The debate over guns is a clash of cultures, a confrontation of different kinds of character, a disagreement over social philosophy and even, though few notice this, over free will and determinism. The contending factions don’t need guns to detest each other. They would anyway.
– Fred Reed
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October 3rd, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 A detective working for the Metropolitan Police specialist crime branch fell victim to crime four times in an hour-and-a-half. His car was broken into and his bicycle stolen before being beaten up and having his moped vandalised. The crime spree started outside his home in Fulham (which is a nice area!) in London. First, his CD player had been taken from his VW Golf. Then his bike was stolen as he went to report the car break-in and to call his insurance company. He took his moped to look for the thief but, after trying to detain a youth he saw riding his bike, he was attacked from behind by two others and violently kicked in the face and body. John Cullen, the hapless policeman in question, said it was “frightening” that his attackers had little respect for people, including the police. He added:
But there is an answer! With the British government’s approach and policy towards crime, gun control and self-defence, how not very odd that even the police are now victims! Unless, Mr Cullen considers a 9mm Uzi SMG a suitable ‘agency’ to tackle crime…  Update: Just saw Alice Bacchini’s post about the story from yesterday. How very fast – I only read about it this morning! September 27th, 2002 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I can’t comment on whether or how guilty or dangerous the alleged terrorist ring is, but some statements, such as the following from Fox News just make me laugh:
Now please tell me why finding a rifle and a sight in a house in Pennsylvania is unusual? I grew up in a small town in Western PA, and it would have been closer to news if they entered a random house and didn’t find an entire cabinet full of rifles, shotguns, ammunition and assorted sights and accessories. It just makes you cringe to read this kind of idiocy. Erratum: Lackawanna is across the border in New York state, not in Pennsylvania. September 20th, 2002 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thanks again to Instapundit for the link to this, about the history of gun control in England, and about the various Americans who seem to be doing most of the serious arguing about it. The focus of the debate this time is professor of history at Bentley College Joyce Malcolm‘s new book Guns and Violence: The English Experience. Time was when, as the sandal-wearing corduroy-jacket gun-wimp chick-flick-preferring libertarian that I still am, I opposed gun control only out of duty and only with difficulty. Now I’m utterly convinced, and it didn’t take the fact that recent British gun control tightening has made gun crime even worse. It was books and arguments like those of Joyce Malcolm – although not her actual book because I’ve yet to see it. September 17th, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
In yet another travesty of British justice, Barry-Lee Hastings has been convicted of manslaughter for defending not just his property but his family from a career serial burglar. Naturally the state sees things differently.
Yet in the last year we have had story after story of the Police responding to pleas for assistance by turning up hours if not days later. The fact is, the job which Detective Chief Inspector Matthew Horne is speaking about is not your protection but rather the protection of the State’s monopoly on the means of violence. Institutionally speaking, the safety of you, your family and your property is purely incidental: if it were otherwise, a person could legally own a weapon for their personal defence in Britain… yet regardless of the fact you may manifestly be at risk from violence in a high crime area or live in a home which has been robbed again and again and again, you may not even use a kitchen knife, let alone a gun, to protect yourself. Ask Barry-Lee Hastings. The state is not your friend. September 12th, 2002 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is a sad fact that one of the things that causes the libertarian movement to get stronger is other groups in society getting weaker. Consider Britain’s gun owners. Until recently they were very content, using their guns to attack targets, animals, and even the occasional bad human being. Most of their intellectual effort went into discussing amongst themselves which guns were the best, how to hit targets even more accurately, how to make sure that the only other creatures they shot were creatures they were trying to shoot, and so forth. Then suddenly the government (worse, almost the entire country) held the gunners responsible for a couple of gun massacres of good human beings and decided to take their guns away from them. Somebody had to take the blame, and the actual perpetrators were already dead. Suddenly a sublimely apolitical group got politicised. Suddenly they found themselves trying to persuade others of the wisdom and rightness of them being allowed to go on using their guns, which you can’t do only by talking about the technicalities of guns, although God knows they tried that. They found, far too late, that they would have to learn about politics, and in particular about whatever political principles might allow them to keep on owning their guns, or failing that, might one day allow them to own guns again. Thus many persons who formerly cared only about guns, suddenly started to care about things like libertarianism also. I believe that another group which is about to be policised are the home schoolers, and not just of Britain but of the entire Anglosphere. Everywhere you look, in Britain and in the USA certainly, and I’m sure everywhere else where “education otherwise” is still allowed, efforts are being made to end what appears to professional state educators as a strange and scandalous legal anomaly. → Continue reading: Guns, the attack on home schooling, and the growth of the libertarian movement August 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Jeff Jacoby has a superb article on Jewish World Review about a woman’s right to defend herself:
Read the whole article as it is terrific stuff. But the fact is, it is not news that “public officials increase the risk to life and limb of the people they are sworn to serve”, it is actually the norm – for it to be otherwise, now that would be (good) news. The state will nearly always try to place whatever its functionaries perceived to be its own narrow institutional interests before those of its subjects. The very nature of modern governance is about management, which is usually interpreted to mean control, and keeping weapons out of the hands of private individuals is pretty much the perfect manifestation of the desire to have the ability to easily impose management decisions on people who might not see that decision as being in their interests. Yet the reality is that what makes management decisions by the state different from management decisions by a company or individual is that the state backs its decisions with the threat of force and does not think twice about intermediating itself into a person’s life without consent. The fact that very real threats to your personal safety are trumped by the state’s desire to maintain exclusive control over the means of self defence pretty much proves that the state regards its ability to impose management decisions as manifestly more important than a person’s right to life and limb, let alone private property. In reality, the principle threat to most people in high crime areas are not so much the muggers but the state which make you easy prey for them and requires you to live in fear for its own convenience. The state is not your friend. August 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
If you like shooting guns for sport then it follows, as a matter of unalterable logic in today’s world, that you must be a nutter, a psycho, clearly not the kind of person to invite to dinner parties and definitely not in tune with today’s world. Well, that at least is the message given out by our ‘splendidly objective’ state-owned broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation. In an excellent article in this week’s edition of the Spectator, Michael Yardley shows how Britons’ recent success in shooting competitions at the Commonwealth Games were blanked by the BBC. I particularly liked this paragraph:
Well, on the latter point, I am doing just that. I am off to Las Vegas in September to attend a Front Sight course, in what promises to be three days of excellent handgun shooting practice. It is such a shame that this noble sport cannot be practised in the UK.
