People are going to have to decide if they want to live as free men or if they would rather live like slaves. The right to keep and bear arms has little to do with hunting, it has a whole lot to do with the basic relationship of the individual to the state. I wish more people realized that fact.
Holy cow! What did he have left to steal?
I guess one way to ignore your own problems is to concentrate on other peoples.
Cheeers Tony
-Empty-Barrel Gun Policies-A legacy of nonsense from Clinton, Blair, and the Left--
-A Problem With Guns (Long... but SOOOO good)--
Shooting More Holes in Gun Control
HCI Aussie Style (read it and weep-or laugh)
The Great Australian Gun Law CON!
| Canadian Gun Control Has Little Impact on Crime (Home Gun Confiscation/Resisters) | ||||||
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Israel is Arming Its Civilians - Why Aren't We?
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| Through the Looking Glass and Back Again - From Anti-gunner to Firearms Instructor in Four Months | ||||||
I can't speak for all states, but Mr. Roberts is way wrong on this where Texas is concerned. Texans are not only allowed to use deadly force to protect our homes, we may also use deadly force to protect any "tangible, moveable property. Meaning that if I see some pinhead trying to steal my Harley I can put a round in him.
Legal aid for burglar shot by Tony Martin
Clare Dyer, legal correspondent
Saturday July 6, 2002
The Guardian
One of the burglars shot by the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin during a break-in at his house has been granted legal aid to sue the farmer for the injuries he sustained. Brendon Fearon, 32, of Newark, Notts, was initially turned down for aid by the legal services commission, but suc ceeded after appealing to an area committee of independent solicitors and barristers.
A spokesman for the commission said: "The area committee allowed the appeal and their decision to allow legal aid was binding on us."
Legal aid will cover the costs of processing the case up to trial. A further application will have to be made for legal aid during the hearing if the case gets that far. The spokesman said: "We are reviewing the case every three months to ensure that it still meets the eligibility criteria. If at any time it becomes apparent that the criteria are no longer being met funding will cease."
Martin, who shot dead Fearon's accomplice, 16-year-old Fred Barras, is serving a five year sentence after his murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter by the court of appeal.
Malcolm Starr, a friend of Martin, said: "I think it's totally dreadful and I think it's time Tony Blair and the home secretary came out and gave a statement with their views."
Martin shot Fearon in the legs at Bleak House Farm, Emneth Hungate, Norfolk, in August 1999. Fearon, who has a string of convictions for theft, drugs and burglary, is thought to be hoping to win up to £50,000.
But, off the bat, there are three things that need saying.
Firstly, it was the Conservative Party that dis-armed Britain, a Conservative party that was, at the time, extremely right-wing, even by American standards. Specifically, it decided rich people living in the country (where very little crime happened) would be allowed to own as many guns as they wanted (largely on the justification of hunting), while the average citizen would not. It was done out of fear of a communist up-rising (of all things) in the 1920s. However, gun ownership has never, ever been widespread in this country (the main effect of the legislation was to deprive households in the South East of the guns they'd been given, in case of German invasion, during WWI). It was a Tory and New Labour (Blair's scheme - basically a Tory economic policy with a slightly liberal social policy, Thatcherism with a conscience) governments that banned hand-guns (again, carefully constructing the legislation to favour the landed elite who are the Conservative party's main caucus) - but it did not, as has been suggested, do it to "cut gun crime" but to stop nutters who legally owned guns going crazy and killing lots of people (this happened in the 80s, there were calls to ban handguns from parental and Christian groups, these were ignored - it happened again a few years later, this time the calls had the massive support amongst the electorate). It's interesting to note that the (unswaveringly socialist, at the time) Labour party dropped their support for gun ownership before WWII, when it proved unpopular at the ballot box and allowed the Tories to accuse them of wanting a communist revolution.
Secondly, the idea that the right of self defence has been dismantled in this country is absolute nonsense. There are occassional, high-profile cases of people getting sent down for carrying dangerous weapons - but that's because the carrying of those weapons is illegal, plain and simple, not because self defense is illegal. For every one of those high-profile cases, dozens, if not hundreds, of cases of reasonable self-defence are never brought to court, and plenty that are brought to court see charges cleared. The most high-profile case - Tony Martin - was an incidence of vigiliantism (he had already successfully put them off robbing his house, his crime was to pursue them out of his house and shoot them as they were running away - in the case of the boy he killed, he shot him outside the front of the house, in the case of the other one he drove half way round the countryside, brandishing his shotgun, looking for someone to shoot). The surviving guy recently tried to sue him - and the case was thrown out of court.
Thirdly, some crime rates in London are rising. But what they are rising to is not some un-precdented high mark. They are rising back to the levels of crime London suffered during the Victorian era (when guns were theoretically legal, mind, though not especially common). Particularly in the areas of youth and violent crime, over the past two decades London has been plunged back a century. The main factor in this would appear to, on the one hand, the return of absolute poverty and the increase in relative poverty during the 80s and early 90s, and on the other an importing of gang violence from the US and Jamaica. The legislation that prohibited gun ownership in the early 90s had no effect, because laws governing gun ownership before that legislation was incredibly tight anyway - you could not have carried a gun legally, had it easily accessible at home, or fired it outside of a gun club - and gun ownership was incredibly rare.
Overall crime has been falling in this country since at least WWII (though as trust of the police has spread, reported crime in certain areas has increased - what's interesting is that crime has always been under-reported, only these days it's the police massaging the figures, whereas it used to be you simply didn't grass people up to a police force that you trusted even less than the criminals - a particular problem in Northern Ireland). It continues to fall, overall, but has been rising for the past decade in those two very specific areas - youth crime and violent crime. These are Thatcher's children, ripped from the pages of Oliver Twist - they don't care about anyone, they'll do anything to get what they want. It's going to take a hell of a lot to deal with them and at least a generation before we can reverse these trends. But it has nothing to do with gun ownership. There was no real "law-abiding gun culture", as one article suggested, to destroy - the logic of the "gun ownership equals less crime" argument is that potential burglars or muggers will be afraid that the people they are attacking will be carrying guns, but this was never a reasonable fear anyway because very few people owned guns before the ban. A ban that affected less than five percent of the population can not be connected with a rise in gun crime. And the rise in gun crime is more connected with gang fighting rather than attacks on individuals - guns are not the weapon of choice for muggers, they're used by gangs to shoot at each other (in a style, as I say, imported from the US and Jamaica - in the old days, our gangs used to go at each other with bike chains and knives).
None of this is to say that America should scrap its guns, or that I'm opposed to gun ownership in principle. The individual should, legally, be able to own a gun - and that issue of personal liberty is enough in itself, without these myths about the relaiton between gun laws and crime in the UK (there is none). And I think America, given the prevelance of guns there, would be insane to ban law-abiding citizens owning one.