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U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney wounded a fellow shooter of quail in an accident. Well, I guess it shows what a gulf now exists between the U.S. government and our own. I cannot imagine a single senior Labour politician who would spend time out shooting. (Imagine John Prescott doing it. Actually, don't). The story reminds me of another deputy leader, the late William Whitelaw (a decorated soldier in the Normandy WW2 campaign), who managed to fire some buckshot at someone during a grouse shooting meeting in the Scottish highlands.

Many politicians in the past have enjoyed the pastime of shooting game. Many MPs were landed gentry, who could not wait to get out of smelly London in the summer months and, once the game season started in August, would blast away at hapless birds, bagging them in prodigious quantities. And several paid the price. Robert Peel, Prime Minister in the 1840s, suffered a nasty buzzing in one of his ears after a gun went off too close. Salisbury and Churchill shot game, as did Macmillan and Alec Douglas Home. Across the big pond there was no greater hunter of game, of course, than Teddy Roosevelt.

All that tradition is fading out. I cannot imagine Tory leader David Cameron shooting game (imagine how that would jar with his trendy image) although his ancestors probably nailed whole flocks of pheasants in their time.

Anyway, the lesson of all this is that if you find yourself in the company of a politician holding a shotgun, stand well behind.

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"Perhaps the meek shall inherit the Earth, but they'll do it in very small plots . . . about 6' by 3'."

Robert Heinlein, quoted at this excellent legal website with stacks of quotations about self defence.

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One of our team brought this bit of aviation humour to my attention.

It is guaranteed to give you a bit of a smile.

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MP Andrew Dismore has blocked attempts to clarify the law on self defence in Britain being proposed by MP Anne McIntosh, because he thinks it would be 'vigilante law'.

Well I have thought for some time now that non-state use of force in defence of life, limb and private property is exactly what is needed in this country and to make no apology for robustly defending what is yours. Take the law into your own hands because it is indeed yours to take, not Andrew Dismore's to deny. I realise that if you are old, infirm or a small woman living alone, the fact the state has disarmed you means you have no option whatsoever but to surrender your property and just pray the criminal(s) will not harm you, but those of us still physically able should be encouraged to use whatever weapons they can find at hand to assert some self ownership. Just do not make the mistake of calling the Police in Britain after the fact if you can possibly avoid it as they work for the likes of Andrew Dismore and are not there to serve you.

You may not have the legal right to fight back effectively, but you will always have the moral right to defend yourself and what is yours. Look at it this way, if you are the only one left alive after some son of a bitch breaks into your house, well, that means it is going to be hard for him to sue you or contradict your version of events, doesn't it. If they do make it out, then just clean up the mess and deny everything.

Vigilante law? As so many members of the political class in Britain leave us with little alternative, I am all for it. When the state fails in its most fundamental duty, it is time for society to remember whose law it really is. If you are able to, fight back, just keep in mind you will be fighting back against the state as well and act accordingly when the plod turns up a few hours or days later to 'protect' you.

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It is not hard to understand why the government does not regard mugging as so serious a crime that it should always lead to a jail sentence, provided "minimal force" is used.

As the government have long made it clear that people should not defend their property with force against people who try to take it by force, they regard just handing your money and goods over as sensible and responsible behaviour. In short, they think the way to prevent violent crime is to stop people resisting and therefore remove the need for muggers to use actual violence rather than just the threat of it.

In other words, they want to make muggers more like tax collectors. Is that really so surprising?

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There is controversy over the fact the Metropolitan Police are using 'dum dum' bullets (which is a term used by people who know nothing about firearms to describe any bullet designed to expand upon impact).

The reason a police force or anyone with a legitimate need to use a weapon in self-defence (i.e. far more people than just the police) would use a handgun firing expanding bullets is to (1) prevent the bullet exiting the target's body and thereby use all the kinetic energy to inflict a wound rather that... (2) leaving the bullet with enough energy that it goes clean through the intended target and wastes energy making a hole in a wall behind them or, much worse, making a hole in an innocent bystander.

It is a scandal that the Metropolitan Police killed an innocent Brazilian man and then lied about the sequence of events that led up to that happening. It is not a scandal that they used expanding bullets to do it. Would the ignorant twits in the media and various clueless Islamic 'spokesmen' trying to make this into a story have preferred that the cops not only killed an innocent man but also killed or injured someone else in the train by using non-expanding military style full metal jacket ammunition? It would be a scandal if they were not using expanding bullets.

The whole point of shooting someone is to cause them serious harm so that they cannot harm you or anyone else. In what way is it somehow morally preferable to use a weapon which does not cause as much harm per round-in-the-target, thereby requiring you to just shoot more bullets into them to kill or incapacitate them?

The only dum(b) dum(b)s here are the various Muslim idiots quoted in the Guardian article and their friends in the media who think this should be an issue.

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Despite the urging of much of Brazil's ruling classes to support the measure, the world's first national referendum which put the proposition to ban the sale of firearms was smashed decisively by a 2:1 margin.

The people who are baffled why so many common people in a murder wracked country like Brazil would oppose such a measure need to realise that it is precisely because the country has such problems with violent crime that people need the means to protect themselves.

As I have said on other occasions - the right to keep and bear arms: it's not just for American anymore.

Maybe more Brazillians in London should be armed as well...

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In these days of concern about violent Islamists running amok on our cities, it is always important to remember that other sources of violence can be found, such as the so-called animal rights campaigners:

A children's nursery has become the latest target of animal rights threats, forcing it to stop providing child care vouchers to parents working for the animal testing group Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Leapfrog Day Nurseries, part of the education business Nord Anglia, said it was reviewing whether extra security measures were needed at its Peterborough nursery, which is nearest to the Life Sciences headquarters in Cambridgesire. It said it already employed "stringent security measures" to protect the children in its care.

Threatening a kiddies' nursery. They must be so proud.

On a related matter, here is a fine essay taking the incoherent doctrine of animal rights apart. In my view, the doctrine is incoherent, although at the same time I think humans should seek to treat animals as kindly as possible, which is a very human-centric opinion to hold, of course.

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One of the things blogs do is edit the news, that is, look at lots of it, and point readers to the best stuff. And when it comes to this story - about a jeweller who chased and was then shot at by a robber, and who was struck in the chest by one of the shots - what counts is this picture:

Maybe other organs have this too, but I first found it, after seeing it on the ITV news, at The Sun. Well done them.

But hang on. Is it not supposed to be illegal even to carry a gun, let alone to fire it at people? These criminals. No respect for law and order.

If the jeweller had been armed, or if he only might have been, the robber would have known it, and this event would probably not have happened. Which in this particular case might have been a shame, because this really is an excellent picture.

In general, I hasten to add, I am against armed robbery, which is why I so completely despise the laws here in Britain which ensure that only armed robbers are armed when they unleash their villainy.

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It is fair to say that I do not always agree with what I read over at the Lew Rockwell blog, considering its position on foreign policy to be sometimes naive to the point of downright obtuse. (That should get the comments fired up nicely, ed). That said, this article drives home very effectively what might be one of the few silver linings of the terrible effects of Hurricane Katrina: it may undermine respect for the wonders of Big Government and underscore the importance of local initiative in times of great danger.

And this article by David Kopel certainly adds to disquiet about what certain state officials are up to.

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How else can you interpret the authorities intention to disarm people in New Orleans? We are not talking looters here, we are talking about people with legal weapons.

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This is not the first article with this title I have written but if some of the accounts coming out of New Orleans prove to be genuine and fair accounts, then I suspect a whole new generation of people who agree with my tagline have just been created on the Gulf Coast of the United States. This was written by a pair of paramedics who were trapped in New Orleans.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

These are clearly admirable self-reliant people here, not a bunch of welfare addled 'do nothings' incapable of independent thinking. They came up with a solution to their problem and the state simply stole it from them.

And if this is true, I can think of no better justification to openly state that people should own firearms to defend themselves not just against criminals but from agents of the state when there is a crisis.

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

And the real stunner...

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

Ok, now would someone like to tell me why these people (a) should not have been armed (b) would not have been entirely justified using deadly force against the 'law enforcement' officials who, at gunpoint, did their damnedest to reduce their chances of survival?

We have heard accounts by authorities of crazed looters inexplicably shooting at contractors who were just trying to repair essential infrastructure. You know what? Maybe that is what happened and maybe not. I find myself thinking the official version of a great deal of what went on is far from the truth. Yet all we are ever going to see on CNN is pictures of heroic cops and National Guardsmen saving the day.

Unless this account proves to be a hoax or a gross misrepresentation of what happened, nothing less than a root and branch purge of the power structures in Louisiana will be enough. This is a true national scandal of the highest magnitude. I am appalled but not entirely surprised.

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This article contains some pretty damning stuff.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

[...]

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

Yup, let the finger pointing begin. However although I am rarely loath to heap scorn on the state for cocking things up, it does need to be kept in mind that this is the worst natural disaster in US history and any blame laying needs to keep a sense of proportion (ha, as if) as expecting the state to magically solve even the most unexpected problems with seamless efficiency is at best (and I do mean at best) rather like relying on a well meaning but hopelessly alcoholic uncle to be there for you when things go badly wrong. Well, he might come up trumps but it is probably not a good idea to expect him to be there when you need him.

I also expect membership in the NRA and other similar groups to surge as people re-learn the lessons of the Los Angeles riots: the state might help you pick up the pieces after the fact and a policeman might come around to draw a nice chalk line around the bodies of your murdered loved ones, but when the veneer of civilisation cracks, you had better have a gun and be psychologically prepared to use it because the reality is that when the predators turn up, you are on your own.

Hat tip to Tom Pechinski

Update: LGF has some more as the blamefest starts to gather steam.

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UK authorities may be faced with a bit of a struggle in extraditing a man, now in Rome, for his alleged involvement in the failed July 21 terrorist attacks on the London transport system, according to this report.

So could some nice person remind me what the EU-wide arrest warrant is suppose to achieve, exactly? Oh, er, wait a minute...

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To run from armed police who are shouting at you (rather than shooting at you) at any time is an extremely bad idea... to do so at a time like this in London is utter madness.

Anyone running from armed cops who have challenged them first in London today should expect to get shot dead given the clear and present danger we are in... but that does not makes this any less of a horror. If Jean Charles de Menezes just reacted idiotically to the situation he found himself in, that does not mean we should feel distain for him.

We really need to know exactly what happened and why, but shooting a man dead who is suspected of being a suicide bomber and who is running away and trying to board a train(!) when being called on to stop is not the incorrect response. It was a tragedy of execution (in ever sense of the word) but not an incorrect policy.

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It could have been so much worse. Another sunny day in London and another series of attacks. Mercifully, as far as I know, no-one has been killed. My fellow Pimlico friend, Andrew Ian Dodge has a good take on the details. Tim Worstall has views here, including ideas on what the motivation of the attacks were in this case.

It appears that at least one person involved in the attacks has been arrested. Perhaps CCTV recordings of the attacks could yield more evidence. What this latest incident suggests is that CCTV, long bemoaned by us libertarians, can certainly record valuable evidence after a crime has been committed but that is not much consolation to the victims. The outrages are certainly going to give further ammunition to the police in arguing that every cubic metre of London needs to have a camera in it. I think that in public spaces that are paid for by the public and clearly key potential targets for terror groups, CCTV has its uses and it is pretty silly to get oxidised about it. But, and it is a big but, such things are clearly no deterrent. (Thanks to U.S. libertarian blogger Jim Henley for prodding me to write about this).

I was in the Aldwych area of London - near the London School of Economics, when the attacks happened. I first heard by a mobile call from my fiancee. Walking back to the office, it was remarkable how relaxed everyone was. In fact, the strained looks on some people's faces had more to do with the English batting implosion against Australia at the cricket.

