Whom the government guns are aiming towards at any one time is largely determined by the beliefs of the majority either directly or indirectly influencing their aim. For a long time it was those who held religious ideologies who were aiming the guns, but now it’s largely secularists and atheists.

Government violence is desirable when people who share your delusions are aiming the gun, but it’s undesirable when other people have their hands on the barrel who don’t. This, in a nutshell, is what Baroness Warsi really means.

The separation of religion and state is progress: I’d much rather have an atheist pointing a gun at me than a Christian, Catholic or Muslim because there’s at least some hope of appealing to reason and evidence. However, society still has some way to go, and the next step is dissolving the belief that we need to point guns at each other in order to live peacefully together.