It seems that the same idea has indeed gone out like a clarion call from many watchtowers and mountain tops and it must be a great time to be in the gun store business in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
(joyous tip of the hat to Freedom Sight for the link)
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…well, arms shops actually. The absurd ‘assault weapon’ ban which prohibited certain weapons on the basis of largely aesthetic criteria, has expired in the USA as of today. However as Dubya made it clear that if there had been enough support for extending the ban in Congress, he would have signed it into law rather than try and veto it, please resist the urge to feel much gratitude for his lukewarm support for the Second Amendment. However it was passed before and could certainly happen again. And so I urge all the redoubtable gun owning men and women of the USA to run, not walk, to their nearest gun shop and purchase nice Kalashnikov or AR-15 or Ruger Mini-14 or FAL or M-14 or whatever, plus a goodly selection of flash suppressors and high capacity magazines, thus ensuring that there are soooooo many of the damn things in circulation that any future ban will simply have no effect. Use the power of the Buycott, have fun at the range, arm yourself to the teeth and, best of all, absolutely enrage advocates of gun control in the process. I mean, how good it that? 
Good stance and correct breathing: now that is what I call gun control September 13th, 2004 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
 On the very first occasion that I saw the advert on my TV, I knew, I just knew that is was going to set the fur flying. I was right. Scenario: a man picks up his car keys and leaves the house to get into his brand, spanking, new Land Rover Freelander Sport motor vehicle. A woman (presumably his wife) spots him leaving. She rushes up to the bedroom, opens the dresser drawer and pulls out a starting pistol. She rushes downstairs again and runs outside just as her husband is getting into the car. She points the gun up to the sky and fires a single shot, thus giving him signal to get started. Pretty innocuous stuff. But still far too traumatic and disturbing for some people:
Yes, you are reading that right. People might be encouraged to store the guns which they do not possess irresponsibly. Priceless! The right to keep and bear arms is not a debate in this country. Nor is it an issue or an idea or an argument. It has all been subsumed into a deep national psychosis for which I see no prospect of any cure. 
What would make you think we are trying to provoke? September 1st, 2004 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well, slap me on the arse and call me Betty!! You spend half a century deliberately fostering and ruthlessly enforcing a culture of civil passivity in the face of crime and malevolence and guess what happens? [Note: link to UK Times article may not work for readers outside of UK]
Let me take a wild leap into the dark here. Could this ‘tolerance’ and ‘reserve’ have anything to do with the fact that private citizens are forbidden to possess so much as a toothpick and even raising their eyebrows in defence of their homes, families or communities will result in their being dragged off to prison by the very people that are supposed to be protecting them? “Leave it to the professionals” said the professionals. And so everyone did. And look at where it has got them.
Meaning what, Ms Casy, meaning what? The swapping of tales of woe? Bouts of collective cowering? Group hugs? Yes, I am sure that will turn the tide. August 5th, 2004 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Alas, the burdensome and time-devouring task of keeping a humble roof over my head prevents me from exploring the blogosphere as much as I would ideally like to do. As a result, I suspect that there are stacks of interesting views and ideas that are simply passing me by. So, praise be for the occasional lazy, hazy Sunday afternoon that affords me the opportunity to saunter through the Samizdata blogroll in search of tasty tidbits. Today, I stumbled across a very tasty morsel at ‘A Policeman’s Blog’ which (as the name indicates) is written by a serving British police officer. Given the candour of his opinions it is easy to understand why he choses anonymity. Particularly when he says things like this:
Given the messianic zeal with which his superiors and their political masters have pursued (and continue to pursue) their policy of civilian disarmerment and compulsory passivity, it is uplifting to hear that at least one of their agents has managed to retain some common sense and a capacity for rational analysis. But then this is a man who actually has to go in and mop up (quite literally in many cases I should think) the pitiful results of their boneheaded obduracy. Nonetheless it is still a testament to his strength of character that he has drawn the correct conclusions despite every fashionable injunction to the contrary. We need more public servants like him. August 1st, 2004 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Further to Antoine’s posting yesterday, about why that old couple got killed, Alice Bachini, now that she lives in Texas, is able to make a comparison:
The trouble is that not very many people actually decide to stop living in one place and to start living in another, so these comparisons have not yet become part of the common stock of experience of mankind. And something like “safety” is not something you can see, the way you can see (or see on television) abundant goods in supermarkets or poets being politically contrary and not being arrested immediately. The only other kind of comparison of this kind is when there is a sudden change of political regime, like the sudden change that occurred in Iraq just recently, or in Germany in 1945. One day, things are done one way, and then the next day, everything is different, even though it is the same place. The circumstance that finally convinced me of the foolishness of English style gun control was a change of this sort that occurred in Jamaica, where, in the early nineteen seventies, they went, gunwise, from Texas to England, overnight. And so did their crime numbers. I like to believe that if we all plug away on this issue we might eventually get somewhere. It is particularly helpful when not obviously belligerent and sporty types like Alice and me become uncompromising supporters of the right to armed self defence. I hate guns, myself. If I lived in Texas, I would be a blatant gun free rider, being safe because others were armed. But that I should be allowed to arm myself, and that it benefits me hugely that other law-abiders are allowed to arm themselves, I have no doubt. And it did not take a switch of continent, or even regular experience of two different countries such as Antoine possesses (of England and of France between which countries