The right to bear arms?

> From: orionaut [mailto:ORIONaut@...]
> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Al Globus wrote:
> > > If they can pull it off by infilitrating into your Habitat with
> > > their guns and then rounding up all your defenseless people at
> > > gunpoint then they'll have a whole Habitat for themselves without
> > > having damaged it at all.
> > >
> > It's possible, but screening for guns at the airlock should be
> pretty
> > easy to do.
>
> Watch David Cronenberg's recent film _eXistenZ_ and think again ;)

Please explain how a few hundred commandos can round up a few hundred thousand people and keep them all from the colony's widely distributed life-support and command-systems.

A colony can be thought of as a massive passenger-liner. In theory you could hold one hostage by seizing it's control-centre and/or planting bombs, but that's about all you could do. It's unlikely you could kill lots of people as the colony will have umpteen safeguards to prevent an idiot from doing it accidentally. In fact it would be far simpler for them to cut YOU off from life-support than the other way round!

Terrorism is another matter though. Place a nuke 100m from (or inside) a colony and you would probably be able to persuade its leaders to do whatever you wanted. In such a situation handguns or rifles aren't likely to make any difference one way or the other.

ANTIcarrot.