Posted on 04/30/2012 9:14:13 AM PDT by MindBender26
Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire.
The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble. In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless.
Yours was never registered. Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.
"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask.
"Only ten-to-twelve years, "he replies, as if that's nothing. "Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested numerous times.
But the next day's headline says it all: "Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die." The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.
Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win. The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.
A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man. It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges. The judge sentences you to life in prison.
This case really happened!
On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England , killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term. How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire?
It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns. Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.
Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.
The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control", demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school. For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners.
Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens.
During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.
Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We cannot have people take the law into their own hands." All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.
When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply. Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.
How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?
WAKE UP AMERICA ; THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.
"...It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.." --Samuel Adams
Three words would have saved Tony Martin a lot of trouble, “shoot, shovel, shut-up”. He was out in the country side, no one probably heard the shots so if he had bagged the second criminal all would have been well, plus his crops would have gotten a little bit extra fertilizer. And if he had gotten caught? Well how many life sentences can you give some one? Lesson here is never call the cops unless you really, really need to as they are nothing but trouble.
ping!
>> “How can you lose a right??” <<
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You can’t lose it, but you can foolishly surrender it.
The british see rights as granted by government, while we see government as a construct by the people, and all rights being granted by God to sovereign individuals. The two points of view are irreconcilable.
Buy ammo. And, do it correctly.....I have a few friends who still don't get it, ie: when I ask, "how much ammo do you have on hand?" I get a few answers of : Got plenty, plus 14 guns in the closet. Have 3 or 4 boxes of 12 ga, a couple for my kids .410, couple of boxes each for my 6 rifles, and a bunch of partial boxes for all my hand guns. I tell them that's fine if they can stay in the house and shoot out the windows, B-U-T if they need to run outside and shoot from behind the car or garage, they may find themselves in the do-do. One can only carry a couple of long guns (of different calibers) and a couple of handguns while on the run, along with their ammo. You shoot up those 3 - 20 round boxes of .30/06, 4 boxes of 7mm, 3 boxes of .45 ACP and you no longer have 3 guns....just 3 clubs.
Designate one shotgun, one rifle and one handgun as your primary "social unrest" home defense weapons and load up on the ammo for them. Having 20 guns doesn't do you any good if all you have is a few rounds for each. Kinda hard to watch out the FRONT living room window where the armed looters are moving around and dig through the BACK bedroom closet for more ammo. ("I KNOW I have at least a half box of .270 somewhere from last deer season......where the hell is it ???").
If you can't afford lots of expensive high caliber ammo, get a few bricks of .22 ammo. 300 rounds flying out that window from your .22 rifle and pistol may not drop a 250 lb man, but a wound in the arm with a .22 will slow him down, take him off the attack and put HIM on defense. Plus, with a bucket of .22 ammo, your wife and kid can easily load one gun while you shot the other.
Don't forget magazines / clips. It's great that you have 1 EXTRA mag that came with your favorite deer rifle, B-U-T a total of 2 mags with only 5 rounds each isn't going to last long until you hear "click" and stop shooting to reload them. If you can't get oversize mags, get a sack full of the "regular" ones.
AND, as noted by another FREEPER after my post; Ensure you have slings on your long guns, so you will have at least one hand free when on the move. If you don't want to "mess up the looks" of your beautiful 375 H & H Magnum with swivels and sling, at least have some precut lengths of small size rope or strapping handy to use for an 'emergency' sling. You can always tie it around the stock and forearm (or barrel) and throw it over your shoulder. It doesn't have to be 'pretty', just a temporary jerry-rig that could save your life.
We should have broken off diplomatic relations when Tony Martin of Emneth was arrested.
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The English Bill of Rights of 1688 goes something like this...
“...That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;
That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;....”
This law was passed by Parliament to reign in the powers of the King and established civilian arms and the national army as a perogative of Parliament, not the King.
Why? The House of Stuart (a couple of Charles and a James here and there over the previous 50 years) had the habit of disarming Protestants and showed strong preference against them being officers in the militia or army. After the Protestant Parliament chased James II out and brought in Dutchman William of Orange with his Scottish wife Mary...sister of James II....they sought to tie him down with the 1688 Act. It worked....by and large the Monarchy quickly slid into the current “theme park” attraction they are today.