Meanwhile, in reflecting on the cultural issues prompted by the current mayhem, go read this fine and no-holds-barred article in the Spectator.

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Whilst watching the BBC news' report about the horrific terrorist attacks against Shi'ite civilians in Iraq, I was astonished to hear the following uttered:

Ominously, there are increasing calls for locals to take up arms and defend their communities.

Excuse me? These poor people have just had the centre of their community blown out and many people killed but the desire to defend themselves is denounced by the BBC as... ominous? It might tell you something about what is happening in Iraq but it also tells you quite a lot about the mindset at the BBC.

It seems to me that locals taking up arms to defend themselves against terrorism directly are exactly what the USA should be encouraging whole heartedly. The fact is that people will start doing so regardless of the wishes of the USA if the security situation continues to deteriorate, so not only would it be pointless to try and stop them, why not make a virtue of necessity and show that the occupying powers welcome Iraqis becoming more self-reliant and willing to confront these murdering bastards themselves?

Iraqi territorial para-militaries could be quite an asset fighting the insurgency precisely because they are not going to be centrally directed, at least to some extent. Counter-insurgency by its nature relies on more than just firepower, which the US has in abundance. It also relies on local knowledge and a willingness to be ruthless, something pissed-off locals could certainly provide. The idea that Al Qaeda can only be fought in Iraq 'top down' (i.e. directed from Washington using US and Iraqi government forces) is probably a mistake, so arming the people who are taking the brunt of the attacks seems a pretty sensible way to go.

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In another of the cases dumped on an unsuspecting public today, the last day of the US Supreme Court's session, the High and Mighty Nine reiterated that a municipality cannot be expected to provide competent police protection for its residents. The only twist was that this time the plaintiff was trying to hold the local coppers liable for failing to enforce a restraining order issued by a court.

The bad guy in question violated a restraining order to kidnap his daughters from his ex-wife's front lawn. After being informed that the perp had announced he was taking the girls to an amusement park in Denver, the local constabulary neglected to call the Denver police or go to the amusement park. Their effort was limited to trying to contact the perp on his phone, and "keeping an eye out" for his truck.

Ultimately, he was killed in a shoot-out with police. After they had tracked him to his mountain hideaway? Not exactly. He was shot in front of the police station. One suspects that he was double-parked, and had blocked in the cruiser detailed with making the morning donut run.

Oh, the three little girls? They were found dead in his truck. Heaven forbid, though, that the municipality should be held to standards of ordinary care.

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British expats living in Spain are taking to handling their security themselves... and why not? Refusing to just throw your hands up in despair when the state proves unable to protect you is just acknowledging that you, not the state, are ultimately responsible for your safety. Vigilantes? Maybe, but why should that necessarily be a dirty word? Sometimes the reality is that 'taking the law into your own hands' is exactly the correct thing to do, and in any case these people are hardly hanging brigands they catch from the nearest lampposts.

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There have been some interesting discussions across the blogosphere about the role of arms in resisting tyranny, many sparked off by what is going on in Zimbabwe. But whilst I am very much in favour of civilian ownership of firearms that are suitable for all manner of uses, I think many 'on my side of the aisle' overstate the direct benefits of not allowing the state to have a monopoly on the means of violence. Certainly I do not buy the argument that arming the Tiananmen Square protesters would have prevented the massacre that occurred.

However what arming the population does is not prevent tyranny (at least not on its own), but rather it raises the marginal cost of tyranny. The in your face reality of most tyrannies around the world is that it is not enforced on a daily basis by armies with tanks and helicopters (against which a few AK-47's will do little) but rather by a couple swaggering officious policemen with little handguns pushing their way into people's houses. Now those folks are the ones a few privately held weapons can truly work wonders with when it comes to the bottom line reality of force, not because privately held weapons will actually be used to kill or intimidate directly but simply because those policemen know that whilst they have the authority of the state behind them, right there and then in that house, there are very real limits to just how far they can push things, which is exactly how it should be.

Sure, they can come back with 50 soldiers in armoured personnel carriers if needed, but if that is what they have to do every time they want to intimidate someone, well, that is a much bigger investment of time and effort. Do not underestimate the value of increasing the marginal cost of tyranny. For example widespread gun ownership in Zimbabwe probably would have a major impact at mitigating the shambolic Zimbabwean governments ability to carry out much of what it does even if it does not directly lead the Mugabe's well deserved downfall.

Guns in private hands work, but it is just one piece of a much larger question and I suspect claiming they are a panacea for the ills of bad governance is not doing the pro-liberty side any service at all.

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This kind of thing used to enrage me. Then it got to the stage where it embarrassed me. Then it began to perplex me. But now, I am almost entirely resigned.

Go on, do your very worst. Bring it on:

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

Next: Doctors call for ban on opposable thumbs.

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There is a question concerning the relationship between guns and gangsterism that bedevils third world countries but the control of arms sounds suspiciously like that other 'success story': the war on drugs. Jack Straw's keen attempt to follow the NGOs on this matter was publicised at a press conference today where he attempted to internationalise this issue through an "arms control" treaty. It is not surprising that this immoral act is perpetrated by the Blair administration: a clique that is unable to understand the simple connection between the rule of law and a well armed citizenry.

Straw argued that existing treaties covering chemical, biological and nuclear weapons should be matched by a new treaty covering smaller weapons. And he acknowledged that such weapons "account for far more misery and destruction across the world". "The new treaty needs to include a wide range of signatories, including the world's major arms exporters," he said. "I certainly do not underestimate the difficulties of that. Many nations are concerned that a new arms trade treaty may restrict their defence industries; constrain their foreign policy; and lead to constant legal challenge of export licence decisions. Their approach may initially be one of scepticism, at best. "But in order for it to work properly, a new arms control treaty will need to include as many of the world's nations as possible - especially those with strong defence industries of their own.

The Control Arms Campaign is co-ordinated by Oxfam and Amnesty International. They view the proliferation of firearms as a key threat to peace and security. They are right in that technology has lowered the cost of owning firearms and has allowed the strong to plunder the weak; governments or gangs to maim, murder and steal. (although the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 did not require firearms, just edged weapons).

However, their solution is old-fashioned, insensitive to local conditions, and designed to reinforce the status quo in many states, rotten as they are. Their solution is global arms control:

Governments must introduce new laws and measures to incorporate the principles of the Arms Trade Treaty. They must also close the loopholes in their arms controls so that they can strictly monitor end use and effectively control arms brokers and licenced production overseas. They must stop the misuse of arms by security services and introduce systems of accountability and training for them, introduce measures for disarmament when a conflict has ended, develop good justice systems for prosecuting those who misuse arms, enforce all arms control legislation and develop and implement a national action plan to address and solve the country's arms problems.

Communities and local authorities must help collect and destroy surplus and illegal weapons, introduce community education programs to end cultures of violence, provide assistance to victims of armed violence, and provide alternative livelihoods for those who depend on violence for a living.

Only the police are considered suitable to carry guns in protection of communities if they follow the requisite standards, set down by the United Nations:

International standards do exist to control the use of guns and other methods of force by police and other law enforcement officials, but in many countries they are not being followed.These standards centre on the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. At their heart is the principle of what constitutes legitimate force. Police must sometimes be permitted to use force or lethal force, in order to do their job of keeping communities safe and protecting themselves and the public from life-threatening attacks. But the force used must not be arbitrary; it must be proportionate, necessary and lawful. And, crucially, it must only be used in self defence or against the imminent threat of death or serious injury.

Self defence for the private individual in defence of life, liberty and property is not included within this 'solution'.

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"You can kill burglars" was the message that came blaring forth from the tabloid press with that flourish of heady triumphalism that usually accompanies a victory-for-the-common-man story (and which, on closer scrutiny, nearly always means that the government has just fucked over the common man good and proper).

To the cursory eye, the impression given is that the government has backed down and responded to public pressure for a change in the law to give citizens more rights to fight back against intruders and attackers. In reality, the government has done no such thing. Instead, those various branches of the state responsible for law enforcement have collaborated on a public statement:

Anyone can use reasonable force to protect themselves or others, or to carry out an arrest or to prevent crime. You are not expected to make fine judgements over the level of force you use in the heat of the moment. So long as you only do what you honestly and instinctively believe is necessary in the heat of the moment, that would be the strongest evidence of you acting lawfully and in self-defence. This is still the case if you use something to hand as a weapon.

As a general rule, the more extreme the circumstances and the fear felt, the more force you can lawfully use in self-defence.

None of which sounds unreasonable per se, but all of which is merely a re-statement of the law as it currently stands. This is not a change of heart or a climbdown or a fresh start or anything else of that nature. This is just yesterday's bill of fare, re-heated and served up with a garnish of finely-chopped press release.

In essence this is political chaff; a big bunch of glittery tinsel ejected into the air in order to deflect the heat-seeking missile of public disquiet. It appears to have done the trick.

As I have said before, the law does need changing in order to more accurately reflect the pre-1967 Common Law positions but, more than that, there needs to be a reversal of the last half-century's worth of anti-self-help culture.

On the downside, we are still a long way from any of that change but, and on the upside, at least the ball is now in play.

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Months before I arrived in Los Angeles this past December, my friend Robert Avrech told me, "When you come to LA, I will take you shooting." Robert, an Orthodox Jew and veteran of the Yom Kippur War, has written about what Jewish law says about private ownership of guns, and has taught his wife and daughters how to load, unload, and shoot various guns. Could I have had a better teacher for my first time shooting?

And yes, that is right: Despite being born and raised in the USA, I had never touched a gun until my recent visit to LA. I was raised not to respect the power of firearms, but to fear them. I was raised to believe that the responsibility for personal defense lies not with the individual, but with the state. I was raised to believe a lot of wrongheaded, backward things about guns and what the US constitution says about them.

Our shooting expedition took place at the LA Gun Club, in a not-so-nice area of Los Angeles. Robert, who is a screenwriter and producer as well as a publisher, told me that if one ever sees a shooting range scene in a film, it was most likely shot at the LA Gun Club. The place itself is impressively stocked with a wide range of rental guns, ammunition, targets, t-shirts, and all the other accessories that a gun owner could want.

Of course, the clientele was made up of your typical right-wing gun nuts.

As Robert explained to me, Asians in LA realise more than most the necessity of being proficient shooters, as they are one of the most besieged communities and amongst the very first targets whenever a riot breaks out.

In case you cannot tell, I really enjoyed my first time shooting. I found the Springfield a bit too powerful for my girly arms, but the 'cowboy gun' - a Ruger - was very much to my liking. It was easy to load, a breeze to unload, and very fun to use.

I have a lot more training to undergo before I am a confident shooter. Alas, it looks like I will not be taking that training in London - or anywhere else in Britain - anytime soon. And with the regulations that the legislature insists on piling upon American gunowners, I would advise US-based readers to exercise their freedom to bear arms while they still can.

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There is an article in the Spectator which seems a bit complacent to me:

If a violent criminal breaks into my house I, too, may react violently, but if I do so I doubt whether I shall live in fear of ending up like Tony Martin. This is because the law already accepts the right to self-defence and does so in such a way as to take into account an individual’s assessment of the threat in the heat of the moment. Strip away the Tony Martin case, which unfairly dominates all discussion on this topic, and just look at other recent cases. In November 2002 the retired businessman Anthony Spray heard somebody trying to open the door of his Cumbrian home and went downstairs, armed with an air rifle, to investigate. Seeing a figure at the now open door, he shot 19-year-old Paul Evans in the eye from a distance of four feet. Evans, it transpired, was not a burglar: he had mistaken Spray’s house for a B&B where he was staying. As a result of his mistake, Evans lost an eye, yet Spray was not jailed: he was given a 12-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay £3,000 compensation.

