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Kuwaiti gun prohibition
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Dave Kopel has a posting on Kuwaiti gun prohibition. The kingdom has a near-complete ban on all guns, and just doubled the penalty to ten years in the slammer. A major issue is the Kuwaiti resistance (to the Iraqi invasion of some years ago), which understandably does not propose to disarm, nor quite understand why its rulers don't trust it. [The kingdom seems to be a perfect illustration of what people of the founding period here foresaw: (1) absolute rulers must disarm their people; (2) they are then forced to rely upon a mercenary army, which (a) must be weak enough to where it cannot take over and (b) must thus be too weak to defend the state... or else be strong enough both to defend it and to take over, and, as Machiavelli put it, what reason is there for an armed man to obey a disarmed one?]
· non-US
David, I would be very interesed in the cite for "what reason is there for an armed man to obey a disarmed one?" I couldn't find a reference to it, as much as I agree with the sentiment.