Posted on 08/25/2009 8:09:55 PM PDT by marktwain
Great Britain has long been held as the shining example of what can be accomplished via gun control. Handgun ownership is all but unheard of and rifles and shotguns are tightly controlled and citizens require a "good reason" to be issued a permit to own one. Historically, self-defense has not been considered a good enough reason.
Now, the Daily Mail reports that while law abiding citizens have been nearly universally disarmed, the criminals have not and flaunt their power. According to the Mail, "the level of violent crime in Britain has risen by 70 per cent. Gun crime is up by more than half and there are more than 100 serious knife crimes each day, with fatal stabbings having reached the highest level on record."
There are many explanations offered for the rise in crime, family breakdown, devaluing of marriage, welfare as a way of life, increasing unemployment, increasing drug use, and the rise in power of street gangs. Despite this blunt portrayal, they failed to note one important thing... that disarmed citizens are at the mercy of the criminal element.
They say that "carrying weapons is becoming the norm," but not by the law abiding. Only the criminals have the weapons because the government gave everyone a choice: be a disarmed victim living your life at the mercy of the lawless or become lawless yourself. Sadly, they now must reap what they sowed.
Meanwhile, in the United States, North Carolina state Senator R.C. Soles reportedly shot a man who broke into his home. The 72-year-old Senator was forced to defend himself after discovering the intruder, who had broken into the Senator's home before. The intruder is recovering in a hospital.
In other news, it appears that the issue of Incorporation of the Second Amendment is headed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Conflicting lower court opinions regarding whether or not the guaranteed protections of the Second Amendment apply to state governments as well has set up a scenario for issue moving to the high court.
In Delaware, Ohio, police have arrested a suspect in the Black Wing Shooting Center burglary from last week. David Wise Jr. has been charged with breaking and entering and police say they have other suspects as well. At least some of the $50,000 worth of items stolen were recovered.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has announced a trial program for a new web-based Hunter Access system. This online system attempts to match up private property owners with licensed hunters to more effectively manage game and increase hunting access.
The program is being tested for Harrison, Jefferson, Tuscarawas and Carroll counties and only for deer hunting currently. After a two year trial, agencies involved will evaluate the effectiveness and determine whether to continue or expand the program.
The upper classes may have taken a disproportinate number of dead in ww1, but ‘most’ were not wiped out. This myth has been reexamined by modern British historians in books like the classic ‘Bloody Red Tabs’, which shatters the myth of ‘an entire generation wiped out’.
My point is that these veterans were outnumbered when they returned home. The first government after Churchill was the Clement Attlee Labourites, even more socialist than Obama. I doubt it was the war veterans who backed them.
Between two wars, Britain had the stuffing beaten out of it. It’s no surprise that only now are they starting to get back some of the chutzpah, with the help of Thatcher. But the typical yob of today is just a shadow of his grandfather and great grandfather.
Sorry, but read your British history. It WAS the returning men in 1945 who kicked out Churchill and the Conservatives. They admired Winston, but they blamed the Conservatives for causing the conditions in 1936-1939 that allowed Britain to sucked into another world war.
In fact, by pure chance, there is a good article in the Daily Mail today about the defeat of Churchill in 1945:
This is almost certainly what it comes down to. Just like the US, street crime is largely restricted to certain very bad neighbourhoods. They are not the kind of places you would have any reason to visit.
State of violent chaos? You mustn’t believe everything you read. I would have no hesitation in walking alone at night in 95% of Britain’s urban areas.
I think that is absolutely correct. Nation states are just that - unique and culturally very different. Aversion to gun ownership is an aspect of British culture that has been around for a long time and is very deeply inculcated.
If you believe Americans need to be free to own firearms that is a perfectly defendable stance and you should promote it as much as you can - but pointing at another country and saying “that’s what happens when you don’t support what I am advocating” is not the way to do it. There are all manner of reasons why Britons, Frenchmen, Dutch, Japanese and so on do things in different ways, and you run the risk of tripping up on that if you do.
Anyway, doing (or not doing) something just because that’s what other people do or don’t do is never a very good reason. Liberals are forever justifying their actions by saying they “bring us into line” with international opinion, or international law, or whatever.
Very offensive, like all eugenics type thinking.
But a soldier’s chance of dying is lower if they have a higher IQ, lower if they are physically fit, lower if they are good leaders, lower if they have a good sense of humor, and so on, and so on.
Basically the British people had had enough of Empire. It was just too expensive, in money, lives, political and social cohesion.
And the conservatives got the blame. Churchill was cheered wherever he went, but his party was just too unpopular.
Pretty much that is what the two wars did to Europe as a whole, and they will never recover from it.
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