NRA likes to suggest (and Reynolds has argued)?
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