Riiight. So the author of this piece, Ross Clark, thinks that the case of Tony Martin, the west Norfolk farmer jailed for killing an intruder at his farm and injuring another, is just a freak, a one-off case which need offer no special insights into the rights of self defence. The Spray case, as is clear, still resulted in the householder being convicted, albeit not having to serve a term of imprisonment.

Clark's piece is not without merit. He argues that the United States has achieved a large fall in crime due, he claims, to such factors as 'zero tolerance' policing, tough sentencing and the like. No doubt these have played a part but it is a distortion to suppose that America's much lower level of aggravated burglaries is not partly linked to widespread ownership of firearms and a different approach on the part of the courts to householders using force to defend themselves.

Clark is correct to state that hard cases make bad law. He is, however, dead wrong to suppose that apart from the Tony Martin case, there are no examples of homeowners having been prosecuted for self defence. And it is abundantly clear that burglars have got the message: raiding a person's home is a low-risk activity in Britain, as Perry de Havilland's former neighbour, the late City financier John Monckton, found out last year.

Fortunately, we have the historian Joyce Lee Malcolm to set us straight on the real lessons to be learned from recent trends in British and American policy on self defence and the law. I urge everyone interested in this issue to read her book if they haven't already done so.

UPDATE: In thinking through the Spray case mentioned above, I do accept that it was right for the householder to compensate a man mistaken for a burglar, but the suspended jail term strikes me as quite wrong although I have not studied all the particulars of the case, including whether the householder had been the victim of multiple burglaries in the past, like Tony Martin.

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If you live in Britain and you do not think crime, casual violence and the background of anti-social behaviour is mounting problems based on the evidence of your own eyes, then stop reading now and keep taking the NHS prescribed Prozac. For all the rest of you, take a look at this report by Civitas.

Of course the government and police claim the truth lies elesewhere. No prize for guessing who I am inclined to believe.

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Tory MP Patrick Mercer has tabled legislation to 'rebalance' the right to defend life, limb and property in favour of the victims of crime.

And how exactly will that make a lone 60 year old woman safer if someone breaks into her house? Please remember that it was a Tory government which decided she will have no right whatsoever to have effective means to defend herself by restricting firearms.

The Mercer Bill is welcome but all it does is make Britain a little bit safer for houses containing one or more adult males from their late teens to their late sixties who are actually capable of picking up a blunt instrument and taking on an intruder with a reasonable chance of success. The unpalatable truth is that most people are not able to effectively defend themselves against your typical house intruder (one or more young men between 16 and 35) unless they have an effective weapon. And that means a gun.

"God made man but Colonel Colt made them equal"

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And here (just in case you missed the comments on the previous posting) is yet another circumstance where an armed populace would have really helped:

One man has died and five other people are in a critical condition after being attacked by a man with a knife.

Scotland Yard said a man drove around the areas between Enfield and Haringey in north London in a red Hyundai stabbing people on Thursday morning.

Officers are investigating if there is a link between the attacks and the murder of shopkeeper Mahmut Fahri.

A man, who police say has a history of mental illness, is being held in connection with the attacks.

"History of mental illness" is today's euphemism for maniac, it would seem.

Personally I believe that people would not even think of behaving like this if they knew that everywhere they went on such rampages they would be confronted by the armed and the respectable. And I further believe (although I would welcome intelligent contradition about this) that this includes maniacs, who (and I believe there have been quite sophisticated experiments about this) are actually quite responsive and rational about altering how they conduct themselves, when faced with predictably different rewards and predictably different punishments. What maniacs lack is not rationality; it is merely any semblance of good manners.

See also: Hungerford Massacre. This slaughter was caused by gun control. It was not only caused by gun control, but it could not possibly have occurred in the way that it did without gun control. The police had to get guns from London. And it all happened at the precise historical moment when, for the first time since cheap firearms were invented, a country town like Hungerford no longer contained any. Simultaneously, crime throughout the British countryside was rocketing. The response to Hungerford was to tighten the screw that had illegalised self-defence in the first place.

This good woman has already been linked to from here today, but there cannot be too many such links out here in Blogland, I say.

I know that, for some, the way we here at Samizdata.net keep banging on, so to speak, about gun control (iniquity and fatuity of) is a bit dreary and predictable. But there is actually a bit of a buzz in Britain now about this issue, and any decade now this country might see some big changes in the right direction. Provided we keep buzzing and banging on.

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Self defence, wrote William Blackstone, the 18th-century jurist, is a "natural right that no government can deprive people of, since no government can protect the individual in his moment of need". This Government insists upon having a monopoly on the use of force, but can only impose it upon law-abiding people. By practically eliminating self defence, it has removed the greatest deterrent to crime: a people able to defend themselves.
- Joyce Lee Malcolm

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A culture of bacteria, a gaggle of geese, a confusion of monkeys, a conspiracy of lawyers, an army of caterpillars, a parliament of owls... and an absurdity of lawmakers.

In response to rising violent crime in Britain, our political masters have proposed outlawing the sale of knives to people under 18. I assume that will swiftly be followed by laws requiring all unattended kitchens within every house in Britain containing a person less than 18 years of age be securely locked to prevent access to...

... large and really sharp knives.

Do anything, anything, no matter how self-evidently preposterous, rather than face the intolerable idea that the problem is not thugs with knives but rather victims without the means to effectively defend themselves.

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Three months ago, I was 'an extremist'. Today, I am merely 'controversial'. I have not changed my opinion, but what is called "the public mood" has changed, at least in London.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, interviewed in the Daily Telegraph (free subscription needed), has shifted the official middle-ground:

Householders should be able to use whatever force is necessary to defend their homes against criminals, even if it involves killing the intruder, the country's most senior police officer said yesterday.

Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said those who defended their families and property should only face prosecution over injuries to intruders in "extreme circumstances", where they could be shown to have used gratuitous violence.

Curiously the blame for the present insane situation where burglars can sue for damages if they are injured whilst invading a home, and where people can be prosecuted for resisting burglars, seems to lie with the common law and judges.

The solution according to Sir John, is a statute:

There should be a presumption in law "that the person using the force to defend themselves is acting within the law, rather than the other way round".

Even if a struggle led to the death of an intruder, Sir John added, the law would presume that the person in that house had acted lawfully "and let the law change that presumption because of fact in evidence".

He said: "The message it sends to the would-be attacker is, `Do not think you can come into people's homes and people will not defend themselves with the right type of force that's necessary.' At the moment it seems it's the other way round."

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This senior British police officer tells the Daily Telegraph that householders should be able to use force, lethal force if necessary, to beat off burglars. Good. It may not immediately lead to a change in public policy but I get the feeling that a watershed was passed in the murder this week of City financier and Chelsea resident, John Monckton. Regular readers of this site will know that the crime was committed within a few yards of our own Perry de Havilland's home.

I am not going to repeat all the arguments we have seen about the issue of self defence, both on this blog and in our comments section. For me it is simple - the right to life is not worth much if one cannot use the means necessary to defend it. Full stop, no ifs, buts or qualifications. What does strike me, though, is that restoring the right of self defence will also, indirectly, improve the quality of our police forces. There are still a lot of very brave, committed and smart people in the police. Such people join up not just for the nice pension but also out of a desire to put thugs behind bars and protect the public. By being turned into "the paramilitary wing of the Guardian newspaper", as blogger David Farrer memorably put it, many good policemen and women may have been demoralised and driven out of the force.

So if we want to be able to encourage smart and good people to be coppers and restore the reputation of the boys in dark blue, then restoring the liberties and protections of our Common Law is an integral part of that goal. All good Bobbies should be cheering on the rights of self defence.

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What she said.

What she (the Telegraph's Janet Daley) started by saying was what they did in New York to bash the crime numbers down to a state bordering on civilisation from a state not bordering on barbarism. And then she turns her attention to the very contrasting state of affairs that still pertains in London, as we here hardly need reminding.

You will have noticed that this is precisely the opposite of what is happening here. Try ringing the police to tell them about an act of vandalism that is going on before your eyes and you will be treated with scarcely concealed ridicule: we've got more important things to worry about than some kids smashing up a building site. Never mind that the kids who have got away with that are likely to conclude that they can get away with pretty much anything.

Now New Yorkers have their city back and we are losing ours. …

I have a suggestion.

The politicos are cranking up this London Olympic bid. Well, all those of us who care more about people getting murdered than we do about people running marathons should offer the Olympiacs a deal. You can have your damned games if, by the time they come here, you have got on top of London's crime numbers. If, on the other hand, you obsess about the Olympics and regard harping on about murder as a mere distraction, then we should all flood the internet with "London: World Capital of Crime – Olympians Do Not Come Here – You Will All Be Murdered" propaganda. "London Welcomes The Olympians" – "Now Hand Over Your Wallet Or Die", etc.

Could some computer graphics genius perhaps do something with those Olympic ring things to turn them into a piece of anti-crime anti-the-political-causes-of-crime propaganda? Slosh some blood on them, perhaps, or make a couple of the rings into the front end of a double-barrelled shotgun.

The good thing about this arrangement is that I believe that it would work spontaneously. No one would have to be in charge of anything. But, if any of the people who do think that they are in charge of the Olympic bid tell us that we are being unpatriotic if we go on about crime in London instead of ignoring it and suffering in silence, they will be spontaneously attacked, and in a way that will really hurt them, with globally circulated (especially in Paris of course) bad news about what an appallingly unsuitable city London would be to hold these stupid games. Shut up, they will say. And the reply will be: no. Either you help us, or we screw you. That will be our message to them. And I think, after they have had a taste of it, that it might prove rather persuasive.

Which means that it is possible is that the Olympiacs might actually be recruited as allies in the campaign sketched out so vigorously by Janet Daley. Which means that something along the lines she says might – quite soon actually – start being done.

If London did do a New York with its criminal arrangements, as a result of the Olympics coming here, I for one could easily put up with a few weeks of Olympiac madness.

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Last night I had some friends and business associates around for dinner here in Chelsea. It was an agreeable evening at which some interesting conversations were had, some good food was enjoyed and some nice wine drunk.

And at around 7:00pm while all that was happening in my home, some 50 yards away my neighbour John Monckton was stabbed to death and his wife seriously injured by a pair of young vermin who broke into their house.

Of course the state forbids people like the Moncktons from owning the means to defend themselves. And the CCTV cameras on our street? I cannot tell you how much better they must make everyone around here feel. The police who have closed off my street are festooned with all manner of weapons and body armour but given that their actual role in modern Britain is little more than clearing up the mess after another disarmed householder has been butchered, perhaps waterproof coveralls and mops would be more suitable equipment for our tax funded 'guardians'.

Bitter? You bet. The world is full of predators and we are required to face them disarmed and as much in fear of the law as the criminal who attack us.

The state is not your friend.

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On the face of it, this is good news, of a householder standing up for his rights, and using reasonable force:

Rock star Ozzy Osbourne has been praised by police for "very courageously" tackling a burglar who stole jewellery from his house.

The singer grabbed an intruder who then jumped 30ft (10m) from a first floor window as the star gave chase at his Buckinghamshire home on Monday.

But of course, this event leaves the definition of 'reasonable' in the same old totally unreasonable state that it has long been in. If you are Ozzy Osbourne, and you take it into your head to interrupt a criminal in the course of his criminality using only your bare hands, and not actually hurting the criminal, and you merely chase him away, with his swag, then fine, the Police will shower you in praise.

