How big does an arms dealer have to be...

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

...to stop being a criminal?



{The irony of Viktor Bout being tried for arms dealing by the world's largest arms dealer, the US government, is a bit much for me.}

[Euromutt]

1. Do you mean in principle, or in practice?

I'm guessing you mean the latter, given your parenthetical sentence there. Personally, I'd say that even a government can behave in criminal fashion when it supplies weapons and/or training to groups or persons of whom that government can be reasonably certain they will use them to commit crimes against humanity. Say, the French and the Chinese selling weapons to the Rwandan government up to and during the genocide of 1994. But in practice, this is one of those situations where possession is nine tenths of the law.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. My apologies...

...I read of Bout's conviction and was thinking that it was rather ironic. Then I read more on the F&F hearings and the post about the Mexican gov wanting to extradite criminals from the US that were involved in guns going to Mexico. I'm fairly sure that the US (and lots of other countries) export weapons to groups which some other countries (and maybe even the UN sometimes) are against having them.

One of my pet peeves is that thinking that says "my enemy's enemy is my friend". I'm convinced that many deals never see the light of day.

As a pro-RKBA citizen, I'd like to know about the international back-door version of the NICS. I know that just having a munitions license from the state department doesn't let you do business anyone anywhere. Certainly companies such as Boeing, Thales, SAIC... are restricted from selling to "designated countries".

I think I trust my neighbors and the shops they buy from, more than large corps and government regulators.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. First poll in a while

where I don't really 'get it'.

I mean, I get what you mean, but.. the options don't seem to scale to the issue.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

4. No biggie

I was just thinking of how meaningless was Bout's conviction in the light of the pardons of, for one, the Iran-Contra group.

[We_Have_A_Problem]

5. The poll presupposes

selling firearms is illegal in the first place. As such, since it assumes a legal activity is illegal, it cannot be answered.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

6. I wasn't thinking 'illegal'...

...I was thinking just wrong or dangerous or maybe just unwise.

[We_Have_A_Problem]

7. Really?

So asking how big a dealer has to be before he stops being a criminal isn't assuming illegal behavior? Seriously?

Do people become criminals for committing legal acts where you're from? Does "illegal" mean something different in your world?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

8. My bad.

I believe that the law derives from fundamental ideas of good and evil. The word "criminal" was a bad choice, maybe.

[We_Have_A_Problem]

9. It was an extremely bad choice.

There is nothing fundamentally evil about selling weapons either.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

10. Agreed.

There is something wrong with arming those who sponsor terrorists and/or murder civilians.

[We_Have_A_Problem]

11. No argument there.

However, there is nothing inherently wrong with selling firearms.