 August 23rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
The Daily Telegraph reports today that a farmer who was accused of shooting intruders at his home has been acquitted. Frederick Hemstock, who had claimed he intended to fire the gun in the air to frighten two intruders, has been cleared of deliberately shooting one of them. The judge in the case also criticised the police for refusing to answer an emergency call made by the defendant’s wife. Why is anyone surprised? Dialing 999 is now the equivalent of playing the National Lottery. Of course, if Mr. Hemstock had deliberately shot the intruder, then he still would not have been guilty in my eyes if he could have been shown to prove self-defence. But as we sadly know, self-defence is the Number One crime in this country. Meanwhile, PC Plod has all those speeding CCTV cameras to attend to… July 12th, 2002 | Comments are closed
By August 1999, Norfolk farmer Tony Martin had had enough. After suffering a string of burglaries, he bought himself a shotgun. The next time he was burgled, by Fred Barrass and Brendon Fearon he used it. Barrass was killed, Fearon was wounded and the British State, outraged at the impertinence of this man in defending his home, saw to it that Martin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison (the charge was subsequently reduced to manslaughter on appeal but Martin still languishes in jail). Now, in a development of Swiftian absurdity, that poor, wounded little lamb Fearon is suing Martin for damages. He will, alas, have no trouble in finding lawyers to represent him and not just prosecute his case but do so with missionary zeal and conviction. When I was first dating my wife (a barrister) I had occasion to meet most of her colleagues nearly all of whom were not so much lawyers as left-wing activists who had simply chosen the vehicle of the legal profession to press home their visions. These people were ideologically and professionally committed to (a) screwing landlords, (b) destroying men in divorce cases, (c) protecting and succouring every scumbag thief and burglar (especially where they knew for sure he was guilty), (d) bankrupting employers, (e) trying (though thankfully failing) to ensure that men had no defence to rape allegations. These people are probably quite senior now and they’re mouths will be watering at the thought of getting Tony Martin in court and stripping him of whatever few assets he has left. As far as they are concerned, Fearon is the innocent victim and Martin a fascist, racist monster. I realise that this sounds like yet another ‘reactionary rant’ but I assure you I have experienced these obnoxious creatures first-hand and, if anything, I am understating the case. What is truly scary is that, in five to ten years, they will almost certainly be sitting on the benches in judgement. I was wholly unsurprised to learn that Fearon had been given Legal-Aid (taxpayer funding) to pursue his claim. There is a certain horrid symmetry to it; the State that ruined Tony Martin’s life may as well move in to finish the job. Fearon will almost certainly win his claim and Martin will lose his home. I would dearly love to endorse Dale Amon’s advice below to my fellow Britons but, in all good conscience, I can’t. In a country where raising your hands in self-defence is among the worst crimes you can commit, it is far less costly to simply let the barbarians in and take what they will. July 8th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Yesterday’s issue of “The Sun” (Saturday July 6th) has an article by John Askill “Gipsy burglar sues farmer”, one of the more appalling items I’ve read recently. The first line says it all: “The burglar wounded by Tony Martin is suing the farmer on Legal Aid, it was revealed yesterday.” A few years ago I dealt with a computer sales guy from Atlanta, Georgia, an ex-US Army man who married a Belfast woman. I think this place was too much for him because after a few years he got divorced and went home to Atlanta. But I’ve always remembered some advice he gave me on dealing with burglars: “Use the Double Tap”. He became proficient at the technique while on active duty. It’s a great small arms method of ensuring your target doesn’t get up again. Like most really good ideas, it is dead simple. Your aim point is the center of the burglar’s torso; you pull the trigger twice, very quickly. That’s where the “double tap” name comes from. The first bullet is likely to hit mid body and dissuade him from further action. The recoil from the first shot pulls your aim point upwards such the second is a head shot. If executed correctly it’s an easy kill. Good ol’ US Army small arms training there! He was advised by a police friend not to use more than two shots if at all possible. More might be considered “excessive force”. You should only use a third round if the lowlife is still breathing,. Make sure it’s not in the back so you won’t be accused of firing while he’s trying to get away. If the body falls out of the door, drag it across the threshold before the police arrive. Farmer Martin’s big mistake was leaving Fearon breathing. He certainly couldn’t be any worse off, and besides… dead men don’t sue. July 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Heard on the radio news so no link, but a 39 year-old man has been shot dead on the doorstep of his East London home in front of his three children. Thus far, the killing appears to be motiveless. July 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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