But if Ozzy had actually smacked the criminal with a chair leg or something, and had done it hard enough to ensure that the criminal would not be in any state to fight back, as would have been entirely reasonable and as would have been very much in the interests of everyone other than criminals, his legal position would now be far more awkward. Never mind that if Ozzy had done this, the criminal might have been caught, and might even – who knows? – have ended up being punished in some way. And Sharon Osbourne would have got to keep all her jewels. But no. Ozzy only managed to chase the criminal away, and the criminal gets to go on being a criminal. Well done Ozzy!

Well, Ozzy did do quite well. At least he had a go, as the saying goes. But he could have done far better, and if he had, the Police would have squealed like outraged, upstaged pigs.

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Reading several pages of interesting reports and discussion on the BBC's website about Somalia, I wonder:

Is Sudan a better country to live in than Somalia?
Do refugees travel between the two countries (probably via Ethiopia) and which is the better place to live?
How would Somalia score on a human rights questionnaire? Compared with say North Korea. I think of the official line from the worker's paradise about homosexual rights: "There is no homosexuality in the Republic of Korea, it is a bourgeois disease."
How obstructive are Somali warlords of international trade compared with say, the EU's regulatory of tariff restrictions on agriculture? Is it easier and cheaper for a Kenyan farmer to sell food to Somalia than to Sudan or Spain?

I also note that multiple currencies are operating in Somalia, with US dollars, private currencies and old banknotes being exchanged in markets. Are Somalis really so much more intelligent than Europeans who had to be protected from currency choice?

The BBC reporter makes the mistake of comparing Somalia today with Holland Park in London today (except that some types of crime are probably more frequent in Holland Park). He is appalled that guns are for sale and that the entry fees finance qat instead of state schools and state hospitals. I think it is much more interesting to compare Somalia today with neighbouring countries today. On the face of it anarchy seems a lot like Robert A Heinlein's depiction in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Ken Macleod's The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal. Despite my quibbles with the BBC on this issue, full marks for going to Somalia eyes wide open, if not quite minds wide open.

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"Just imagine that instead of urging householders to barricade themselves inside their homes if a burglar attacks, a group of senior police officers were to write a joint signed letter to the Times saying that in such a case, fight the intruder, to the death if necessary. Imagine what impact this would have on the public debate about self defence and crime."

Brian Micklethwait, speaking at a recent one of his regular Friday evening soirees.

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After seeing an encouraging headline on the front page of yesterday's Daily Express ("AT LAST, A JUDGE BACKS A MAN WHO SHOT A BURGLAR"), I bought the paper, read the story, and looked for further enlightenment by googling "Judge Andrew Hamilton" "Kenneth Faulkner". I got these headlines:

Judge stirs debate on self defence

Shot burglar case sparks debate

Judge Backs Farmer Who Shot Burglar

Sadly, however, there is rather less to this story than meets the eye:

Prosecutor Michael Auty told Judge Andrew Hamilton that charges against Mr Faulkner had been considered but not brought, since his intention was to frighten; there was no evidence to suggest "anything other than acting in legitimate defence of his property and person". In addition, Rae had suffered only pellet wounds to his lower leg.

Rae suffered "only pellet wounds to his lower leg". So, although charges against Mr Faulkner had been considered, they were not brought. Had it been worse, it would also have been far worse for Mr Faulkner, is the clear implication.

The final google headline that I harvested yesterday went like this:

Housebreaker accepts victims have the right to fight back

How very sporting of him. The idea that you need the moral assent of your burglar before you may counter-attack him is ridiculous, not to say contemptible. Although come to think of it, I suppose that in the debased criminal justice culture of this country just now, it probably counts as news that this particular burglar has no plans to sue his victim for the crime of resisting. As is the fact that a judge is saying this kind of thing too.

His Lordship does at least seem to have confused matters sufficiently for the Guardian to go on to say this:

Yesterday there were calls for clearer guidelines. Victim Support spokesman Andrew Buckingham said: "The Home Office itself says there is a lot of confusion. When there is confusion to what reasonable force is, coupled with residents' anger at being targeted, it makes for a very complex set of circumstances."

Ah yes. Where would we all be without those "calls for clearer guidlines"? How about a guideline that says: If there is any doubt about the reasonableness of the force used against a burglar, the benefit of it goes to the burglee rather than to the burglar.

I do not object to the principle of only 'reasonable force' being allowed in cases like this. The trouble is, it depends what you mean by reasonable.

Tony Martin shot someone in the back who would almost certainly have returned to attack him again, as the attacker already had half a dozen times, and after the police had proved utterly incapable of doing anything about these attacks. If that was not a reasonable thing to have done, then the word reasonable has lost all meaning. This is like saying that anti-aircraft gunners should only be allowed to shoot down bombers over their country if the bombers have yet to drop their bombs and are still coming rather than going.

And just to emphasise the limits of reasonableness in these matters, here is report in today's Telegraph:

Police chiefs have urged householders not to confront intruders, but to call 999 and lock themselves in safely until help arrives.

Their advice was issued last night after a judge defended the actions of a retired man who shot an intruder who had returned for the third time to break into his isolated country home.

The judge's comments were hailed by victims' groups as the first sign of "common sense" on the rights of householders to defend their property.

However, the police counselled caution - while admitting that the public had little faith in their ability to turn up in time.

The only really good news here is that there at least reports of all these various pronouncements, which means that not everyone has given up on the idea that reasonableness should be reasonable.

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So hapless Prince Harry takes a swing at some paparazzo who bashes him in the face with a camera, and the British press have apoplexy tut-tutting over his behaviour.

To use internet parlance, WTF? If some pushy bastard negligently clips you in the mouth with a camera whilst in search of a few quid, the correct response is to return the favour with interest. That is not ill-advised or thuggish or incorrect, it is an entirely appropriate means of male-to-male comminication at such a time. I am glad to see that there is a member of the royal family who actually has personality traits that approach those of the Crown's normal everyday subjects.

It seem quite appropriate that not only should he not apologise for his reaction to the incident, he should be advising Christopher Uncle that if there is a next time, there should be some expectations of a royal boot in the bollocks as well.

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I was paging through the new issue of American Rifleman, the monthly magazine of the National Rifle Association, when I came across an interview with General Tommy Franks, who led the brilliant assault on Baghdad last year. (Sorry, no link available).

In the interview, the retired General is asked a couple of questions about his preferences in guns, and I found his answers surprising.

First, he said he prefers the current Beretta 9mm handgun to the .45 he carried in Vietnam. He couldn't really point to anything concrete, just a generalized (so to speak) preference. He did note that it had to be shooting the right loads to be an adequate combat weapon, but that was the only concession he made.

Second, he said he considered the M-16 to be a superior battlefield weapon to the AK-47 in every way. Period. Based on his comments about the M-16 earlier (he was in basic training when they were first issued), I think there is an unspoken assumption here that that it is a better weapon in the hands of well-trained troops who know how to maintain it.

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We will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns. I don’t think people should have guns unless they’re police or in the military or in the security industry. There is no earthly reason for people to have... ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia

So said re-elected Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in an interview on April 17 this year. (Audio here). While Howard is certainly America's friend in the war against Islamic fundamentalism, you should actually be careful before assuming that he shares your position on much else. This is after all a man who once introduced a hypothecated income tax specifically for the compulsory purchase of people's firearms.

(Link via Tim Lambert.)

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When capital punishment was abolished in Britain in the 1960's, the resulting public disquiet was mollified by assurances that convicted murderers would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

That assurance proved worthless. Over subsequent years, and by gradual degree, the span of 'life sentences' was whittled down to the point where a convicted murderer is now confined, on average, for between 10-12 years.

Apparently, even that is now far too draconian:

Some murderers could serve less than 10 years in prison under guidelines unveiled by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Woolf.

But it would only be in extraordinary circumstances - for example, if they had given themselves up before their crime had even been detected, he said.

The caveat of 'extraordinary circumstances' is a promise which will prove to be as valueless as the last one. Step-by-step and case-by-case, the defintion of 'extraordinary circumstances' will be widened to the point where convicted killers are routinely sentenced to spend a few hours exploring their inner child with a Court-appointed Outreach Counsellor.

Towards the end of the 19th Century the British State made a contract with its citizens the material terms of which required the individual citizen to surrender up their right to self-defence in return for the protection of the state which, by its agents, would both defend the citizen from harm and pursue and prosecute those who did (or attempted to do) the harm.

Gradually, but inexorably, the state has walked away from its side of that bargain. However, this would be no bad thing were the citizen likewise released from his or her obligations. If the entire contract was simply put in the shredder, it would, at least, leave us free to make our own arrangements for our self-defence and security. But this is not so. The citizen's promises to relinquish the right and means of self-defence remain not only extant but zealoulsy enforced by the state which has decided that it does, indeed, take only one to tango.

The poor, willing, plodding, dutifully contracting citizen has now been placed in the worst possible situation: forbidden from defending their own life and limb and unable to call on anyone else to do so for them.

The perfect scenario for the perfectly predatory society.

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Sometimes it takes a stark juxtaposition to shine the spotlight on the vacuity and moral cowardice of our Fourth Estate.

I was watching the early evening 'news' yesterday on ITV1, the more popular terrestrial, commercial station. This is something I can bring myself to do only very occasionally as commercial TV "news" presenters are such unwavering amplifiers of fatuous Nulabour propoganda that they make the average BBC reporter look like Rush Limbaugh in comparison.

Yesterday evening's first (and, by scheduling implication, most urgent) item was a piece of political agitprop by some organisation calling itself 'Mothers Against Guns', barely dressed up a 'news' feature.

Not content with the strictest anti-gun laws in the Western world, these people are upset because (wait for it) replica guns are still commercially available. Rooted to the spot, I squirmed through the next five minutes of shockingly blatant manipulation mixed in with junk statistics that were so obviously and ridiculously fraudulent as to be beyond parody. "Nine Tenths of all deaths in this country are caused by replica firearms which are converted to fire real ammunition". Yes, the Mothers Against Gun frontwoman actually said that and got clean away with it.

The upshot of all this heart-string tugging is (surprise, surprise) that they want the 'gubbament' to ban replica guns as well. For the sake of the children, of course.

Normally I would make no remark on this. Not because I do not care but only because it is so sadly typical of the agenda-driving that passes for "news" in this country, that no single example is, of itself, particularly worthy of comment.

But, on this occasion, there was a difference. The second item (yes, the very next item) was a report of this horror:

[Note: link to UK Times may not work for readers outside of UK]

Police hunting the killer of an elderly couple found brutally murdered in their home in North London today have arrested a man near King's Cross.

The bodies of Derek Robinson, a retired paediatrician, and his wife Jean, a retired music teacher, were discovered at 8am by a decorator who had come to work on their house, and may have disturbed the killer.

The decorator let himself in with a key and stumbled on a blood-splashed scene so gruesome that detectives have yet to establish what weapon was used to kill the couple.

Detective Superintendent Sue Hill said: "This is a horrific attack. These people were in their own home and they were slaughtered."

These unfortunate souls were both in their sixties, so it is unlikely that their mothers are still around to learn about the grisly and frenzied murder of their defenceless children.

Guns don't kill people. A lack of guns kills people.

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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.

Heh

(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

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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:

A television advert for Land Rover featuring a woman firing a gun has been banned by watchdogs for glamourising gun culture....

The agency behind the advert said it was intended to promote the message "that the Freelander Sport triggered sporting behaviour".

But 348 viewers complained to media regulator Ofcom, meaning that the advert is in the top 10 of the most complained about commercials.

Most viewers were concerned that the commercial glamourised or normalised gun culture despite the fact handguns are illegal in Britain. Many also pointed out that the gun was stored irresponsibly.

