You will hear this a lot in Taiwan. People are told not to think for themselves so they hide behind the rules. There is never a special case, or special circumstances, all things must follow the rules without exception. Even last week was a unique situation where I actually offered to pay more money for something and the company would have benefited without any drawback yet they couldn't do it cause they must follow the rules, thus they lost money.
Perhaps the most glaring example of rules being rules is in self defense. In Taiwan you can NOT kill somebody, ever, under any circumstance. Somebody could be slowly putting a knife into your body but you can not kill them in self defense, you have to sit there and let them kill you. Yes it seems untrue, but there are always stories of people going to jail and even being put to death for murder in self defense. An obvious flaw of a judicial system where the rule is the rule and the outcomes are decided by judges and not a jury of your peers.
Guns are illegal in Taiwan, which as the NRA would say means that only the criminals have them. For the most part guns are hard to come by, and most fights involve people slapping each other with their slippers. Common news video is of people taking off their slippers to fight in the street. Baseball bats and knives are for more serious fights. And murders usually involved people being butchered by knives.
However you can get a gun if you'd like, and criminals can go on rampages with a gun as they are pretty hard to be stopped since only they have the guns. That and as mentioned before you are not allowed to protect yourself. I am reminded of a case where a criminal had a gun and tried to harm a young man and his girlfriend. The two guys fought and the criminal was shot. The hero was sent to jail.
The picture above is a terribly taken picture of an airsoft gun store. They are pretty popular shops to have around night markets, but i don't know really what they are used for. Paintball is fairly big in Taiwan, but airsoft guns don't seem to be used for anything.
Oh even stun guns and tasers are illegal here. You really can't protect yourself at all. I hope no super villains read this, cause they could easily come here and take over Taiwan in a matter of hours.
