Posted on 09/30/2005 12:16:07 PM PDT by David Hunter
A Conservative councillor who left two children alone in his home for three hours with access to a Bren gun and a musket narrowly escaped jail yesterday.
John Smith, 49, was told by a judge that his behaviour had been "deplorable and disgraceful". He was given an eight-week suspended prison sentence.
Sheffield Crown Court was told that police forced entry into his locked house and found two distraught boys aged eight and four.
Officers found the Bren gun with a loaded clip at the top of the stairs, a rifle in a bedroom, exposed wires on a light switch and electrical socket and a knife with a serrated edge easily accessible in the kitchen.
Judge Patrick Robertshaw told Smith: "The care and nurture of two defenceless infants had been entrusted to you and you discharged that trust with reckless, selfish, gross irresponsibility."
Chris Tonge, prosecuting, said that Smith, a councillor for three years on Labour-run Barnsley metropolitan borough council, left the boys locked in his untidy home at Barugh Green, Barnsley, while he met tradesmen.
Smith admitted two offences of child cruelty. Neither gun was capable of being fired, he said, but he regretted the incident.
Now, now, mate. I'll admit that there are many wussies in Britain today, but most of them are New Labour or Liberal Democrats, not all of us Brits can be tarred with that brush.
This sounds like old fashioned legal language. No one I know in Britain would ever call a 4 or 8 year old an infant, they would call them a child or a kid.
Don't be so certain that the Bren was a DeWat. Following the motorbike crash that took the life of Thomas Edward Lawrence, AKA *Lawrence of Arabia*, the executors of his estate found a number of lovely trophies from his service at his cottage at Cloud's Hill, including a perfectly servicable Lewis Gun with several drums of ammo for it.
His S.M.L.E. rifle- with five notches in the stock- resides in the Imperial War Museum collection, following Lawrence's presentation of it to Britain's King George V.
The term *Lad* is still heard here and there, most often from one's old Em and Da. And from RSMs to junior Lieutenants, of course!
Nowadays, of course, you would get a minimum of 5 years and probably more like 10 years in prison for mere possession of a fully-automatic weapon and you can be sure that the cops would have had those two guns checked out to make sure that they were deactivated.
ever child in BRITAIN should be taught how to use a gun by the age of thirteen-they will need it to fight the islaamafads-but oh no the perverts have taken control-they do not want you to defend yourself with a knife even if you are eighty-take away defense and you change the populace-who needs anglo saxons in ENGLAND-or AMERICANS IN AMERICA
The people in the US are just as ignorant, including many who use firearms.
The law applies only to commoners. Had he been Mr. Average citizen, he'd get twenty years.
Officers found the Bren gun with a loaded clip at the top of the stairs, a rifle in a bedroom, exposed wires on a light switch and electrical socket and a knife with a serrated edge easily accessible in the kitchen.
Gee, what an unusual place to keep a knife, one with a serrated edge no less.
Put a fork in them. They're done.
In Britain they hand out life sentences for shooting a burglar in your own home. This guy was lucky.
Why would you load a gun that wasn't capable of being fired?
Perhaps because military/historical firearms collectors just like their display guns to look functional.
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