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?

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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]

NEIGHBOURS have been urged to band together to fight back against yobs making life a misery for many communities in Britain.

Louise Casey, head of the Government’s antisocial behaviour unit, said yesterday that she feared people were becoming too tolerant and afraid to intervene because of traditional British reserve.

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.

Critics will seize on her call as an admission of government failure to stem a rising tide of social disorder. But Ms Casey said that the answer to the yobs was not more legislation, but greater community spirit and co-operation.

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.

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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:

As an NRA member (see link on sidebar) I’m in favour of liberal gun laws and I think it’s irresponsible of the state to take away an innocent person’s right to self-defence. As a Police Officer, I get tired of having to investigate crime that is unsolvable, yet has only occurred because the victim is weak and the perpetrator is a bully and knows he will get away with it.

To American readers, the British attitude to guns must seem very strange. On the one hand we want to ban law-abiding people from having guns, on the other hand it has never been easier for a criminal to obtain an illegal handgun. We worry about thugs and crime on our Council estates and at the same time refuse to give ordinary people the means to defend themselves and their property.

The Police have long since given up the traditional role of “law-enforcement” and have now become professional “evidence gatherers”. That’s not a problem for the Police, but it does pose a difficulty if you live in an area where you have a lot of crime. So who does the “law enforcement” nowadays?

Nobody.

That’s where widespread ownership of guns comes in. Together with sensible laws on self defence, guns have a habit of cutting through all kinds of complex arguments about the causes of crime. If I try and burgle your home, you might shoot me: that concentrates the mind. It also reduces reliance on the state and it makes people responsible for their own actions. Best of all though, it gives victims a chance against offenders, something they’ll never get if they involve the Police. All we do is "gather the evidence."

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.

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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:

English person was asking me how come Austin is so crime-free and safe for kids compared to the UK?

"Well, over there," said I, "if someone breaks into your house in the night and tries to burgle you, you can shoot him. You can even kill him, and you won't get arrested. If someone mugs you, you can shoot them too. So that must put quite a few criminals off."

Mentioned the Tony Martin case, and the fact that criminals are going to have guns even if they're banned.

It has actually taken being extendedly in Texas for the last bit of Brit-bred gun-scepticism to fade from my lower cerebellum. It does feel safe in Austin. But people used to living in danger can forget what feeling safe is like. They think that danger is normal. That's how evil ideas take control.

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.

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"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.

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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.

Ariel was always amazed at how many Jews - Shomer Shabbos Jews - aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens. During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Karen and I, Ariel and Leda were inside a film theatre. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Leda in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen held Ariel's hand.

"Don't worry," I said with false confidence, "the police will be here soon."

But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson and widespread looting. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.

A few days later, I bought a gun.

I bought a gun because I realized that the day might come again when the people who were sworn to protect us would once again choose not to.

As Ariel's conservative political opinions began to cohere, he logically fell on the side of legal gun ownership. But because he was first and foremost a Torah Jew, first and foremost a Talmudic scholar, Ariel sat down and put gun ownership into a Halachic framework. We talked often about his ideas. Ariel wanted to put them down on paper. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity.

And so I humbly jot down a few of Ariel's ideas on the Second Amendment.

Ariel pointed out that in his commentary on Beresheis 4:23, Ramban says: "The sword is not the cause of murder, and there is no sin upon him who made it." In other words, a weapon, be it a sword or a gun, is neutral. It can be used for good or for evil. Thus to label a gun as "bad" makes no sense, for a gun can be used in self-defense which the Torah sees as a primary right.

The Torah (Exodus 22.2) teaches that, when necessary a householder may kill a burglar to save his own life.

Gemara Sanhedrin (72A) says: "He who rises to kill you, you must kill first." It seems odd to have to defend the most basic notion of self-defense, but in America today, the shrill and self-righteous voices of pacifism and appeasement have become alarmingly prominent. Ariel told me that if gun control advocates had their way, the only people with access to guns would be the police, who cannot be counted on for security, and criminals, who can be counted on to be, well, criminals and to have absolutely no respect for the hundreds of gun laws already on the books.

Ariel also pointed out that on Purim the Jews were given royal permission to defend their lives. The King's edict did not order the army to protect the Jews, no; the Jews were allowed to purchase arms in order to defend themselves. Obviously, as a minority in the Persian Empire, Jews were forbidden weapon ownership. This is not unique in Jewish history. During the Roman occupation of Judea, Jews were forbidden to own swords, spears or any implements of war. What better way for a ruling empire to control an unruly and rebellious population? And of course, in Europe, one of the first laws that Hitler imposed was an all-encompassing weapons ban. Imagine how different Jewish history would be if every Jewish family in Europe owned at least one gun that had six bullets in the chamber.

One of the hallmarks of modern Liberalism, Ariel suggested, is an astonishing inability to recognize, much less confront, evil. Therefore it is psychologically necessary for the liberal to place the blame on an inanimate object - the gun - rather than the person who pulls the trigger. It is easier to fault the gun manufacturer for the horror at Columbine, rather than admit that two sixteen-year-old boys are capable of such evil. The Jewish attitude, Ariel said, is to place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the two young men; to declare their evil, and never to utter their names. For just as goodness is a reality, so is evil. Try and imagine, said Ariel, if one or two Columbine teachers had guns with them. Imagine if these armed teachers had been able to protect the students who were shot down like defenseless animals.

There was another aspect to these stories that Ariel detected and deeply troubled him. The news always referred to Columbine and even 9-11 as "tragedies." "They're not tragedies," Ariel held. "They are outrages." A tragedy is when people are killed in a fire or an earthquake. But when people are murdered in cold blood, it is an atrocity. Again, Ariel pointed out, the media, overwhelmingly liberal, is unable to distinguish malevolent acts from natural disasters.

Ariel concluded that Jews in America should be at the forefront of the right to bear arms. Jews should join the National Rifle Association. For Jews to rely on the power of the state for protection is sheer foolishness. Time and again, Jewish history reveals governments cruelly betraying their Jewish citizens. And though Ariel felt that America was "different," he still maintained that allowing the state to make the ownership of weapons illegal is an unwise policy. But like so much else in American Jewish life, Jews have signed on to aggressively utopian ideologies that go against their self-interest. Instead, countless Jews espouse principles that feed their need to feel virtuous. But in the end, these are beliefs that defy common sense and display an appalling ignorance of Jewish history and Halacha.

Ariel looked forward to the day when he and I would go to the shooting range together for some target practice.

"Let's shoot at a picture of Arafat," I said.

"And Osama," said Ariel.

"And Saddam Hussein."

"And the President of France," Ariel added with his wry smile.

Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California
March 2004

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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.

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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.

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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:

Resolved: No Funds shall be invested by CREF in any entity brought to its attention that publically advocates firearm control legislation or repeal of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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.

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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:

The Government will attempt to tackle Britain's gun culture with plans to be unveiled this week for an overhaul of outdated firearms laws.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will publish a consultation document which is expected to lead to tougher restrictions on the sale and manufacture of replica firearms as well as new age limits on gun ownership, especially for airguns, starter pistols and shotguns.

The consultation follows lobbying by the police and anti-gun campaigners who say Britain's gun laws are confused, out of date and in desperate need of reform.

Of particular concern are replica firearms which are popular with gun collectors and can be bought legally but are being converted by criminals into lethal weapons to fire live ammunition.

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'.

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If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then surely accreditation must run it a very close second. There may well be pundits and scribblers who do not experience the frisson of pride when their work is quoted in other media but, if so, then I have never met them.

Speaking for myself, I simply love it when other people link to my articles or quote from them. Nor is my satisfaction diminished by even the smallest degree who link to my articles as evidence that I am mad, bad and dangerous to know. It's the recognition, stupid. Even if my attributors despise every single sentiment I ever express, at least they consider me significant enough to be worth drawing to the attention of others.

However, some people take quite the contrary view. In this case, a certain Mr. Greg Truscott of the South London Press.

It seems that Mr.Truscott has been filing reports about the nasty violent crimes which occur with disturbing regularity in and around South London and which are published on-line at the South London Press website (above).

So far, so what? Mr. Truscott is a journalist and he is only doing what journalists do. But, this is the age of global communication and the stories that Mr. Truscott may have intended only for the good burghers of South London have found an audience over the pond, courtesy of the team at 'Keep and Bear Arms'.

The self-defence campaigners of 'KBA' have been linking to Mr.Truscott's reports of chaotic violence in South London as a means of helping to persuade their fellow Americans that civilian disarmerment does not work and only leaves civilians helpless against the thugs and parasites who would (and do) prey on them.

Sound like a good idea to me. If you want evidence to support your case that firearm-prohibition should not be tried in America then what better way to do it than by harvesting case-studies from a country where firearm-prohibition is just about complete (and just about a complete disaster).

Mr. Truscott, however, has taken a rather less charitable view. In fact, he appears to be be so incensed by this perfectly rational (but unexpected) use of his copy material that he wrote an e-mail to KBA team as follows:

DO NOT USE MY NEWS STORIES TO FUEL YOUR DESIRE TO BEAR FIREARMS.

TAKE NOTICE OF THIS WARNING OR I'LL PASS IT TO OUR LAWYERS TO DEAL WITH.

GREG TRUSCOTT, SOUTH LONDON PRESS, UK.

Surely the KBA team (along with everybody else) may use material in the public domain to fuel any desires they dee fit? I do rather hope that Mr. Truscott sees fit to pass this matter to his lawyers so that he can be told that he has no cause of action.

As for KBA, I am pleased to note that the words 'cease and desist' to not appear to be in their vocabulary. KBA's Nicki Fellenzer replied to Mr.Truscott as follows:

Dear Mr. Truscott -- What exactly is your major malfunction? If you are a journalist who has been published in a newspaper and your writing is available online, we are within every right to post a link to your story for people to read -- it's the equivalent of giving a person directions -- we are giving our readers directions to your writing. If you don't like it, that is your problem, not ours.

Our "desire" is not to bear firearms per se. Our "desire" is freedom, as guaranteed and protected by our Constitution. And our "desire" is not to become like the crime-ridden pit the UK has turned into, disarming the peaceable and law abiding, placing them at the mercy of armed thugs and punishing them for defending their own lives when police are unable to do so. THAT is our desire.

Your shrill screeching is unappreciated. If you don't want people to be directed to your writing, perhaps you should have chosen another career.

Well, quite.

This is a perfect example of the really interesting things that can happen because of the internet. While I still have my doubts about the extent to which it can or will act as a catalyst for any real social or political change, it does mean that any nation's dirty, little secrets have become much harder to keep secret.

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I used to be a singer in a rock and roll band.

Well, okay, maybe not, but I was a lead guitarist in a punk rock band. I even had my Fender copy tuned so I could play the major rock chords with a single sliding finger, just like those anarcho-punk legends, Crass.

If only our band had possessed some luck, a good manager, a driving licence between us, some money, a van, and a small pet monkey named Brian, we might have made it big. Especially if the lead guitarist had actually possessed any talent.

But, alas, this punk dream faded, as it did for a million others, and my brush with anarchy submerged itself for another twenty years. However, much to my surprise it resurfaced again last year, a little rusty but largely unscathed, when it experienced a depth charge blast from Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe's mental mind bomb, Democracy: The God That Failed.

There are few in the world who dare promote the dissolution of all forms of government, especially in the hostile spitting face of a billion state-supporting rent seekers. And of those few brave men, only a tiny handful, mostly Austro-libertarians, possess the requisite economic theory, moral strength, and political knowledge to really frighten all of those state-loving horses. Foremost amongst them is Professor Hoppe, a man in the proper Austrian tradition of being a German speaker by birth, though also a man at odds with many inside proper libertarian circles, as opposed to those Christmas-voting leftist libertarian turkeys who believe the state is the ultimate guarantor of individual rights. Which makes about as much sense as taxman with genuine friends.

