We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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This poster can be seen all over London. In it a young man standing at a bus stop chats on his mobile phone, a sight one sees all the time on London’s busy streets.
What the Metropolitan Police are saying is that doing this, talking on a mobile phone in London, in public, is unwise behaviour. Okay, fair enough, London is a big city and all big cities have their fair share of street crime, so what is the problem with this message from the boys in blue?
The problem I have is that this poster is not warning criminals who might attack us and steal our phones of the sure vengeance of the law. Not it is calling on us all to refuse to tolerate thieves in our midst and to resist to the best of our ability. Hell, how about suggesting “if you have a mobile phone in your hand and you either witness a mugging in progress or think you are in danger, dial 999 and the Police, whose paychecks and cars with flashing lights come from your taxes, will come rushing to the rescue”.
No, it does not say that at all. The real message here from our appointed protectors is not “we will protect you from crime” and certainly not “protect yourself from street crime”, but rather HIDE from street crime.
OUT OF SIGHT IS SAFER
The state cannot protect you, it will not permit you to protect yourself effectively, so all it can do is offer advice… and the advice is hide. Do not show anyone you have something worth stealing. I expect we will soon see posters across London saying “it is safer not to wear Armani suits, you might get mugged” and then “don’t wear short skirts, you might get raped” and finally “don’t go out at all, the streets are not safe”.
Perhaps when the state has taxed everything and we no longer have anything left to hide, we will indeed have ‘safer streets’.
The state is not your friend.
Does anybody else recall reading this rather doom-laden analysis written by John Derbyshire?.
I seem to remember that Mr.Derbyshire was treated to something of a rotten tomato-splattering from much of Blogland in response to his heretical pessimism. Whilst I must admit that it makes for a sobering read (to say the least) there was one prediction which struck me as all too plausible:
“Actual crime — murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and assault — will skyrocket, but it will be illegal to talk about it.”
That plausibility began to look like distinct possibility when I read this:
“An editor whose newspapers print lists of local crimes has claimed the police are trying to gag him.”
Now that’s not quite the same as making it illegal, but the impulse is apparent.
“Andy Jackson of Avon and Somerset Police said: “We do not want a blanket list of crimes because we don’t benefit from that.”
No, I’m sure you don’t benefit from that, Mr.Jackson. After all, if the tax-cattle are exposed to the reality they might begin to wonder what the hell they’re paying you for.
“We wanted to present it in a responsible way so readers weren’t alarmed by large volumes of crime.”
Note: no denial that there are ‘large volumes’ of crime, merely a plea for the statistics to be presented in a responsible manner (whatever that means).
And so it begins. And Mr.Derbyshire, if he ever reads this, might feel just a little vindicated.
[My thanks to Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance for the link to the BBC story above]
The National Ammo Day BUYcott is today, November 19th. Remember all those people in other nations who have been disarmed by their governments when you stock up on a few boxes of your favorite 9mm and 308 Win.
No retreat. No surrender.
I walked past the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in Victoria Street yesterday and saw giant banners telling citizens not to call the emergency services number 999. The advice was that “unless a crime is being committed or a person is in immediate danger” one should call the local police station.
If I understand this notice correctly, if I should observe a murder being committed in the street outside my window, and I am quite sure the victim is dead (e.g. by being decapitated with a machete), and the murderer flees the scene of the crime, then I must not call the emergency services or risk being arrested for wasting valuable police time. Instead I should attempt to contact my local police station which is normally either shut, or the fearless crimefighters are hiding in back offices compiling hate crime statistics. As the typical response time for calling my local police station is never (at least on the three occasions in the past five years that I tried that route), this means that the police don’t want forensic evidence, and the corpse is presumably a problem for the road sweepers.
With the abolition of the right to silence, police licence to shoot people in the street for no good reason, and the removal of double jeopardy, there doesn’t seem to be much point in wasting time on detective work to actually try to find out who is really committing a crime.
Meanwhile hate crimes have their own hotline. This is useful. I’ve been bored with the usual tiresome ethnic jokes for some time. The fact that one can be arrested for telling a joke which someone finds offensive on the grounds of race, gender, and sexuality will obviously make London a safer place to live.
An investor of a company well known to us is being sued: the classic tactics of a certain over the edge group. Read this. Make sure you save a personal copy of the page.
Need I say more?
Here’s a meme (“a pack not a herd”) that I’d like to see run wild. And allow me also to refer back to this and to this, a single piece by me in two fragments from the Samizdata archives (from before we had the “MORE” routine in place).
