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I am pleased to offer a shout-out for a dandy new informational website, the Bellicose Women’s Brigade, put together in part by regular Samizdata commenter analog kid. The term was originated, I believe, by the Ubiquitous One in response to the decidedly militant response to the 9/11 attacks by women in the US. One interesting side effect of this attack on American soil was a change in the attitude of many women towards aggressive self-defense, both in the international and domestic spheres. Women began buying guns and taking self-defense classes in unprecedented numbers.
This is where the BWB website comes in. It is a resource for people who are new to the self-defense and guns thing. My quick review of its contents shows a nice selection of accessible essays on the essential topics (gun safety, gun selection, and so forth). Gun geekery is kept firmly in the background.
Sadly, this information is mostly academic for our British cousins currently laboring under a most atrocious denial of their right to own and use guns for self-defense. Still, for those of us living in more enlightened realms, this looks like a good place to send someone who is thinking about buying a gun for their own security, but wants good information they can review in the privacy of their own home.
Via the inevitable and ubiquitous Instapundit, a new blog by Clayton Cramer devoted to chronicling the use of firearms in self-defense.
What? Why does Clayton need two blogs? Because I started to keep track of civilian uses of guns for self-defense–and there were so many of them that it was hard to find them in my normal blog. So, here’s where they are going to go in the future!
What sort of entries will go here? Just summaries and links to articles about civilians engaged in defensive uses of guns.
Brian Linse seems to be very self-satisfied today over the fact that John Lott Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime (1998), is currently on the ropes in defending his work. He is even going to the point of calling Prof. Lott’s central thesis “fraudulent”. I do not know what Brian’s background is, but I would guess from this that he is neither an attorney or a scientist. In either of those cases, he would know that simply because a theory is flawed, that constitutes no grounds for labeling it fraudulent. Brian should also be aware that, simply because a theory is flawed in its details, that’s no reason to abandon the basic concept.
I must admit, I have been quite remiss in following the efforts to debunk Prof. Lott’s work over the past year or so. But this is a pet issue of mine, so I guess it is time I brought my talents to bear on the matter.
During my recent travels in the US, I encountered many a ‘security’ measure at various airports. By the end of my stay and a fair number of flights, these were beginning to really get on my nerves. I am not singling the US as the only security-mad country, although it seems that something certainly got out of hand there. The airport searches are interminable – going through metal detectors that seem to have the highest sensitive settings was most annoying as my travel companion is one of those people who will fail to fish out the last quarter from their pockets or forget to take off his watch/belt/keys. (By the way a dime in my pocket did go through just fine…)
Another inexplicable measure is the never-ending checks of one’s boarding pass. After the full check-in with bells and whistles on – passports and security questions, our boarding documents were checked no less then five times before we finally settled down in our seats. Most of them happened within three yards of each other.
My harping on about this may be a bit off the point especially as I was not subjected to anything as drastic as overzealous security personnel and most people seem to accept the ordeals. The flights were uneventful and most likely not delayed by the searches and checks and screenings. What is most frustrating is the fact that none of those measures are effective or make much sense. They certainly are not efficient, spawning a huge mass of regulation, petty rules and turning customers into a fair game for any hung-up, power-crazed ‘little official’. While they may provide an effective therapy to thousands of sufferers of inferiority complex and to the ordinary people who would otherwise never have ‘tasted power’, the costs, born by the airlines i.e. their customers, act as a throttle on the demand for air travel.
It is a sad ocurrance that airports, the hubs of modern travel and civilisation, have become Kafkaesque worlds where bureaucracy has been allowed to run amok. To be fair, there are other places and institutions that manage similar achievements as the winners of Privacy International Stupid Security Contest testify.
Natalie Solent has some striking gun-control analysis from Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, Here’s a bit of the bit she quotes:
There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that. Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.
Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers – say, three per citizen.
Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing’ and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. …
Natalie concludes her comments thus:
I suppose Pratchett might say that Vimes’ opinons are not his own, but, even so, Vimes is not just a one-off hero but a much loved character who stars in several books: this shows at the very least that Britain’s best selling living novelist sees where we’re coming from.