Proper libertarians divide themselves into two broad camps; Minarchists and Anarchists; those who believe in a minimalist night-watchman state, on the grounds that even though the state is odious and should be limited in every way possible, it is still necessary to provide security; and those who believe that we need no odious government at all, because even security, that last bastion of the coercive apparatus of the state, can itself be provided on the open market.

However, when you educate yourself away from leftist-libertarian socialism, as some of us poor schlepps have had to do, this question of security, which divides the Minarchists and the Anarchists, is like the great family secret you can never find the answer to. It is the mad aunt in the closet, the uncle who should be kept away from his nephews, and the grandmother with the glass eye who does unspeakable things to goldfish. This question of security is simply never discussed. At least, never any place you can find it. You are either sensible, and a Minarchist, or a Barking moonbat, and an Anarchist.

Which is why I am glad that Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe has broken the log-jam and tried to answer this divisive question of security, with his editorship of The Myth of National Defense. Fortunately, as well as buying the book, you can also read the whole of its text online, courtesy of a Mises.org PDF file.

Hoppe has assembled his wide-ranging collection of essayists, and their ideas, around the following pair of double-think concepts:

First: Every "monopoly" is "bad" from the viewpoint of consumers. Monopoly here is understood in its classical sense as an exclusive privilege granted to a single producer of a commodity or service; i.e., as the absence of "free entry" into a particular line of production. In other words, only one agency, A, may produce a given good, x. Any such monopolist is "bad" for consumers because, shielded from potential new entrants into his area of production, the price of his product x will be higher and the quality of x lower than otherwise.

This is contrasted with:

Second, the production of security must be undertaken by and is the primary function of government. Here, security is understood in the wide sense adopted in the Declaration of Independence: as the protection of life, property (liberty), and the pursuit of happiness from domestic violence (crime) as well as external (foreign) aggression (war). In accordance with generally accepted terminology, government is defined as a territorial monopoly of law and order (the ultimate decision maker and enforcer).

Hoppe contends that both principles are incompatible. Either monopoly is good or monopoly is bad. It cannot be both. However, to counter this Minarchists argue that security is a special product, one which defies the first principle, because without statist coercion we would all be wolves at each others' throats in a Hobbesian world of Homo homini lupus est, suffering from a continual under-production of security. Hoppe argues otherwise, basing much of his anarchistic case on the original ideas of Gustave de Molinari, who predicted in the Production of Security what would happen in a monopolized security system:

If...the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned, according to the power and influence of this or that class of consumers.

The British police, in particular, seem to have taken Molinari to heart. In large swathes of the UK they see their job as being no more than handing out crime numbers, so that victims of theft can claim on their private insurance policies. From recent newspaper reports, the British police can sometimes hardly be bothered to do even that small task. The thought of coming out of their warm cosy police stations, or comfortable motorway police cars, and actually chasing down burglars and muggers is far too much like hard work. It is much better to stay behind a desk drinking tea and processing lucrative car speeding fines. British courts are also a superlative home for the overpaid and the underworked, with the price of justice set far too high for most ordinary people, and some innocent men and women spending years banged up on remand, at Her Majesty's pleasure, while indolent government justice officers tea-break their tortuous way through endless triplicated paperwork.

Hoppe's book is divided into four sections; State-making and war-making; Government forms, war, and strategy; Private alternatives to state defence and warfare; and Private security production and practical applications.

After an introductory chapter of his own, Hoppe hands over the baton to Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri, for a first section chapter on the relative modernity of the state, which they claim has only properly existed since the Florentine time of Niccolo Machiavelli, rather than the dawn of time, as the state's denizens would prefer us to believe. Thus, having existed only briefly, the state is a concept which has a before. Therefore, it may also possess an after, which we can all happily work towards. They also describe how the state mainly arose as a vehicle for those who wished to become a new ruling class, after feudal times, and how, as free institutions and free markets threw off the ever-increasing strictures of the nation state, this ruling class saw its only hope for survival in the creation of supra-national bodies, such as the European Union, to use them explicitly as a means of controlling the free movements of goods, people, capital, and ideas, while still retaining full control over a coercive and parasitic stream of lovely jubbly taxation income, for themselves, their families, and their friends.

This essay is followed by The Master, the mighty Murray N. Rothbard. Hoppe reproduces one of Uncle Murray's best ever pieces, which you may have read before, on War, Peace, and the State. This lucid morality tale tells us about how and why the state has killed millions since its Renaissance inception; how and why we can tackle all of the state's arguments, which it uses to aggress against us in the form of taxation, regulation, and straightforward oppression, as it pursue its own agenda against other states; and how and why we should always try to work towards the maxim that no man should aggress against any other man at any other time, except in the case of self-defence. No anarchist, or aspiring anarchist, should ever leave home without reading this essay first.

The second section of the book then begins with what I feel is the best written essay in the book: Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's piece entitled Monarchy and War, on the dangers of modern democracy. Rather than give you a blow-by-blow account of this bitingly acidic tour-de-force, let me just regale you with a few quotes:

Democracy reappeared in a more civilised form in Athens, but when Socrates, in a truly political trial, praised monarchy, he was condemned to death. Remember also that Madriaga said rightly that our civilization rests on the death of two persons: a philosopher and the Son of God, both victims of the popular will.

Top quality.

It will be interesting to see if Mel Gibson makes his next film project 'The Death of Socrates'. I would love to see it, but I do hope Mr Gibson avoids scripting the dialogue in classical Greek.

Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is particularly caustic about the terrible effects of the French Revolution, with its introduction of mass murder, conscription, and caretaker-king democracy:

It [The Revolution] wanted to bring liberty and equality under a common denominator, something Goethe considered only charlatans would promise. Equality, indeed, could merely be established in some form of slavery – just as a hedge can only be kept even by constantly trimming it.

Now that is an analogy to cut out and keep. If you ever see me using it again at some future date, please forget you ever saw me quote it here first. Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn also thinks one of the worst outcomes of the French Revolution was its export of democracy to the nascent United States, and the subsequent goal of the United States to then make the world a safe place for this same mob rule beauty pageant, otherwise known as democracy:

It was the destruction of the Habsburg Empire that made Germany the geopolitical winner of World War I. Bordering after 1919 on only one great power—France—it was now the direct or indirect neighbour in the East of partly artificial, partly militarily indefensible states. As His Magnificence, the rector of Breslau University, Ernst Kornemann, pointed out in 1926, the time to take advantage of this advantageous situation would come sooner or later. And it came. What Hitler actually inherited from these nincompoops who had dictated the Paris Suburban treaties was not only an internal situation characterized by the economic uprooting of important social layers and the imposition of an unworkable form of government, but also a uniquely profitable geopolitical position due to the division of Austria-Hungary. If Hitler had had any sense of humor, he would have erected a colossal monument to Woodrow Wilson.

You may disagree with what Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn says about the horrors of democracy, but his writing really is wonderfully entertaining.

We then head into what I thought was the most disturbing and contradictory part of Professor Hoppe's book: Bertrand Lemennicier's chapter on nuclear weapons. After various mathematical proofs, based on Game theory, the author concludes that nuclear proliferation is a desirable thing to encourage, in terms of world peace. He also believes that the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and other members of the nuclear club, have no intrinsic right to prevent this spread of nuclear weapons.

I found this essay rather jarring, particularly after reading Murray Rothbard's earlier piece, which states that we should try to remove nuclear weapons from the world as a priority action in every possible sphere, as they are immoral weapons of evil. And even if I could force myself to believe Lemennicier's argument that various world governments should be the recipients of nuclear proliferation, one shudders at the thought of various non-governmental men, currently somewhere at large in the Hindu Kush, getting hold of such devices. Nuclear mushroom cloud over London, anyone?

I hope and pray that I and my children never live to see that day.

Gerard Radnitzky then puts a firm leather boot into the lie that democracy is more peaceful than any other form of government, decrypting virtually every war of the twentieth century, most of which involved democracies, often in the role as aggressors. This is a wide-ranging chapter which balances theory with reality, but which essentially comes at us with the premise that what democracy encourages is the creation of total war and the deliberate targeting, with lethal munitions, of other states' civilians:

The democratic method tempts you to expand collective choice, because it appears to be so simple to use and almost costless (a facile mechanical process). It invites you to sin — galloping interventionism. The consequences: Because of the redistributive bias of democratic constitutional rule, it transforms the state into a vast redistributive machinery and the society into the "churning society"—interventionism, welfarism, collectivism—with consequences that go far beyond anything known under predemocratic social choice.

After this heavy, but necessary, opening half to the book, we get to the more interesting stuff. Joseph R. Stromberg talks about mercenaries, guerrillas, militias, and the ways in which they have been combined for successful defence, as in the American Revolution against the armed might of Great Britain. Larry J. Sechrest then writes a fascinating chapter on naval privateering and its warfare for profit, which helped keep the mighty British navy at bay when the early United States spent several decades consolidating its early freedom, mostly through a successful reliance on naval privateers.

So why did privateering die out then? Stromberg concludes his chapter with the riposting answer:

The fact is that privateering disappeared precisely because it was so effective. Career naval officers feared and resented the competition it represented, and those few nations with large public navies wanted to make sure that smaller nations could not challenge their domination via the less costly alternative of private armed ships. These were the primary motives behind the Declaration of Paris, signed by seven maritime nations in 1856, which prohibited privateering by the signatories and greatly hastened its ultimate end.

Whatever the case, the knowledge I gained from this essay certainly helped make the recent Russell Crowe film, Master and Commander, far more entertaining, especially when Captain 'Lucky' Jack Aubrey argued with ship's doctor, Stephen Maturin, about the nature of warfare and anarchy, and how to fight a Boston-built privateer.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel answers another important question in the next highly instructive chapter. If governments are so bad, why do they so dominate the world? Hummel paints an optimistic picture portraying the state as a macro parasite which grew from the revolution in agriculture following hunter-gatherer times, where large bodies of people could produce enough food to carry free riders and wipe out remaining hunter-gatherers through slaughter and the diseases induced by people living in civilised proximity. The rulers of these early states could then introduce religious or secular ideologies to maintain the organic growth of statehood, leading us towards the present day cacophony of worldwide states. However, Hummel surmises that modern states which can lower their statist free-riding burden will become dominant through their consequential wealth-generation abilities and the superior weapons systems which this will also provide. Hence, the state may wither on the vine as such advantages become apparent, especially if just one truly anarcho-capitalist state could emerge with a large enough population to hold all the other states at bay.

No doubt Hummel has the United States in mind, for this torch-bearing role. But with those rapidly growing flat-tax economies in Eastern Europe, who knows where the wind of freedom will blow next?

We then come to the book's important fourth section, where Walter Block, Professor Hoppe, and Jörg Guido Hülsmann, discuss how the private production of security could actually come to genuine fruition, in a future world based on reality rather than hope.

Block lays open the public goods theorists who insist that only states can provide defence, by taking all of their arguments apart and leaving them wanting. Hoppe then follows up with a demonstration of how reliance on the state for defence has left us in a state of perpetual war, with a continual and a permanently insecure destruction of private property, and how a system of insurance could provide us with a reliable system of both internal and external defence. He also argues why this system would lead to a far more peaceful world than the one we currently have, where airlines are stopped by the state from having $50 dollar guns on their flight decks, so a $400 billion dollar US state defence system can then fail to prevent terrorist outrages involving airliners. If you are going to read just one chapter from this book, read this one.

