Reply #77: gag me with a spoon [View All]

[iverglas]

Orwell was in a "organized militia" (the Home Guard) formed in the hope of repelling Nazis in the feared invasion of Britain. It was in this context that he wrote about firearms.

He was also armed when he fought in the Spanish Civil War, against the forces of fascism.

His advocacy of firearms possession had SOLELY to do with the ability of the masses to resist and throw off oppression perpetrated by NON-DEMOCRATIC governments -- whether the resistance be against invading forces or indigenous forces of oppression.

(Did he ever take up arms for that purpose in England after the external Nazi threat was eliminated? Nope.)

It had NOTHING to do with "self-defence" against burglars or any others of his fellow citizens.

Orwell never, ever wrote about firarms in the context of INDIVIDUAL "self-defence".

So as long as we're all feeling free to stake our claim to any dead guy we like, who has no opportunity to speak for himself about the issue in question in the context anyone here is in, I'll claim Orwell, thankee. The idea of people going about armed against other members of their class would have appalled him, and the numbers in which those people kill one another in the US would have sickened him. I say with all the confidence of anyone who presumes to put words in anyone else's mouth.

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