Mark Steyn: In the Absence of Guns

The Vanguard (originally from the American Spectator) ^ | 14 June 2000 | Mark Steyn

[Ancesthntr]

Is it an intentional plan to destroy freedom and institute absolute police power? If so, it isn't working the way is was supposed to work in England. Sure, Britain is a police state, but there is absolutely NO control of the criminal element, while the citizenry at large seems to be nothing but a huddled mass of scared rabbits.

Maybe the way to institute a police state is to have no control over the criminal element - this justifies ever-increasing controls over the vast majority of the people, and actually gets them to ask for/demand those additional controls (sheeple work this way). The truly rich and powerful have armed guards, so they'll never be victimized. The criminal element is their tool, precisely because it is uncontrolled.

[TomSmedley]

Maybe the way to institute a police state is to have no control over the criminal element -

The "socially friendly" (criminal) elements kept the soviet gulags under control.

[Steve0113]

In Britain, criminals, police, and magistrates are united in regarding any resistance by the victim as bad form.

I would never live under laws like that. It would be time to find another country to live in.

[RetiredArmy]

Britian is a self-inflicted wound. Power may be with the so called Crown, but the Crown has no power. The Parliament is made up of elected individuals. These people could be deposed of through elections if the people gave a tinkers damned about their own personal safety and rights. The power is always in the hands of the people. The people have risen up and brought down countless goverments through the ballot box as well as by the gun. These people simply need to find and elect leaders who will lead and not so-called leaders like the left imposes upon you. We will eventually do the same thing here. The left is slowly gaining their footholds through the school system. People in the USA are getting lazier and lazier. It is easier to be the victim than to work and earn your way. Vote buying will continue. The left will slowly prevail. I pray it is not for another 40 or 50 years, but I fear it will be sooner. Let us elect a leftist Congress and President, and watch these same massive changes happen here. It will happen when the dems are in total control again. They will not allow theselves not to be out of power again.

[Shooter 2.5]

Times have sure changed. If an officer of the law gave advice like that today, he should lose his badge for being such a moron.

Changing evidence will get a person in more trouble than if they did shoot someone outside the building.

[templar]

If he is outside of your house you may not dispose of him unless he is a mortal threat (coming at you with a knife gun etc).

If he is simply larger and/or younger and stronger than you, and attacking you with his fists, would that qualify? What amount of force being used against you would be required to justify shooting the guy there?

[templar]

The school cop gave me the same advice when I was 17.

When I was a teen a cop gave me this advice "If you want to kill someone, don't shoot them. You'll go to jail. Just run em over with a car and say it was an accident. the most that will happen is you'll maybe get a year for negligent homicide".

Of course, having said this publicly, it'll be hard to use that excuse again.

[Steve0113]

Changing evidence will get a person in more trouble than if they did shoot someone outside the building.

That seems to be a well-kept secret around here. Tampering with evidence is a serious crime. And it WILL be discovered, because forensics is an advanced science.

[cpdiii]

If he is struggling with you or tying to get close to you and you have a weapon you are in mortal danger as he may take your weapon and kill you. Off him!

[dcwusmc]

Bump against such idiocy!!! Second Amendment bump!

[headsonpikes]

You're onto their little secret.

This is the logic of the State; always has been, always will be.

[Ancesthntr]

I prefer to think of it as the logic of the Statists; as you and most people on FR know, this State was not set up to be the way it seems to be headed (or even the way it is now). The Founding Fathers and their generation fought a bloody war on home soil to be rid of Statists, and structured our government to prevent them from gaining too much power. It worked for a while, but it is falling apart now. The Founding Fathers knew that it couldn't last based solely on what was written in any document, but only for so long as the People were vigilant. The Statists know this and are patient; they hope to boil the frog slowly. It is our job at FR (in the frog's brain, to keep going with this analogy) to wake up the rest of the frog, get it to jump out of the nearly boiling water, grab a gun and shoot the ba$tard$ who turned up the gas.

[headsonpikes]

You're right. I meant, of course, that this is the logic of a State divorced from any accountability to its citizens.

IOW, without a CONSCIOUS effort on the part of both citizens and politicians to enforce the Rule of Law, the State and its minions will always function so as to maximize their control over the populace.

Tyranny is the default mode of human governance.

[jodorowsky]

"In the (Soviet) Criminal Code of 1926 there was a most stupid Article 139 -- 'on the limits of necessary self-defense' -- according to which you had the right to unsheath your knife only after the criminal's knife was hovering over you. And otherwise you would be the one put on trial... This fear of exceeding the measure of necessary self-defense led to total spinelessness as a national characteristic...

"The state, in its Criminal Code, forbids citizens to have firearms or other weapons, but does not itself undertake to defend them! The state turns its citizens over to the power of the bandits -- and then through the press dares to summon them to 'social resistance' against these bandits..."

Solzhenitsyn, "Gulag Archipelago", Vol 3, Chapter 16