Malcolm’s Moment

As I read Paul Rahe’s recent Ricochet post “Rioting for fun and profit,” it occurred to me that events in England had made this Malcolm’s moment — Malcolm as in Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm. Professor Malcolm is a historian and constitutional scholar specializing in British and colonial American history who teaches on the faculty of the George Mason University Law School.

Professor Malcolm has devoted much of her scholarly career to the historical roots of the right to bear arms, on the one hand, and the link between the abrogation of the right to bear arms and the rise of criminal violence, on the other. Her pioneering work in To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (1996) contributed to the revivification of the Second Amendment in the Heller case. Her 2004 book Guns and Violence: The English Experience bears pointedly on the events of the past two weeks.

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published Professor Malcolm’s column “The soft on crime roots of British disorder.” Thinking along the same lines as the editors of the Journal, last week I invited Professor Malcolm to write for us on recent events in England. She has graciously responded with the column-length essay “The English riots: How British law fosters disorder.” Professor Malcolm writes:

Nice article. The problem is that a lot of it is complete and utter rubbish.

Firstly, the ‘Salford burglary’ which is the first case mentioned. Arresting the shopkeeper on a charge of attempted murder makes this and such British cases sound much much worse than it is.

It is standard in the various British laws, in a case where a person has died a violent death, to arrest the other person/people involved until an investigation can be done and its determined whether the person arrested has done anything wrong. Arresting on this charge therefore is just a police procedure, not a statement that its illegal to defend oneself in Britain. Its a formality more than anything.

I know it may seem odd, but the arrest and the charge actually wont mean anything unless the shopkeeper/houseowner has been one of only a tiny minority who had a burglar under control and decided to kill them anyway (like the man who had his family hold a burglar while he ran over him and tried to kill him with his car).

99.99% of British people involved in such incidents and arrested on what seems an odd charge were released asap as the facts of their right to self defence were quickly established.

I have already pointed this out here several times on FR very recently as there was a case last month which had its thread on FR. In that case, again, all people ‘arrested on murder charges’ were released because they clearly defended themselves.

Ms Malcolm omits that the ‘arrested’ people were all quickly released after the facts of the case were established. Coincidental omission?. I think not.

Secondly, Ms Malcolm again fails to point out that the 72 year old man was also quickly released.

AND I AM AFRAID HER ARTICLE JUST GETS WORSE.....

Thirdly, she cannot even get the simple year correct regarding British weapons and self-defence. It was 1946, not 1964.

Fourth, and this is where frankly either she is making it up as she goes along or she is woefully uninformed, she makes the allegation that toy guns and replicas are banned.

UTTER RUBBISH. The idea that toy guns are banned in the UK is complete tosh, the shops are full of them. And replicas are not banned, I know, as I own four of the things!.

Fifth, and this is the best piece of drivel by Ms Malcolm:

‘The government does not permit even someone who is unarmed from acting forcefully when attacked if his or her assailant is harmed in the process. If a citizen is attacked in the street he is to flee.’

Again, complete rubbish.

Britain has the right to self defence AND has the law of citizens arrest. Every word in that quote is nonsense. The assertion for example that we have to flee an attacker is frankly so bizarre I’d check Malcolm hasnt had a stroke recently....

I KNOW, over and above the fact that I am British and well-informed, that we have the right of self defence, have powers of citizens arrest and dont have to ‘flee’ an attacker because I MYSELF was a victim of burglary in Sept 2008, where I had to fight the attacker and subdue him.

So I know at first hand that Malcolm assertions are bilge.

Lastly, this:

‘. Since the 1950s it is only under extraordinary circumstances that anyone under 18 is put in jail.’

Again, utter rubbish.

Anyone over 40 in the UK remembers ‘borstal’: which was the prison system for young offenders under 18. Borstal was notorious as a very hard and brutal system, in fact many are calling for its return (it was phased out in the 80’s and replaced with other forms of teenage/child jails).

As for more recent times, under 18 offenders are NOT simply fined or give community service, most young offenders are sent to ‘young offenders institutions’, which are prisons for under 18’s.

Again, the notion that we dont jail our young is nonsense. In fact both the EU and UN have criticised Britain for jailing too many!.

I find it frightening that a supposed (acclaimed) academic is so utterly wrong and clueless on so much of British justice.

I have no problem with criticism of the UK or its legal/crime systems and problems, but Americans and others must do so on the basis of actual facts. Not lies, half truths and utter nonsense.

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