Tacos vs all the amazing food invented by the French. No contest. French people can be effete, but most are not. Hundreds of years of refinement and culture can have that effect. Imo, it's not as bad as some NYers, Bostonians, SF Baysiders.

You mean magazines. Clips are for revolvers. ;)

SA doesn't favorably compare to Paris.

I live in Manhattan, but I've never seen anything like Paris at night. In fact, I had been considering living in Paris for a year, perhaps retiring there. Haven't dropped the idea, but I am reconsidering. I'll see what changes they make in their "no go zones".

If you look at the wiki page it does say that the protestirs who were students were unarmed and wanted a sit -in. Hardly difficult for marines to handle. It then said protestors realized the marines were not "life threatening " so with the help of more protestors which had been gathering they overtook the marines, tying them up and blindfolding them. Seems highly likely they did not have loaded weapons. Why would they just give themselves over to unarmed students?

Khalling,

Being a Marine, in the Jimmy Carter era, I was more than ready to accept it on face value. However, the truth is what really matters and I will try to track down some verification for everyone.

Somehow...I knew someone would ask...

Ah, the old joke about what to do if you were being chased by a bear...

Monsieur, mes mains sont en place! Se il vous plait ne tirez pas!
According to Google Translate, this is a Parisian gendarme saying, "Mister, my hands are up! Please don't shoot!"
My dino imagination conjured up a vision while I was writing the above.
Imagine French cops on strike marching through a Muslim neighborhood chanting, "Hands up! Don't shoot!"

Run faster than the guy with you?

Every time I have been to France, the police carried side arms. I have never seen an unarmed cop in France.

yes, they rode their bicycles up to the scene and
surrendered. -- j

In some jurisdictions even animal control travels armed. How would you defend yourself against a very mad rottweiler?

A cop without a gun? A wasp without a sting, a pianist without fingers, an accountant without an adding machine, a butcher without a knife, a politician without a mouth, (hmm, maybe that last one's not a bad idea.). Perhaps the only good thing that may come of the French massacres is to make it compulsory for police to carry guns.

What good are unarmed police guards? If they were armed the terrorists shouldn't have gotten passed them. Passivity.

I do not think that this is entirely accurate. The national police apparently are armed; the municipal police are under the control of the mayor of the town they are in and the mayor is responsible for whether or not they are typically armed.

I cannot find anything about whether the assigned police guards at Charlie Hebdo were armed but the first police to arrive on bicycles apparently were not.

So it looks like whether or not an individual officer is armed depends on who they are working for - one bets that more of them are armed today than there were last week.

Jan

Sounds like something that coward would do....

Odd, I carry at least one gun everywhere I go. In addition I carry two extra magazines on my belt, just in case. So 17+1, 17 and 17. A decent amount of stopping power.I'm not even a cop.

They looked worse than that when they had to flee the scene.

The rest must look like a pack of Inspector Clouseaus without their guns.

Dead will.

wow. Is their a cite for this?

How many heard the story that Jimmy Carter took all ammo (not the guns, themselves) from the Marine embassy guards, in Iran, prior to the hostage crisis in the 70's?

We all saw how that story ended.