Posted on 07/31/2003 1:38:19 PM PDT by David Hunter
Tony Martin's most precious possession, his dog Otto, was moved to a secret location yesterday hours after it was claimed that travellers planned to kill it.
A newspaper reported that a £5,000 "contract" had been put out on Otto, the only one of Martin's three Rottweilers to survive since he was jailed.
The dog had been moved from Worcestershire to kennels in Lincolnshire shortly after Christmas. Yesterday morning, it was taken to another, secret address.
"Mr Martin was tremendously upset by the suggestion people were out to kill his dog," said Malcolm Starr, the farmer's closest friend. "They haven't been reunited but I expect they will be in the next couple of days."
Travellers were said to have put a price on the dog's head in revenge for the shooting by Martin, 58, of Fred Barras, 16, during a burglary at his farmhouse in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk.
*A report in early editions of yesterday's Telegraph stated that Tony Martin was being guarded by representatives of ITN and a national newspaper. ITN has asked us to point out that none of its news outlets is offering any payment for an interview with Martin. We apologise for the error.
The only thing stopping it is political cowardice.
So9
This community may well end up with such a committee if the authorities fail to respond to this situation. It's all very well to fantasize about catching the fellow killing the dog and thrashing him as an example to the others (Hollywood movies are full of this sort of thing), but it won't be an example, it will merely be an incentive for them to set their own example on the guy who did it, and they'll always have the advantage because (1) they have no fixed addresses, (2) they're used to criminal activity, and (3) they have more violent people available to them than the average citizen. In the U.S. a firearm is only a partial equalizer, as they learned in San Francisco. It's a breakdown and a failure of society that allows this situation, and it must be addressed on a collective level.
The reason that you always run into trouble with the authorities taking this approach is that one part of being an "authority" is possessing a monopoly on "legitimate" violence. Mr. Martin found that out the hard way.
They have a society like Gypsies, but they are Irish.
They are a clan of con men and thugs. They literaly own several small towns in the United States, and use them for bases in their wandering and plundering.
So9
The British government will never "outlaw" any group, other than self-confessed terrorists, because that wouldn't be cricket in this day and age. Instead, they will just pass another set of useless gun laws and probably more limits on a citizen's already fragile right to self defence.
I heard a whiney liberal politician on the radio the other day saying how the Martin case showed the need for more restrictions on gun ownership. These liberal morons need a few violent thugs to break into their houses a few times, then we'll see how they feel about a citizen's right to defend themselves and their property with force.
The formation of an pseudo-vigilante organisation, even one that doesn't actually take any action other than "talking the talk" and being highly vocal in the media, together with support from middle class respectable British people is likely to cause the arrogant British government to reverse its tradition of ignoring the victims of robbery and burglary and with any luck to rethink its policy on self defence.
Nothing will happen if another householder, or a hundred, are convicted for defending themselves against burglars under similar circumstances, they will just be prosecuted by the same worthless idiots that Martin was. What's needed is someone to start rocking the boat, to frighten the government into enacting more right wing/libertarian style policies.
The problem is the current Labour government has a history of ignoring even the largest and best planned campaigns and marches. Look how much notice they took of the countryside alliance march last year and the "stop the war" march, which incidentally was the largest march in British history, (not that I agree with the latter of course).
Even the British Conservative party are soft on criminals and hostile to empowering the public to use realistic force (and certainly not armed force) to stop criminals. The establishment of a high profile vigilante like organisation would send a message to the government, and the Torys, that either the state must solve this problem or victims will band together in groups and take the law into their own hands. Such an organisation would have the added benefit of keeping this issue in the public eye and stopping it from just disappearing once the Martin fiasco stops making headlines.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.