I guess it’s a case of read the whole thing.
Great story posted at the Volokh Conspiracy:
Ron Simpson knows guns — and instantly knew the one in front of him Wednesday night was a phony.
Sure, the gun in the hands of the would-be robber at Action Video at 1058 Alamance Church Road had the look of a 9 mm, but Simpson, the manager, said he was “95 percent sure” the muzzle was too small to project a bullet.
“That is not a real gun,” Simpson told the robber. “This is a real gun,” he said, pulling a .25-caliber derringer from his front-right jeans pocket. . . .
Simpson picked up a cordless phone, dialed 911 and followed the robber outside. The fearful criminal stayed about a minute and ran before police arrived. . . .
Reminds me of that scene in Crocodile Dundee when the eponymous hero is confronted by a street punk with a switchblade.
Doesn’t it?
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, someone opened up with a set of twin-mounted .30-caliber machine guns, or the more lethal array of quad-mounted .50-cals in a swivel turret.
Could there be such a thing a ‘Legal Laffer Curve’? What I mean is, a point where there are so many laws that the State cannot possibly enforce them and their agents start to wilt under the pressure of trying to do so. From then on the whole thing starts to go downhill and the lawlessness begins to grow uncontrollably.
Has that point been reached?
A chief Constable admitted yesterday that his officers are being forced to ignore thousands of burglaries, thefts and car crimes because they are swamped by increasing drug and gun violence.
The public’s perception that the police were not interested in low-level and non-violent crime was underlined when Steve Green, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire police, said there was not enough money or officers available to investigate all crime.
The emergence of Britain’s drug and gun culture had impacted on his force to such an extent that “something had to give”.
A very telling admission from a man who is clearly under pressure. However my sympathy-meter is stuck at nought. The police have spent decades campaigning vigourously to abolish just about every right of the citizens to preserve their own security and, of course, the means to do so. The natural consequence is that they have arrogated that burden onto themselves and it is a burden the can neither cope with nor discharge. Truly that is a zero-sum game.
Yes, I think something will have to ‘give’ but knowing this country as I do, I doubt very much that it will be the pathology of total control that has caused the problem in the first place.
The US Centers for Disease Control (for our UK friends, that’s the same as “Centres for Disease Control”) recently admitted that gun control laws can’t be shown to do much of anything to reduce violence.
From the press release:
The Task Force review of the effects of various laws showed insufficient evidence to conclude whether firearms laws impact rates of violence.
Among the areas under task force review were: bans on specific firearms or ammunition, restrictions on firearm acquisition, waiting periods for firearm acquisition, firearm registration and licensing of firearm owners, “shall issue” concealed weapon carry laws, child access prevention laws, zero tolerance for firearms in schools, and combinations of firearm laws.
A finding of “insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness” means that, based on the current body of literature, the Task Force is unable to determine whether the intervention was effective or not. The task force agreed that additional scientific studies relating to these interventions might help to provide clearer answers.
A little background and a few points to consider:
The CDC has a long history of being virulently anti-gun. That it would make such an admission, even in such painfully hedged terms, is no small thing. The diversion of the Centers for DISEASE Control into the gun debate was a prime example of mission creep and of the notion that violence is not the result of personal decision and (ir)responsibility, but rather was the result of impersonal forces and even of inanimate objects.
Alternatively, this may also be cited as an example of the way that administrative agencies bend to the political winds – the CDC was pro-gun control under pro-gun control administrations, and now . . . . My acquaintance with the tenured civil servant class, though, tends to undercut this attack. The folks who generate these kinds of reports are very nearly untouchable, and if anything their motivation increases when they disagree with the politicals.
I have always said that the burden of proof rests on those who would restrict our liberties. This report would seem to pretty well indicate that the burden has not been met on gun control.