Says Glenn Reynolds (for it is he):
… After repeatedly slipping through the fingers of law enforcement, John Muhammad and Lee Salvo were caught because leaked information about the suspects’ automobile and license number was picked up by members of the public, one of whom spotted the car within hours and alerted the authorities – blocking the exit from the rest area with his own vehicle to make sure they didn’t escape. …
… So while Chief Moose and the other talking heads were holding press conferences in which they castigated the press for reporting information, they should have been figuring out how to take advantage of the vast resources that a mobilized public can command. But the officials didn’t want to, for fearof “vigilantes”. Luckily for them, a leak saved the day. …
… Rather than creating new bureaucracies, we need to be looking at ways of promoting fast-moving, dispersed responses, responses that will involve members of the public as a pack, not a herd. Even if doing so reduces the career satisfaction of shepherds. …
In other words and to extrapolate the principle only somewhat, what if security, catching bad guys, the very law itself maybe, turn out to be like the economy? What if, like the economy, the criminal justice system (and most certainly the criminal detection system) can’t be or – more modestly – works far better when not centrally planned? Oh sure, there’d be a mass of “waste and duplication of effort” in a free market in public safety, just as there is now in the electric kettle industry. But good electric kettles are not now hard to find, the way they would be in a world run by the likes of the F(ederal) B(ureau of electric) K(ettles). So …
About a week ago I posted a brand-X piece about armed citizenry (wisdom and virtue of), but included a not quite brand-X question: does anyone know of any website/blog/compendium of links to individual stories of guns used successfully for self-defence? There were a few comments, including this from themic:
The best way to find regular stories about guns saving lives of good guys is to rely on the abilities of thousands of bored people who are connected to the internet and have a common interest.
So, I recommend checking out Packing, a website dedicated to keeping track of concealed permit laws here in the US. Click on “Gun Talk” and scour the headlines that people post throughout the day… you can usually find at least a couple per day, that were actually referenced in the media somewhere (!).
Here in the US, it’s generally thought that guns are used defensively 2 – 2.5 millions times per year (but rarely actually fired).
I can point you to some more links if you want. I keep track of this stuff because I’m often bored and on the internet.
To my shame I didn’t email any encouragement back to him, and that was that, until today, when themic came back with a further comment:
I have doubts that anyone will read this anymore, as it come a bit late … but i stumbled upon the absolute best place website that tracks firearms used defensively.
I share these doubts, which is why I’ve rescued the comment and its link from the oblivion of being attached to a week-old posting and put it here.
Changing the subject somewhat, on his own blog themic also supplies a link to this – as he rightly calls it – creepy website, that backs up that creepy poster first encountered and photographed by Perry, and copied ever since by bloggers everywhere.
UPDATE. Quote from keepandbeararms.com:
What We Do
We seek and find current news stories recounting true events of lawful, decent citizens using firearms to defend themselves, their loved ones, others and property — and channel it back to this central location to assure maximum exposure of these events in a timely and efficient manner.
That’s exactly what I was asking someone to be doing. (How nice it would be if some Americans actually heard about this site for the first time from here. Usually all the information and explanation flows in the other direction.)
Justice Barker has a curious notion of the law. Last time I thought about wandering the streets of London with a crowbar, I remembered that if I were found to be in possession of such an object, that I would be charged with possesion of a dangerous weapon.
A Londoner was recently shot several times by armed police for carrying a table leg: that murder however was entirely justified, according to one of Mr Justice Barker’s colleagues. So presumably the intruder teleported the crowbar into his victim’s home using equipment from the 25th century.
Also, presumably I would be allowed to carry a machete, crowbar or table leg around Mr Justice Barker’s home at 3am, but not in my front garden at 3pm. Perhaps a group of squatters might like to find out where Mr Barker lives and turn up at about 3am with plumbing tools and invite themselves in for a cup of tea.
I assume that Mr Barker thinks there is no difference between this and the “right to roam”. And to think there are people who want the UK to have more common law? With barking Barkers on the judges’ benches, who could tell the difference?
Anyone believe that a future Conservative government would amnesty self-defence prisoners of conscience? Ha!
Britain’s idiot gun laws look like being today’s issue du jour. And at the risk (following on from my enlarging photos fiasco) of making a further fool of myself on a technical issue, it seems (to me) that if you follow a link embedded in a Samizdata comment it works, but the window refuses to get any larger, and the result is tricky to read. That’s what happens with me anyway. No doubt one press of one button will solve the problem, but I have yet to locate the button in question.
