Thank goodness the Secret Police aren't the only ones with guns!
Posted on 04/25/2008 4:17:09 AM PDT by marktwain
Justin Webb, BBC's North America editor, reports to UK listeners and readers on the "paradox" that America is less violent (and feels much safer) than Britain, where private hand gun ownership is banned.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Keep in mind that this is an article by the BBC, which is as liberal as our MSM. Furthermore, New Jersey is one of the nation’s most liberal states and private firearms ownership is more difficult here than in most other states.
Most fallacies begin with the media.
Darn Big Dawgs
Early Warning and Alert system that allows the homeowner to arm himself before the threat makes it up to the front door.
Works at our house and we feel secure.
My Early Warning Alert System: A 70 pound snarling, growling, snapping AM Bulldog. Of course, she is really a lap dog at heart, but don’t tell the neighbors. As a bonus, if someone came into the house and did manage to subdue her, their DNA would be spread all over the house and possibly a finger print from the jowls of the lapdog/ beast.
I'll attest to that! However, ownership is possible within the constraints of the State law and parts of our State are armed to the teeth.
You can't carry concealed here, but you can carry on your property or place of business. It's fun to freak out the liberal neighbors when they stop by to chat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm
"What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.
Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.
One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.
I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town."
Thank goodness the Secret Police aren't the only ones with guns!
An armed society is a polite (and safe) society
And by the same token, the UK is scary and I do not feel safe there any longer. Twenty years ago I felt I had perfect freedom to walk around London and the countryside of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Kent; the police agreed with me that as long as I stayed out of dark London alleys after 10 p.m. I should be okay. Today, it’s dangerous in the extreme to go around much of London after dark, and crimes in the countryside are ignored. The police do nothing. My British friends, like the people in the article, are delighted when they come over here and would move here in a heartbeat if they could.
I read about a pizza delivery kid in NJ who bought a used car and hadn’t cleaned it out thoroughly, when cops stopped him and searched the car. In the glovebox lint was a single .22 bullet someone had left there. Supposedly that is a serious crime in NJ.
Henry Adams famously said that no American ever dies in the land of his birth. He wasn’t referring to migration; he simply meant that America changes.
I’ve lived in Britain, and no older Briton today is living in the land of his (yes, or her) birth. Forget “Upstairs-Downstairs,” that’s long gone. Today “A Clockwork Orange” better describes the country. The Home Secretary - in charge of security - wears a bullet-proof vest when walking in her own neighborhood.
In fact, the crime rate across the US has been declining steadily. Some credit goes to enforcement, but a more telling statistic is the increase in the number of “shall issue” concealed carry permit laws being enacted. Something on the order of 75% of US states are shall issue states now. With the possibility of running into an armed “victim,” criminals are moving to different pickings.
“...personally owned weapons = homeland security!”
The George Wallace third party run in 1968 was the beginning of that reaction. Richard Nixon paid attention to the shift away from permissive treatment of criminals. His appointees to the Supreme Court, while by no means conservative, were generally opposed to the anti-prosecutor and criminal rights bent of the Warren Court. Mike Dukakis' liberal tendencies with respect to pardons seriously hurt his 1988 Presidential campaign. Defeats of liberal jurists and politicians on law and order issues, such as with Jerry Brown in California in 1982, Rose Bird's recall in 1986 in the Golden State, and Mario Cuomo in New York in 1994, were major blows to the permissive approach to criminals. As for gun control, almost all ballot measures proposing greater regulations were defeated in the 1980s and 1990s. The hostile reaction to the Brady Bill by gunowners was a major reason for the Democratic rout in the 1994 elections.
The lessons of the 1980s and 1990s became clear to liberals. Promoting lenient treatment of criminals and supporting gun control were political suicide outside of hard core Democrat areas like big cities, college towns, and elite suburbs.
However, as you point out, things change. The fact that New Jersey recently abolished the death penalty may indicate the pendulum is turning back to permissiveness here.
The only way the crime situation in Britain will turn around is if the British public becomes sufficiently angry and demands tough sentences for convicted criminals and permit law abiding citizens to be armed once again.
No old chap... Hollywood is the home of the Sopranos, not New Jersey.
With all the crap pouring out of tinsel town, it's no wonder the rest of the world is clueless about the United States.
Doesn't even have to be a 'big' dog. Most any dog will let you know when something ain't right.
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