Gun Controllers Unwittingly Support Unsafe Societal Conditions

[spin]

8. Exactly right. For example, look how we subdued the Taliban in Afghanistan. ...

and now completely control that nation

September 15, 2010, 12:44 pm
What’s Inside a Taliban Gun Locker?
By C.J. CHIVERS



Since last year, The New York Times and At War have taken several different looks at insurgent arms and munitions in Afghanistan, which can yield information about how insurgents equip themselves and fight, and how the Taliban has been able to maintain itself as a viable force for more than 15 years.

Today the blog will turn back to this pursuit with another sampling of data from Marja, the area in Helmand Province that has seen some of the most sustained insurgent fighting of 2010. In this case, early this summer, the civilian law enforcement liaison working with the Marines of Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, along with the battalion’s gunner, had in their custody 26 firearms and an RPG-7 launcher captured from Taliban fighters or collected from caches.

Of these weapons, 12 were variants of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, 8 were bolt-action rifles from World War II or earlier, 4 were variants of the PK machine gun, and 2 were small semiautomatic pistols. This was in some ways a typical mix for Afghanistan, although the ratio of bolt-action rifles was higher than what many units outside of Helmand Province have seen.

***snip***

Together the technical qualities of these rifles and the thinking behind them, along with the quality of their manufacture and the relative simplicity of their ammunition resupply, have helped a largely illiterate insurgent movement not just to exert its will on its own country, but also to stand up to the most sophisticated military in the world.
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/whats-inside-a-taliban-gun-locker/