I would like to think it means something that this story is in the Metro, a London free paper, but it is probably there only because the video of the robbers running for their lives is so funny. Other than where it appears, there is nothing unusual about the story. Gun use for self defense seems quite common.
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71-year-old fights off robbersJuly 18th, 2012 |
 6 comments to 71-year-old fights off robbers |
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I would disagree with the idea that this sort of thing is ‘quite common’ in the US. It isn’t – that’s why it’s on the news.
I would submit that what’s actually quite common, especially in shall-issue CCW states, is that young scallywags like this pair of mental midgets think to themselves ‘what if I go to hit a lick at that store filled with middle-class white folks, and one of them pulls out his piece and shoots me in my ass?’ and then they decide to do – something else. And indeed, one of these two did not go through that train of thought, and indeed, he ended up shot in the ass.
It;s interesting to note that, in the city of Detroit proper, there are actually very, very few strong-arm robberies in public places. They always make a big splash in the news. And why is this? It is precisely because there is a very good chance that multiple bystanders will be armed (legally or otherwise) and they have very few compunctions about shooting back. Strong-arm robberies and carjackings take place mostly in the suburbs, where the chance of meeting armed resistance is a lot lower.
Full marks to the old man. Textbook self-defence use of deadly force, I’d buy him a beer. He terminated the threat, but stopped at the door. Absolutely textbook. A perfect score.
llater,
llamas
In Classical Civilization being legally forbidden to own and carry weapons was a key mark of a slave.
In both the Greek city states and the Roman Republic being legally able to own and carry weapons was just assumed, it was a basic right. In dangerious situations (say the city was under threat of being destroyed) slaves might be armed – but there was no discussion about whether free people should be armed, OF COURSE they were armed, they were FREE people.
With the rise of the Empire (and unlike the Emperior in the “Star Wars” films – the real Emperor, “Augustus” as Octavia can to be known, was a charming man who had good intentions) even Roman citizens were not (with some exceptions) allowed to privatly owe and train with military weapons.
Elections continued (for all the offices) and the Senate still met – but the Res-Publica had fallen. The Empire was a disguised militay dicatorship – based on a keeping the citizens unarmed.
In Germanic societies also (including among the Angles and the Saxons – the English) the mark of a slave was his being forbidden the private ownership and use of weapons.
The final mark of the humilation of the Jews in the Middle Ages was their being forbidden to own and train with weapons (a prohibition that may, in the German lands, go back as far as the 11th century).
However, those who attack the Middle Ages for its treatment of Jews should remembr that this (the endless humilations and subjection to arbitrary power) was how the Roman Empire treated its own citizens.
It is not an accident that under the CENTURIES of the Empire (which takes over the glories of Classical Civilization) there is no progress – indeed there is a gradual DECLINE.
For all the horrors of the Middle Ages that can not, justly, be said of them – in the Middle Ages people were constantly (from a very low base) finding new and better ways to do things (contray to the myth of stagnation – the Middle Ages are a time of dramatic change).
Modern Britain is like the Empire – and not even the Empire under “Augustus”.
No – it like the last dark days of the Empire where taxes may have reached between a third and a half of total output.
And where the servile population took any confiscation or other insult and humilation – because armed resistance had been made alien to them (although there were still some revolts – which makes even the “citizens” if the end of the Roman Empire more like human beings than modern cattle are).
Of course they submitted to a handful of Germanic barbarians – just as they submitted to Roman Emperors with their (releative) handful of soldiers.
As cattle they knew no other way – just as the modern people know no other way.
By the way – such violence that does exist gives me no hope, quite the contrary.
It is not resistance of property holders against government. No it is the lust for loot among the what the Victorians called the “criminal classes” (NOT the same thing as the poor) – they sense weakness, and they do not see why the government (the “official bandits” to use the old Chinese term) should have it all.
Why not take some of the loot for themselves? And have the pleasure of smashing, and burning, and raping, and killing… as well?
After all the respectable “citizens” are not going to stop them.
They will just scream for the government to come and save them and their families.
This is why, although British, I tend to write about the United States – not Britain.
It is less depessing to write about a person with a terrible illness – even if they may well lose the fight against the sickness and die…..
Than it is to write about a decaying corpse.
And should anyone doubt this….
Remember that this 71 year old in a British context would be under arrest.
It’s amazing how the leveling ability of a weapon protects the least of us best (the meek and the weak) – a death is a tragedy but violent crime enslaves an individual and the ones close to them for a lifetime. A slave to fear is a deadweight loss to civil society – for much longer than the societal costs of the grieving and loss from a death (needless or not).
Given the opportunity I’d mimic the Swiss, and if not the Swiss, develop a measure of civil society and ability to trust (from leaving doors unlocked to putting bars on windows) and have the police actively distribute guns and train citizens when the slope is negative (away from civil society and towards slavery).
I don’t want the police to provide firearms or training. My pistols and rifles (I bought myself) are better than those issued to the local police and I KNOW my training is superior.
It is welcome that, in spite of the slow slide towards totalitarianism in the United States, Second Amendment rights are actually strengthening with time.
Defensive gun use is more common than is commonly realised; for every incident in which a firearm is actually discharged there will be twenty or so incidents where merely demonstrating that one is armed shuts the incident down. The NRA magazine America’s First Freedom has each month a list of a dozen or so occasions of defensive gun use in which the weapon is used to preserve life, limb and property.