It will be interesting to see if this affects the coming expiration of the assault weapons ban. Bush has said he will sign an extension of the ban if it lands on his desk (another black mark on his permanent record). The CDC report should be useful to opponents of the ban.
Glenn Reynolds has an interesting article with links on violent crime. US murder rates have continued to drop over the last ten years and are now at the lowest seen since the 1960’s.
Meanwhile, as we have seen in the last week, murder in the UK has been skyrocketing. One of the linked articles also reports something many of us have predicted. If cheap guns cannot be bought, they will be manufactured.
It turns out that is exactly what is happening in the UK. It is not as if gunsmithing were a high technology endeavour. Is there anyone out there who truly believes hand-made items manufactured in 16th century London workshops cannot be built to much higher standards in a 21st Century London garage?
Where there is a customer, there’s a way.
PS: An interesting thought struck me whilst off in the shower… we may be on the verge of a new generation of experimental and creative armourers here in the UK.
The time has come for the government to take firm action.
Yesterday:
A shopkeeper who was shot dead in a robbery stepped in front of her killers to save her daughter, said her husband.
Thieves killed Marion Bates, 64, in front of her daughter Xanthe in an attack at their family-run jewellery store in Arnold, Nottingham, on Tuesday.
Today:
A man has died and another has been injured after a drive-by shooting in Hertfordshire.
Police say the two men came under fire – possibly from an automatic weapon – outside the Physical Limit Health and Fitness Club in Brewery Road gym in Hoddesdon.
This must never be allowed to happen again. How many more lives are going to be sacrificed to the cowboy, wild-west gun culture that has gripped this country? How many more families are going to be destroyed? When is this government going to do something to make our streets safe again?
We must get guns out of private hands. All handguns and automatic weapons must be banned completely. We must have strict laws against possessing these kind of deadly weapons backed up by draconian sentences. If it saves even one life its worth it.
Enough is enough. Britain needs gun control now!
Update: I have just been advised by my eagle-eyed team of researchers that, in fact, Britain has the strictest anti-gun laws in the developed world and that handguns and automatic weapons were banned years ago! I told them that this cannot possibly be true but they assure me that it is. Well, back to the drawing-board to find a new campaign. Any suggestions?
This is both good news and bad news:
Farmer Tony Martin has accepted an offer from a burglar whom he shot and wounded to drop a claim for damages.
The aborted attempt by Brendan Fearon to sue Mr Martin for compensation is likely to cost the public around £50,000, a friend of the farmer said.
Mr Fearon last week offered to halt his compensation claim if Mr Martin agreed to abandon his counterclaim for compensation for damages suffered when his home was broken into.
Mr Martin today gave his lawyers formal instructions to accept Mr Fearon’s offer.
The good news is that this absurd and fraudulent legal threat from “Mr” Fearon now looks as if it will cease. The bad news is that this deal accepts not only the equality before the law but also of legal outcome of a householder and his burgling attacker. Maybe (maybe), Fearon has suffered enough for what he did to Tony Martin, although I doubt if he has suffered nearly enough for what he has done to lots of others. But Tony Martin has certainly suffered far too much. If this deal makes his life easier and happier, then I’m for it, and of course he knows his own best interests. But the law should never have put him in the absurd position of having to negotiate with this thieving little apology for a man in the first place, just to stop any further predations.
Sting in the tail of the Telegraph piece already quoted from:
Mr Fearon was claiming legal aid for his court bid.
But of course.
Going off at a bit of a tangent, I posted some news yesterday afternoon and last night over at White Rose of another bit of broadcasting done by Sean Gabb, whose efforts on behalf of Tony Martin were featured here in two recent posts, this time on the subject of Identity Cards. I didn’t hear the broadcast, but Sean apparently did very well, with much phoned-in and e-mailed support.
ID cards will do nothing to stop the likes of Fearon in their criminal rampages. ID card forgery will merely be another crime for criminals to commit and another pointless governmental expense, as Britain seems about to learn, and as Nigeria, apparently, already knows. There, the forgeries came several weeks before the real things themselves!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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