Why should only James Bond be able to have this.
Posted on 11/12/2012 11:12:46 AM PST by marktwain
Sergeant Danny Nightingale, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in a military jail last week.
A working 9mm Glock handgun, given to him after he trained a counterterrorism force in 2007, was found in his home by police last year.
He said he forgot he had the weapon and failed to declare it. His wife Sally described the father of two as a 'hero who has been betrayed', while the sentence came in for more criticism after it was handed down in the days leading up to Remembrance Sunday.
Sgt Nightingale's lawyer said his client had planned to deny illegal possession of a firearm but changed his plea to guilty when warned he could face a five-year sentence if convicted.
At his court martial even prosecution lawyers described Sgt Nightingale as a serviceman of exemplary character.
To me, as an American, this whole case is repugnant in the extreme. The handgun at the heart of this matter is in no significant way different from the handgun which I carry, concealed on my person, on a daily basis. It is in no significant way different from the thousands of handguns sold legally over the counter every day in this Great Republic.
That Britain and the Commonwealth Countries see fit to treat these self-defense weapons as contraband, to be gathered up and destroyed by the government, the mere possession of which is ground for years of imprisonment is appalling. Your weapons laws (like ours ... indeed like any) serve only to harass the honest peaceable citizen.
Tangent to this, I spoke with my auto gnome about a week ago in regards to the labor shift in Europe to Spain because it is cheaper. The gnome then noted, other than "Kit Cars" and boutique manufacturers England doesn't have domestic automobile production anymore.
In fact, the gnome went so far as to say given the slide since WWII ( and all the things Hayek warned them about) their thesis is they actually never recovered from WWII.
I believe this fixation with gun control came in the 60's and I know one brilliant Brit Inventor that left because of it and it was to expensive to fly as a hobby.
Sadly, they are now trying to politically castrate this SAS mountain of a man on the altar of political correctness....
Savage is right, their is no England anymore...
The thing is - being SAS, he should have been able to get a PPW (Personal Protection Weapon) licence. They are very difficult to get in the UK (I actually have one for reasons I’m not allowed to discuss), but SAS have never found it difficult to get them, because of the risk they face from certain Irish terrorist groups. The fact he doesn’t seem to have had a PPW makes me wonder what else was going on here, that isn’t being discussed.
I'm probably preaching to the choir ... but there's something very wrong with that statement. So much of the way we talk ... a license for this, qualifying for that, being eligible for the other thing ... seems to come straight out of a bad dystopian novel. "1984" was a warning, not an instruction manual. Did we really win the Cold War?
And no, I'm not pointing fingers at Britain or the Commonwealth ... America is going down the same drain.
The UK hasn’t changed, same as is been for 100 years. Example; during WWII the NRA here in the U.S. asked its members to donate rifles to the UK so that their homeland defense would be able to make a stand should the Germans invade. Did the Brits learn from this and after the war relax its guns laws? Answer is no, got stricter in fact.
This was a court martial, not a civilian trial.
No, it isnt.
BTW, this was a military trial, not a civilian trial.
And your country has just voted in Barry Hussein AGAIN.
Clean out your own pigsty, before you criticise others.
I agree with your first point (although I’d point out that this was a military trial and sentence).
I agree with your police point.
I dont share your affection for Tommy Robinson.
The first major gun law post-1945 in the UK was 1968, then 1988 and 1997.
Here is some history from Churchill in 1897. Note how the Crown handled the “theft of crown jewels”.
How times have changed.