Hülsmann then concludes this book with how secession, down to the level of the individual, may be the method by which we can reach Hummel's anarcho-capitalist wonderland.

All in all, The Myth of National Defense is a fabulous book, and one which I can highly recommend even to confirmed Minarchists, so they can refute it at their leisure. Its one drawback is that it does lack the organic unity of the Professor's earlier book on democracy, mainly because he failed to write the whole thing himself. But just the chapter by Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, alone, makes up for this.

Is it really possible for the state to be removed from our lives and for us to survive to tell the tale afterwards? You will have to make up your own mind, but after reading it myself I can only say one thing:

Ich bin ein Barking moonbat.

Auf wieder hören...

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For those who missed it, this morning, there was a fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph about the increasing failure of the British state to perform its most basic activity, that of providing personal security to its tax-paying citizens. It seems more and more people are simply withdrawing any hope they may have once held in the British police and are taking their own personal security matters directly into their own hands, with impressive crime reduction results to boot, through the creation and adoption of private police forces.

It seems the Individualist Revolution really is creeping up on us, unawares, as street by street, in Britain, the enfeebled state withers away and people take an ever-increasing amount of private control over their own private lives.

This is not what the state intended. But it is what is happening. Long may this withering process continue.

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Like many people, I recently thoroughly enjoyed that rather silly movie romp, Pirates of the Caribbean, full of English toffs in redcoats, ghostly pirates with bad teeth, not to mention luscious wenches relying on the dubious chivalry and charm of Johnny Depp. However, lest we think piracy belongs to the era of men in wigs with parrots on their shoulders, I have news to report.

Seaborne piracy is rising fast in many parts of the world. It is particularly virulent in parts of Southeast Asia, for example in and around the coastlands of the vast stretch of islands making up Indonesia. Today's Caribbean and the Indian Ocean are also dangerous. A while back, while I was spending a wonderful day ogling at unattainably expensive sailing yachts at the London International Boatshow, I grabbed hold of a book warning amateur sailors about the perils of being held to ransom by pirates in oceans all over the world. At the very least, you would be nuts to embark on a long passage without carrying at least two workeable firearms.

But as the report I link to makes clear, there is increasingly an ideological slant to modern piracy. In Indonesia, it appears that Islamic militants, like terrorists the world over, are mixing their religious fervour with the juicy temptations of crime.

I am frankly surprised that there has not been more written on how easy it would be for a terrorist group to get hold of even a small sized motor boat, fill it chockfull of explosives, sail it up the Thames, the Rhine or any other major river you can think of, and blow it up. As an aside, I continue to be amazed at how relatively easy it is to sail into a marina without necessarily having to immediately declare any ID. On a recent trip to France by yacht I never once was required to show so much as a passport.

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If you haven't dropped in on Clayton Cramer lately, do so. He has links to more self defense stories per day than I have typically seen in a full year.

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Over at One Hand Clapping you can read about a new mobile phone technology that will simply knock you dead.

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Iraqis are not just depending on government to protect their new liberty. According to this report from the Coalition Provisional Authority, they are armed and dangerous... to terrorists:

Elsewhere in Baghdad, individuals inside a white Opel fired small arms at ICDC personnel at the Al-Amil gas station. The Civil Defense Corps soldiers returned fire, and Iraqi customers waiting for fuel also fired at the Opel. The assailants broke contact, and a search of the area met with negative results.

Is it just me or does this paragraph sound like something out of an L Neil Smith novel?

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Tony Martin was clearly a trailblazer:

A proposal to allow homeowners to use "any means" to defend their homes, has topped a BBC poll on the bill people would most like to see become law.

BBC Radio 4's Today programme asked listeners to vote on suggested Private Members' Bills, with the first choice taking 37% of the votes.

Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, whose fatal shooting of a burglar in 1999 sparked a national debate, welcomed the result.

As well he might. For him this is a vindication. For others, though, this is an embarrassment, not least of all for the Conservative MP who was supposed to be Tony Martin's champion:

Tony Martin's MP, Conservative Henry Bellingham said the idea went too far by suggesting homeowners should use "any means" to protect their property.

For politicians this potato is just too hot to touch. The mere mention of rights to self-defence is enough to have them scampering away whelping like whipped curs. Nor do I expect that this synthetic exercise is going to make so much as a dent in the established view that defending oneself from barbarity is morally more reprehensible than the barbarity itself:

More than 26,000 votes were registered by listeners taking part in the poll and the winning bill will now be presented to the House of Commons by Stephen Pound MP.

He will need to persuade the 20 MPs who have been chosen to put forward Private Members Bills to take up the poll winner's suggestion.

He will have more chance trying to persuade Osama Bin Laden to book his daughters in for pole-dancing lessons. Me being cynical? No, not at all. Just hear what the same Stephen Pound has to say about the whole thing in the Guardian:

Stephen Pound, Labour MP for Ealing North, who was one of the programme's judges, expressed surprise at the high vote for such a controversial plan among listeners to such a programme.

"My enthusiasm for direct democracy is slightly dampened," the MP told Today. "This is a difficult result. I can't remember who it was who said 'The people have spoken - the bastards'."

Hmm, colour me skeptical but I have a hunch that his heart is not really going to be behind this campaign. These people are always agitating for 'more democracy' until it jumps up and slaps them in the face. Democracy is only supposed to be for the compliant: no 'bastards' allowed.

Mr Pound, however, is one of the more sanguine respondents. Elsewhere there is enough sqwauking and clucking to drown out a poultry market. The Guardian is already denouncing the result as a fix:

The BBC was warned yesterday that it may have fallen victim to a mass lobbying campaign after a controversial plan for a "Tony Martin" law topped a Today programme poll yesterday.

Suspicions were raised when thousands of listeners voted for the mock parliamentary bill which would allow homeowners to use "any means" to defend their homes from intruders. Such a law would have protected Mr Martin, who was jailed for the manslaughter of a teenage burglar, Fred Barras, in 1999.

And from the BBC article, linked above, a dire warning of what such mad and irresponsible ideas would lead to:

But leading criminal barrister John Cooper warned that the idea was dangerously flawed.

He said: "The law as it stands at the moment, despite its critics, is functioning. If you are in your house and you are attacked by someone or threatened by someone, you can use proportionate force.

"We do not live in the wild west. This legislation that is proposed effectively may well turn us into that."

Thus proving that it is possible to be wrong on more than one level. For a start the 'wild west' was nowhere near as wild as legend would have it. But I'm quibbling here because I sort of know what he is driving at. He thinks RKBA and a right to self-defence would result in a desolate landscape riven with feuds, lynchings and random acts of carnage. He is still wrong though because that is exactly the type of scenario we are heading for now. The virtually unprotected citizen is easy meat for predatory.

Having assumed a monopoly of the crime-control business, the British state has found it cannot actually do that job and, increasingly, is disinclined to even try. The only thing they can maintain is the pretence by landing like a ton of bricks on any citizen who dares to be more than a docile farm-animal.

The result of the BBC poll gives lie to the whole facade. People are losing faith in the ability (and even willingness) of the state to come to their aid in time of crisis. As the police spend more of their time collecting taxes and scoring brownie points with their political masters, this disquiet will only grow.

[This article has been cross-posted to White Rose.]

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By the time I finish concocting this post David Carr will probably have posted on the subject already, because it's right up his alley, if he'll pardon the expression. No, nothing from him yet and this posting is now done, so here goes. (UPDATE: something from David after all - see above - and HE got the Instapundit link. It's a tough blogosphere.)

Basically, what it was was that the BBC, in the form of the Today Programme, decided to do a stunt stroke exercise in participatory democracy, and they arranged that listeners could vote for whatever law they wanted to vote for, and the winning law would then be presented to Parliament by a pre-appointed MP who, believing as he does in democracy and all that, was happy to commit himself to whatever law got the most vox from the populus.

The idea was that a law would duly be voted for about saving an Endangered Species or banning a Officially Disapproved-of food or pleasure or past-time. That would-be law would actually be presented to Parliament. It would not be enacted. But another little gob of nannyism would duly have been proclaimed as desirable.

However, the plan went wrong. The particular bit of the populus that got most organised and did the most voting was the bit that thinks that Tony Martin was right to shoot at those thieving bastards who attacked him in his rural farm, and that if one was killed and the other wounded, that should have been their problem for being thieving bastards, and not Tony Martin's for defending himself and his property. So a new law was crafted along the lines of people being allowed to use any means they like to defend their property. It got the most votes. So now, the Independent reports, the MP who promised to present this to Parliament is going to have to do just that. He is not a happy MP:

Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" – a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question.

"The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards."

Having recovered his composure, Mr Pound told The Independent: "We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of Radio 4. I would have expected this result if there had been a poll in The Sun. Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"

Well, it would seem that quite a lot of people do. And you know what? If there was such a law, there'd be a lot fewer burglars a-burgling.

Personally, I'm with Mr Pound in thinking that "reasonable force" ought to be sufficient. However, unlikeMr Pound, and many others, I think that the force which Tony Martin used against his attackers was itself quite reasonable, and that in general, lethal force is often a very reasonable way for householders to fight off burglars, and in the process to uphold the law (one of the laws being that you mustn't burgle). After all, for many householders in many circumstances, the only choices available are: (a) householder shoots at intruders to kill, and therefore quite often does kill, or: (b) householder is helpless, and is duly robbed, or worse. What Official Opinion wants us all to accept is that there is a third alternative which is superior to both (a) and (b), which is: (c) the householder reports the crime, and the criminals are speedily apprehended by the Police and punished appropriately by the courts. But why is (c) so very much better than (a)? And what if (c) just about never happens, either because the burglars aren't caught or because if they are caught they aren't sufficiently punished?

Simon Jenkins isn't my favourite columnist. (See here for evidence of just how fatuously wrong this man is capable of being.) But after starting off his latest column for Timesonline by denouncing the BBC for getting above itself by actually proposing legislation (and thereby setting itself up in competition with Parliament), and for failing to guide public opinion into a more proper direction, he ends up admitting that this little exercise has actually worked out rather well. It gave lots of people a chance to say that they don't feel safe in their own homes and would like the right to defend their homes themselves, and they took it. By their insubordinate refusal to accept their duly allotted place in the grand scheme of things, the place allotted to them by people like Simon Jenkins, an important slice of public opinion got members of the pompous git classes to actually think about that proposition for a change. Jenkins' column started out under the heading "How the BBC made democracy just a show", but ended up saying this:

Which brings me full circle. There is virtue in the listeners’ law after all. I have debated it for an entire column. I am sure that the BBC would declare this as no more than their original intention. A listeners’ law is better than no law at all. Where indeed would we be without the BBC?

Under the circumstances, that's quite an admission.

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In the week of the increasingly embarrassing Turner Prize, here (I found it via these people) is news of some art that Samizdata can really get behind:

Since 1998 Italian artist Antonio Riello has been making very special weapons as artworks. Assault rifles, pistols, machine guns, carbines, sub-machine guns, hand grenades, rocket launchers and any kind of contemporary military guns are restyled by the artist as high fashion accessories for sophisticated ladies.

And for a certain sort of gentleman, I'm guessing. (Although those ball and chain things at the top of the picture collection don't look to me like they're for self defence at all.)

Weapons from all over the World are used: American M16, Russian Kalashnikov, Israelian UZI, Italian Beretta and many others. Recently also armours in steel, plastic and Kevlar are made to protect ladies against urban dangers.

Globalisation. Good.

In this artproject the glamour of fashion system is mixed with the common perverse and morbid fascination for weaponry.

Yeah yeah. They have to say that.

