Treat Them to a Good Dose of Lead (Why the 'Wild West' was not what Liberals claim-my title)

Chronicles Magazine ^ | January 1994 | Roger D. McGrath

[rellimpank]

--in spite of what HBO is apparently putting on tonight, Deadwood, South Dakota was pretty much the same in the early days-"an armed society is a polite society"-

[King Prout]

this is long, and quite good.

[PistolPaknMama]

kaboom!

[Fiddlstix]

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[Gritty]

this is long, and quite good

Yes, indeed. I have been searching for this article for years ( I knew I hadn't thrown it out) and found it last night in a box in my cellar. A bit of a search, and there it was, posted on the Web. It's an oldie, but goodie!

I think this article is one of the perfect answers to the anti-gunner's faux-triumphal canard of "would you really want to return to the barbaric old days of the Wild West?"!

My answer (and the author's) is "yes"!

[MileHi]

Polite society BUMP

[basil]

Thhis was really a good read! Thanks for the ping!

[Travis McGee]

You wonder if the liberal grabboids will EVER get it!

[King Prout]

actually, I believe the "leadership" (overlords, rather) "get it" very well, and that is EXACTLY what they are afraid of:
1. armed cits taking care of their own business, without feeling compelled to have Big Gov solve their every little problem
-a. cuts the bureaucracy and admin overhead, and gov-lifers don't like that
-b. would lead to a gutting of domestic tax-funded programs, and gov-lifers REALLY don't like that - they'd have to go work for a living if that happened
-c. would lead to a dramatic reduction of the already specious excuses used for taxation, and gov-lifers' heads explode when they contemplate THAT
-d. would lead to cits imposing The Rules once again in society, leading to sharp curtailment of all the nasty little experiments in social engineering the Left has been conducting Lo! these many years (and, yes, the gov-lifers HATE that idea)

2. armed cits would assuredly put up with less invasive crap from Big Gov, and might just eyeball the gov-lifers and take care of THEIR problems in the bargain.

[yarddog]

The best pro-gun argument I have ever read was written by a British Constable who is also a "fellow" at Cambridge.

His name is Colin Greenwood and he has compared the crime rates in England from the Victorian era with those in modern England. I don't recall the exact figures but there was something like three or four armed robberies per year during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

During this period, Great Britain had some of the most liberal gun laws in the world, even more permissive than in much of the U.S.

[yarddog]

BTW, by "Liberal gun laws" I didn't mean the kind that modern liberals like. I meant liberal in the meaning of free or loose.

[ApplegateRanch]

No I don't wonder at all; I KNOW they will never 'get it'.

[oldfart]

Bump

[U S Army EOD]

That pretty well describes where I live up until the late 1960's. The local sheriff didn't really care who killed who as long as you didn't bring the problems into town where all the decent folks lived.

[Travis McGee]

I think you give them too much credit for rationally thinking about these things. I think they just operate 100% in the "feelings zone," ie, "guns are ba-a-a-a-d".

[supercat]

I think you give them too much credit for rationally thinking about these things. I think they just operate 100% in the "feelings zone," ie, "guns are ba-a-a-a-d".

The "useful idiots" go on feelings, but the liberal leadership know precisely what they're doing and how to manipulate people. If they merely thought guns were bad, they wouldn't bother exempting themselves from anti-gun restrictions.

[Gritty]

I couldn't find your Colin Greenwood quote, but here is another one by him, as well as some comments by the author of the article:

"At first glance, it may seem odd or even perverse to suggest that statutory controls on the private ownership of firearms are irrelevant to the problem of armed crime, yet that is precisely what the evidence shows. Armed crime and violent crime generally are products of ethnic and social factors unrelated to the availability of a particular type of weapon. The number of firearms required to satisfy the 'crime' market is minute, and these are supplied no matter what controls are instituted. Controls have had serious effects on legitimate users of firearms, but there is no case, either in the history of this country or in the experience of other countries in which controls can be shown to have restricted the flow of weapons to criminals or in any way reduced crime." (Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood, West Yorkshire Constabulary, Police Review, 10 Nov 78, P1668.)

On the author's last trip to England, he found that a legal .45 Colt handgun could be purchased for 500 pounds, and an illegal one for fifty. Purchasing the legal firearm required a police check of the applicant's reputation with his employers, his neighbors, and his relatives; purchasing the illegal one required 50 pounds and fifteen minutes of enquiry of shady characters in a Soho bar. It is evident that their registration system is a failure as a method of firearms control, despite the major control advantages of being situated on an island.

source: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/NFA/firectl.bas

[yarddog]

That post is a pretty good one. I have not kept up with Greenwood since reading his article, but did notice a few years ago that he testified before parliament against their current gun ban.

[Gritty]

Wait a minute. I just found a better source, Select Committee on Home Affairs Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence, from the debate minutes in Parliament.

There is a large amount of excellent evidence Greenwood enters into the record - most of which was obviously ignored by Parliament when they did their last gun ban. Here is a sample (Early Legislation, point 5)...

5. The evidence shows that, despite the existence of an absolute right to keep arms and the very widespread ownership of firearms as evidenced by the state of the gun trade at the time, the use of firearms in crime and disorder was extremely rare.

Greenwood goes on to quote some statistics. This Appendices is well worth the reading and gives an excellent overview of weapons laws in Great Britain stretching back to the longbow, including some legal basis of our own 2nd Amendment. The overall Parliament Report is here (Report) and here (all Appendices).