Before 1688, the right to arms (proper to one’s station in society of course) had been considered the natural right of an Englishman in the “common law” for over 1,000 years since the times of the Saxon militia and fyrdman (free man) system....itself the outgrowth of the Germanic warrior based society where all arms bearing males had relatively equal say in governance. Google “althingi” and see how it worked more recently for the Norse.
The English can’t have arms now because once, just once, they waited until it was too late to use them. They slid down the “be reasonable” slippery slope to serfdom.
First handguns. Then nasty old semi-auto rifles. Then then finally even the old doubles. Now even a box cutter is considered a deadly weapon (sound familiar)...and as the author notes, the weapons were easy to take because the Masterclass had already established that “self defense” was no justification for any weapon.
Stand fast and don’t make the same mistake here.
What youre talking about is a privilege not a right. Theres a diff.
There sits the problem. No written Bill of Rights/Constitution, just a collection of changeable laws, to guarantee the conduct of society.
OK, using your definition, if there is no God, we merely have privileges that the state bestows or removes from us. Only if there is a unchanging and moral God do we have rights.
"The English Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of the Parliament of England (1 Will. & Mar. sess. 2 c. 2) with the long title An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown and also known by its short title, the Bill of Rights. It is one of the basic documents of English constitutional law, alongside Magna Carta, the Act of Settlement and the Parliament Acts. It also forms part of the law of some other Commonwealth nations, such as New Zealand and Canada. A separate but similar document applies in Scotland: the Claim of Right.
The Bill of Rights 1689 is largely a statement of certain positive rights that its authors considered that citizens and/or residents of a constitutional monarchy ought to have. It asserts the Subject's right to petition the Monarch and the Subject's right to bear arms for defence. It also sets out (or in the view of its writers, restates) certain constitutional requirements where the actions of the Crown require the consent of the governed as represented in Parliament. In this respect, it differs from other "bills of rights," including the United States Bill of Rights, though many elements of the first eight amendments to the U.S. Constitution echo its contents. This is in part due to the uncodified constitutional traditions of the UK, whereby the English Bill of Rights forms a list of rights in respect of the people as represented in Parliament, in addition to those rights already provided for individuals as set out in Magna Carta.
Source: Yahoo Answers
It appears that they did at one time have "codified" rights including the "right to bear arms".
Castle doctrine stems from English Common Law. The original Book 4, Chapter 16 of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England states that a man has the right to protect his house (also called his castle) and there is no possible way to lawfully enter the house, except for cases when it is needed for Public Safety (for example during a lawsuit).
It also appears that English Common Law like American Constitutional protections have have been greatly eroded by aggressive (progressive??) liberal attack over the passage of time (it's for the children, don't ya know...).
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you we can keep it.”
Regards,
GtG
You set the bar mighty low, I believe my dog Frank would be a better President then zero.
Regards,
GtG
No, you know both that Corey has flouted Florida’s self-defense laws, and that she has no authority to do so. Allen (Alan?) Dershowitz (also, sp?) may be the force that gets Angie and friends indicted for suppressing exculpatory evidence. I’d love to hear that she and they have been charged, tried, found guilty, and are on “extended leave.”
Vote for Democrats and RINO's, who pretend they have read the Constitution and have your best interest at heart. Forget those silly bible thumbing social conservatives, we will try to help them in 2016, er 20, er 24......
“When guns are outlawed, then only the outlaws have guns”
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No, not only the outlaws will have guns but also the ruling elites, which is just as bad.
Do you really think that the elites will tell their bodyguards to carry down pillows from then on?
Outlawing of guns for law-abiding citizens is an indication that their lives have become of lesser value, as judged by the elites, and are no longer worthy of protection.
Believe me I understand. Despite wishing it were not so one of them IS going to be President.
Bookmarked. Thanks.
More to the point, the ruling elites are beginning to fear the reaction of the citizenry to their over reach of power. Disarmament of the citizens becomes imperative. Also imperative is getting control of the internet. The ability of the prols to communicate with each other freely is a real problem for a wannbe totalitarian ruling class. Their biggest fear? An armed and informed citizenry.
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