Sir Bindon Blood was a striking figure in these savage mountains and among these wild rifle-armed clansmen. He looked very much more formidable in his uniform, mounted, with his standard-bearer and cavalcade, than he had done when I had seen him in safe and comfortable England. He had seen a great deal of the British and Indian armies in war and peace, and he had no illusions on any point. He was very proud to be the direct descendant of the notorious Colonel Blood, who in the reign of King Charles II had attempted to steal by armed force the Crown jewels from the Tower of London. The episode is in the history books. The Colonel was arrested as he quitted the Tower gates with important parts of the regalia in his hands. Brought to trial for high treason and several other capital offences, he was acquitted and immediately appointed to command the King’s bodyguard. This strange sequence of events gave rise to scurrilous suggestions that his attempt to abstract the Crown jewels from the Tower had the connivance of the Sovereign himself. It is certainly true that the King was very short of money in those hard times, and that the predecessors of Mr. Attenborough were already in existence in various parts of Europe. However this may be, Sir Bindon Blood regarded the attempted stealing of the Crown Jewels by his ancestor as the most glorious event in his family history, and in consequence he had warm sympathy with the Pathan tribes on the Indian frontier, all of whom would have completely understood the incident in all its bearings, and would have bestowed unstinted and discriminating applause upon all parties. If the General could have got them all together and told them the story at length by broadcast, it would never have been necessary for three brigades with endless tails of mule and camel transport to toil through the mountains and sparsely populated highlands in which my next few weeks were to be passed. The General, then already a veteran, is alive and hale to-day (written in 1930). He had one personal ordeal in this campaign. A fanatic approaching in a deputation (called a jirga) whipped out a knife, and rushed upon him from about eight yards. Sir Bindon Blood, mounted upon his horse, drew his revolver, which most of us thought on a General of Division was merely a token weapon, and shot his assailant dead at two yards. It is easy to imagine how delighted everyone in the Field Force, down to the most untouchable sweeper, was at such an event.
Got sand in your panties, Braveheart?
and so, scotty, we crazy red necked bitterly clinging american remnants still think it’s nuts; it was a “military” trial over something that wouldn’t have even been deemed wrong if there hadn’t been a “civilian” law keeping a firm lid on the average englander’s right of self defense.
Why should only James Bond be able to have this.
My grandfather had a price on his head due to his involvement with KMAG (Korean Military Advisory Group), so he acquired a surplus 1911A1 and practiced with it every day. Fifty years later, he was still a crack shot.
At least in our country, free men can own firearms to protect their families.
And muslim rape gangs are not violating young American girls while the police look away and American men just take their dole check to the pub and drink beer.
You won’t even protect your girls from rape gangs of hostile invaders. That is a DEAD PEOPLE.
Next stop: EXTINCTION.
Visit England now, before the cathedrals are all mosques.
At least Tommy Robinson is resisting the muslim conquest of “Great” (sic) Britain.
It’s as if the only Winston Churchill England can muster today is some average lad. The rest of you are are rushing down the road to dhimmitude, full speed ahead.
In another generation, you’ll be explaining to your daughters that it’s perfectly normal that they must wear a veil out in public, lest they be raped. And it would be their fault if they were.
If your generation was in charge in the 1930s, you would all be speaking German and goose-stepping to the pubs with your dole checks, signing the Horst Wessel Song.
We yanks might have lost this election to the socialists, but we’re not dead yet, inside, like England is.
A people that won’t defend its young girls from rape gangs of hostile invaders is a people that is dead inside, just a technical step and a generation or two from total EXTINCTION.
“Britons never never shall be slaves.”
What a joke.
See England today, before the cathedrals are all mosques.
English “men” won’t do a bloody thing to stop it.
The previous legislation had been the National Firearms Act of 1937, which modified the first serious gun control law in England, the National Firearms Act of 1920.
In no particular order
What punishment, if any, would a US soldier expect for keeping a service-issue weapon at home without authorisation?
If this man's Unit was searching for a missing weapon, you would expect it to have been the Military Police which searched the house. Yet the article just says 'police', which implies the civilian police. If that's the case, on what grounds did they obtain a search warrant? Were they searching for something else, and came across the gun by accident? If so, what were they looking for? And would that imply that until that time his Unit didn't know the gun was missing? If not, why not?
Finally, doesn't it rather stretch credulity that a senior Special Forces sergeant could simply 'forget' where one of his weapons was?
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