the gun rules differ substantially – see the comments below), to convince me of this. And if I can be convinced, so can others. We can start with those who, because they are so attracted by pro-freedom ideas about other matters, want to believe that similar ideas apply to guns. And then we can work our way outwards from there, starting with the people who want to use guns for sport, and do not see any harm in that. The point is, for them to see the good in it and to start talking about that too. July 25th, 2004 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Why would someone attack this lovely elderly couple?” asks the front page headline in the Daily Telegraph. James and Joan Briton, both in their 80s were stabbed to death attempting to defend their home from a man believed to be Mark Hobson. Hobson, aged 34, is on the run, suspected of sexually assaulting and murdering twin sisters (one of whom was his girlfriend). The question may be rhetorical but the answer is not. Mr and Mrs Briton, of Strensall near York, were murdered because their attacker knew he could get away with it. Armed with a knife there was no possibility that the intruder could face anything more threatening than a lawyer offering him compensation for injury if his victims used household implements to defend themselves with. Police advice is to “not approach Hobson”. I am puzzled as to quite how this advice is relevant to an intruder who bursts into one’s home. Meanwhile two carjackers who killed a man are sentenced to seven and a half years each. With ‘good behaviour’ they will no doubt be released in three years, minus any time spent on remand. I note that Hobson and the carjackers are all whites, in case anyone is imagining that ‘criminal underclass scum’ has any ethnic minority connotations. July 24th, 2004 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
My friend Robert J Avrech, the Hollywood screenwriter behind such productions as Body Double and The Devil’s Arithmetic, lost his 22-year-old son Ariel to pulmonary fibrosis last July. Ariel, like the rest of his family, was a devout Orthodox Jew, and was also a rabbinical candidate and an incredibly learned Talmudic scholar. Ariel was just a kid when his family found themselves trapped in a cinema besieged by thugs during the Los Angeles riots of 1992, and as he grew older and studied the Torah more closely, he turned his attention to the case made in Jewish texts for the right to private ownership of guns. He eventually grew too weak and ill to put the case down on paper, just as he never did have the chance to go to the shooting range with his father as he dreamed of doing. But Robert has written about the matter himself, and it makes for compelling reading whether you are Jewish or not. I reproduce his essay, in its entirety, with Robert’s kind permission. → Continue reading: Jews and guns July 15th, 2004 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
News of large scale arrests of criminals in Baghdad carried out by Iraqi police are welcome, provided there is due process and it is not simply a trawling operation. It does however demonstrate the differing priorities of an army of occupation versus a police force. The International Herald Tribune article taken from the New York Times also mentions a drop in ‘spectacular’ terrorist attacks over the past three weeks. Those of us who consider that terrorist groups usually prosper in a climate of lawlessness will ponder the Iraqi situation and reflect on Northern Ireland. There is little doubt that massive police activity will uncover some terrorist networks and disrupt potential attacks: for example raiding the home of a criminal can turn up equipment intended for terrorist actions. In Northern Ireland all sorts of crimes, from welfare benefit fraud, fraudulent elections, fire insurance scams, drug dealing, protection rackets, unlicensed gambling and alcohol premises, contract killings and woundings, are tolerated on the grounds that the ‘peace process’ must be kept going. For the first time in months, I get the sense that Iraq may be going in the right direction. I wish this were the case of Londonderry and Belfast. I have felt for a long time that the violence in Northern Ireland should be considered a law-enforcement problem, separate from politics. July 14th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
In Saudi Arabia the government’s response to attacks on foreign workers is to allow them to carry firearms. Any chance of that happening in London? I can get a foreign passport if necessary. However, foreign contractors for the Saudi government will not be allowed to carry weapons because they are under the protection of the State. Good luck to them. On balance, I think I would swap the British Home Secretary for his Saudi counterpart: less fascism, less victim disarmament, more effective law enforcement, and slightly less political correctness. June 25th, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
As our long time readers know, I spent much of the 1980’s as an academic research scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University. Because of this, I am a member of the academic pension fund organizations called TIAA and CREF. As with any such organization, they have annual elections, proxies and oft-times one or more ‘Participant Proposals’ up for vote. Academia being, well, academia… such proposals are most often of the form “divest of stock in companies doing business with X” or “any business that makes Y”, where X and Y belong to the set of Politically Correct causes. So imagine my surprise when I found the following:
I voted for it, just for badness. I actually quite agree with the Board of Trustee’s statement that investments should be made on a purely financial basis. The measure will not pass… but it is the thought that counts. June 15th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Despite some of the strictest anti-gun laws anywhere in the world and despite the abject failure of those laws to make this country a safer or better place in which to live, the anti-gun hysteria shows no signs of abating:
By ‘reform’ they mean ever-greater restrictions leading inexorably to prohibition. In due course, toy guns, water pistols, potato guns and anyone with the surname ‘Gunn’ will be added to this list. The whole subject of firearms has gone way beyond any arguments about citizen’s rights to self-defence or law and order or communal safety. Guns are now just bad ju-ju; the modern equivalent of the ‘evil-eye’ or some other medieval, peasant superstition the mere sight or mention of which is sufficient to induce an impulsive and irrational terror. Bad ideas can be challenged with good ideas but superstitions are far more difficult to combat. For that, we need a whole new ‘Age of Reason’. May 9th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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