So, here, just in case it helps anyone, is the Reason article by Joyce Lee Malcolm linked to by Ralf Goergens in his comment on the sublime David. This Reason piece concludes thus:
The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen, confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to “have arms for their defence,” insisting upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens. It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the English tendency to decry America’s “vigilante values,” English policy makers would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which stood them so well in the past.
And here’s a link to Natalie Solent‘s latest piece on Biased BBC, also regarding guns. Taster paragraph:
Oh, and just skim the whole bunch of stories and look at the headlines: “Terror in US schools and workplaces” – “History of shootings” – “America’s gun culture.” Every mention of the liberty angle has a question mark after it: “Firearms – a civil liberties issue?” – “Right to bear arms?” Don’t hold your breath waiting for headlines like “crime down in gun states”, willya? And don’t wait around for a list of accounts of innocent people saved from murder or rape by guns, although there is a list of accounts of innocent people slain by guns.
Come to think of it, has anyone compiled an internetted list of links to accounts of people saved by gun use, along the lines of that Muslims Condemn Terrorism link page that I flagged up a while ago? If so, another link embedded in another comment please. Do wait around for that, because I bet there is one.
In response to the increasing public concern at the spiralling rate of violent crime, the Home Office, acting in concert with the Association of Police Chiefs, have prepared this pamphlet containing advice and guidelines that will help you and your family avoid becoming victims of violent crime.
Further, and as a direct result of the high number of complaints from members of the public about slow police response times, we have established the Crime Reaction Emergency Team Initiative Networks (CRETINS), a specially constituted force tasked with providing a swift and effective response to emergency calls from members of the public in danger.
The most important step to take in order to avoid being a victim of crime is to ensure that you live in abject poverty. A number of government studies have proved that most criminals are motivated by the desire to obtain other people’s possessions by force. Whilst having no possessions at all cannot guarantee your safety, the less you have, the less criminals can steal from you.
However, if you have been careless enough to amass material wealth, the following helpful tips listed below may be of some assistance. → Continue reading: A Guide to Self-Defence in the UK
If so then people will soon start lying, perjuring and deceiving if they wish to do so in Britain…
Increasingly people may conclude that is the only rational response if they ever find themselves in fear for their life some night in their own home. Barry-Lee Hastings found out what happens if you tell the truth. He killed a burglar in his house using a knife, stabbing him in the back after mistaking a crowbar in the criminal’s hands as a machete.
So if you find yourself confronted by an intruder and you live in Britain, generations of cultural logic tell you to not do what the state would have you do: retreat, surrender your property and realise only the state has the right to use force. No, if that person is British then they will understand that the correct thing to do is to fight for what is yours. They will defend themselves as is their inalienable common law right and if need be, kill the person who is threatening them.
…and so some British homeowner find themselves standing over the dead body of a burglar holding a crowbar.
But because they also read the newspapers, watch the television and hopefully read blogs, they will quickly realise that they are still very much in danger. Once they have calmed down, they will start to examine the body of the dead criminal and what they were holding… and they will make sure that the evidence of the intruder’s clear and present threat to their life is not just manifest but incontrovertible: if necessary they will cut themselves and arrange things to make the reality of their contention ‘hyper-real’. They will conclude there is no shame in defending themselves but they will also realise that it is not just the intruder they must defend themselves against, but also the state which would make them a neutered victim.
If the state wanted to encourage perjury and hostility to the judiciary, it could not have found a better way of going about engendering it. This is Britain’s future as the alienation between the commonsensical British expectation of law and the state’s law grows.
After presiding over Barry-Lee Hastings’ conviction for manslaughter, Judge Barker said:
No one can fail to have sympathy for a householder or visitor who without warning found himself in the position you did when you reached the front door.
Ludicrous dissembling sentiments. I rather doubt Barry-Lee Hastings will give a damn about Judge Barker’s worthless ‘sympathy’ as he rots in jail for the next five years. Well sorry, how is a crowbar in an intruder’s hands not a deadly weapon? The next time this happens, as happen it will, I wonder what the next householder with the bloody knife will tell the police? The unvarnished truth? I have my doubts.
The state is not your friend.
To add to the recent outburst of gun-related posting I think this will work a treat!
Unfortunately, it appears to be only an urban legend. But even the fact that such story has been coined is a good sign. We need more of those! Both, grannies and stories… 
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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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