“Mr. Sadr’s aides say it is unreasonable to expect fighters to give up their rifles because these are privately owned. “Don’t most families in America keep a weapon?” Sheik Bakhabi asked.

– the New York Times today.

One of the arguments of the anti-gun control crowd, sometimes made explicitly, sometimes not, is that they feel we would all be more secure, and more free, if we were all armed. Can’t sit around and wait for the police, ya see. And (they often add conspiratorily) you can’t really trust the police, either. Why should the government have all the guns? Nope. An armed society is a polite society.

What I don’t understand, then, is why the NRA doesn’t offer package tours to places like Najaf, or Fajullah, or anyplace in Afghanistan outside Kabul, or Darfur, or a great tragic swath of Africa, as a kind of lifestyle tourism for Second Amendment enthusiasts. They can stroll the weapons bazaars, and enjoy the free air of a land where each and every homeowner may defend himself with, in Fatboy Slim’s immortal phrase, their weapon of choice.

“Boy,” the survivors would say on their return. “Everybody in Mogadishu was so polite.”