These works – made using leopard skins, brightly lacquered colours, jewels, furs, trendy fabrics and special technological appliances – play along the thin line between fashion and trash.

Miami Vice aesthetics you might say.

LADIES WEAPONS are a sort of hybrids born from the most outstanding contemporary Italian features: the obsession for personal security and the passion for elegance and fashion.

I would have preferred passion for personal security and obsession for elegance and fashion, but like I say, they have to say that guns are bad. This is Italy remember, not Arizona.

Every artwork has a name of a woman ("CLAUDIA", "TAMARA",….) and exists only in one exemplar.
Where is allowed the artist uses real weapons, in the countries where is forbidden artworks are based on perfect replicas.

"Where is allowed." There's your problem. And of course, "perfect replicas" are only allowed "where is allowed" also. This art is presumably illegal wherever replica guns are flaunted in places "where is not allowed". Oh well, it all adds to the buzz.

My guess is that the Art Nazis, to coin a phrase, won't allow this stuff to qualify, because it is itself far, far too "obsessive" about guns to be allowed into polite Euro-society. As "art", it will never catch on. It's typical Euro-trash half-baked goodness/uselessness, in other words. More work is needed.

This guy should stop titting about with "only in one examplar" nonsense, go to America, and mass produce these things. Forget art. Embrace the gun culture, and help to make it (even more) fashionable.

When he gets there, he will course have to deal with the fact that in America they presumably have a lot of this kind of kit already, selling healthily (not to say obsessively), with no thought of art at all.

(By the way, and flying off at somewhat of a tangent, "Art Nazis" is a phrase I recently invented, which I think may have a future. I say invented, but I googled for it after thinking of it for myself, and I did find this use of the phrase, to describe the idiot/villain art critic at the centre of Tom Wolfe's splendid little book The Painted Word.)

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It's no good. Every time I think about Jonny's sun-kissed fringe. Every time I think about Dallaglio's try-setting run. Every time I think about that little girl at the airport, at 4:30am, holding up a homemade picture of the England rugby team framed in red tinsel, I feel like blubbing. Even now, as I write this, I'm filling up again. What a game.

I think it's something to do with having children. You just start becoming emotionally incontinent about everything. Or at least that's what has happened to me. But enough of this nonsense. I shall ask Mr Micklethwait to try to cure me by email.

But his post below set me thinking about something else. Having waded through various anarcho-capitalist tomes, in the last few months, there's something I've found particularly unsatisfying about them all, as they babble on about private courts, private arbitration, and private police. Where's the beef!

You hear tantalising snippets about successful anarcho-capitalist societies in fourth century Germany, in eleventh century Ireland, and in fifteenth century Iceland, but rarely, if ever, do you actually get to see the beef. What would an anarcho-capitalist society actually be like? And if it's such a good thing, why didn't the German, Irish, and Icelandic experiments sweep the world? Yes, those with the biggest spears, swords, and addictive philosophies, imposed their coercive natures upon the rest of us, and their useless miserable parasitical states. But even anarcho-capitalists will admit that even the worst dictator needs the support of the broad mass of his state's population, or at least their grudging acceptance, in order to survive. Otherwise, as revolutions like the recent one in Georgia have shown, the dictator is curtains.

So where's the beef? Show me anarchist law successfully in action, and then maybe I will believe. And yet there it was before me, all the time, like that big "W" swaying in the breeze before Phil Silvers in 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'.

The typically Anglospheric state guards its 'right' to administer all internal state justice with a ruthlessly monopolistic intent. Except in one place. In this one small area you can deliberately break a man's leg, in front of tens of thousands of potential witnesses, and you will suffer nothing more than a curt dismissal from a patch of grass. In this one small area you can punch a man until he's unconscious, and kind men on television will accuse you of nothing more than a 'wee bit of nonsense'. And in this one small area, legal decisions are routinely made which change people's lives forever, but which are inapplicable to anywhere but this one small area, and even then for only a small time period typically less than half a day.

I am of course talking about 'The Pitch', that sacred Valhalla, from the concrete on the five-a-side soccer pitch at Wilmslow leisure centre, in Cheshire, to the verdant turf of the Telstra stadium, in the rugby world cup championship decider, in Australia. Here, men are men, flexible rules of the game are iron laws of reckoning, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are tired and emotional, after the long trip to the game, from Alpha Centauri.

Am I stretching a point? Probably. But could this be a key? Could 'Sports Law' one day become the foundation stone of anarcho-capitalist law? Let's take a look at it. Dr David Friedman is covered. If you're a football player who doesn't like one set of laws, you simply move to another form of football laws which you do like. And you can do this on the field right next door, whether they're playing soccer, rugby union, rugby league, American football, Australian football, or even table football, if you fancy going back to the warmth of the clubhouse.

Professor Rothbard is covered. All the players or teams pay a competitive sports administration board (FIFA, the Rugby Football Union, the National Football League), to provide private judges, or referees, to adjudicate on the law. Even within these administrations these private judges compete to satisfy teams better than other private judges, under the same administration, so that they can officiate at the really big games and get the highest fees and advertising sponsorship.

Even Professor Hoppe is satisfied. Should a really difficult decision go beyond the ability of the appointed private adjudicator, this adjudicator goes up to a final arbitrational court, or as he's more often known these days, the 'television referee'. The television referee virtually always enjoys an unchallengeable respect within the game, and his decision is always accepted as binding and final, without the need for any further arbitration. Even in the worst cases of rough justice, the final result of the game always stands, regardless of any post-game televisual analysis.

Notice how quick and inexpensive this law is, compared to the years and cost it takes the monopolistic state to bring even the simplest case to trial. It is virtually instant. There may occasionally be a 10 second conference, with more minor adjudicators, or as they're sometimes known, linesmen, and possibly a 60 second decision going to the final binding arbitrator, up in the Gods.

But then, that's it. It's decided, and everyone on 'The Pitch' obeys the legality of the decision, and moves on. Except on very rare occasions. And if some player should lose his rag, and his team-mates remain unable to restrain him from prolonged legal dissatisfaction, he almost always pays for it afterwards in a total loss of respect for either his opinion or his inability to control his own temper.

Notice, also, that little in the way of policing is required. The referee makes a decision, and that's it. Self-restraint and the need to save face in the 'society' of the game, gets most players obeying 'The Law', though occasionally team-mates and linesmen, acting as proxy-police, are needed to suppress hotspots of dissent. Notice also how powerful this effect of self-restraint becomes, before the face of this flimsy anarchist law. You've got a six-foot-five, 32-inch-waisted, nineteen-stone man, pumped with adrenaline, who has just had his testicles gouged with a bullocking boot, who has retaliated in kind, and who is shouting and remonstrating at an eleven stone referee, and yet the merest display of a red piece of plastic and the point of a finger gets this beast of a man to turn, to walk away, and to obey the instruction to leave 'The Pitch'. Okay, so he's often unhappy, and lip readers refuse to reveal what he's saying on family television, but he does ultimately do what he's told, even if kicking some form of bench, or bench official, on his way off.

So speedy inexpensive legal decisions, competitive judges, competitive systems of law, the lack of a need for much policing, binding second level arbitration, legal stability, and a complete acceptance of all parties as to the ultimate legitimacy of 'The Law'. Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you a fully-functioning anarcho-capitalist legal system, in action. It can work.

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Interesting legal issues are raised, I feel, by this story:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis.

In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made "road rage" famous, Charles Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on bail for making repeated threats to staff of a Canadian company between May and July.

Booher threatened to send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to the company, to "disable" an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.

He used return e-mail addresses including Satan@hell.org.

In a telephone interview with Reuters on Friday, Booher acknowledged that he had behaved badly but said his computer had been rendered almost unusable for about two months by a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail.

Here's what happened: I go to their Web site and start complaining to them, would you please, please, please stop bothering me," he said. "It just sort of escalated ... and I sort of lost my cool at that point.

I believe that Charles Booher speaks for many of us. In some ways, it strikes me, this resembles the Tony Martin case. The complaint against Martin was that he has shot one of his burglar-tormenters in the back. But since this burglar had attacked him repeatedly and since his latest attack provided yet further evidence that, if he could, he would be back, it made sense to me for Martin to shoot him in the back in self defence, against his next attack.

Booher requested, then demanded, that his computer to be left alone. But alas, Booher was unaware that his replies merely proved that he and his email were real, so the bombardments immediately intensified. But given that Booher was unlikely ever to catch these miscreants, was it not reasonable for him to threaten complete ghastliness in the unlikely event that he did? Had he known with certainty who they were, such bloodcurdling threats as Booher's would have been excessive. More mundane remedies would have been sufficient. However, for people who behave as Booher's tormentors behaved, is there not a case for the reintroduction of something like hanging, drawing and quartering? Or maybe crucifixion?

I agree, probably a bit over the top. But Booher's rather extreme reaction does serve to remind us all of just what a problem spam is now becoming for many people, and that if the free market does not spread around some answers to the problems of people like Booher, governments will be only to ready to use his plight to impose their own much more draconian arrangements, in the form of alleged cures that will almost certainly turn out worse than the disease, but whose worseness will only become obvious when it is all in place and impossible then to reverse.

I for one would love to have a comment string explaining how 'anti-spam,' software works, what principles it follows, how it avoids stopping good stuff while still stopping the bad, and so on. Maybe Booher's problem has already been solved, and the only problem that remains is telling him and everyone like him what this solution is.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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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Which is to say, a politician I respect. Now I do not always see eye to eye with Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican representative for Texas, when it comes to dealing with tyrants and other nastiness outside the USA, but I do respect him nevertheless and given my views on politicians as a breed, that is saying something. When he is correct, oh my, is he correct:

Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act." This legislation prohibits US taxpayer dollars from being used to support or promote any United Nations actions that could infringe on the Second Amendment. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act also expresses the sense of Congress that proposals to tax, or otherwise limit, the right to keep and bear arms are "reprehensible and deserving of condemnation".

[...]

Secretary Annan is not the only globalist calling for international controls on firearms. For example, some world leaders, including French President Jacques Chirac, have called for a global tax on firearms. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council’s "Report of the Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms" calls for a comprehensive program of worldwide gun control and praises the restrictive gun polices of Red China and France!

[...]

Mr. Speaker, global gun control is a recipe for global tyranny and a threat to the safety of all law-abiding persons. I therefore hope all my colleagues will help protect the fundamental human right to keep and bear arms by cosponsoring the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act.

Damn, that is almost enough to turn me into a Republican! Now if that party could just do something about its mercantilist anti-market trade policies, repressive sexual policies in some states and nasty tendency to vastly increase the size and scope of state whilst claiming to be the party of small government...

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Despite the most draconian anti-gun laws in the known universe, the British police are having to resort to enlisting the help of musicians in an attempt to curb gun crime:

The senior detective investigating the murder of Toni-Ann Byfield, the seven-year-old girl shot in the back, yesterday told Britain's black music artists to warn their fans to stay away from guns.

At a summit with senior music industry figures, including Mercury Music Prize winner Dizzee Rascal and members of So Solid Crew, Detective Chief Superintendent John Coles, head of Operation Trident which investigates black-on-black gun crime, said it would help stop the shootings if rap musicians, DJs and producers spoke out against Britain's escalating gun culture.

What's all this nonsense about 'escalating gun culture'? How can that be? Isn't that something Americans are forced to endure but we Brits are mercifully free of?

Priceless.

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In response to my posting below about Sean Gabb's radio interview with Tony Martin, a couple of commenters from the USA have inquired as how they may make a contribution to Mr.Martin's legal defence fund.

Allow me to assist. Mr.Martin has a support group with a website which, I believe, has details of how to contribute to his civil defence fund.

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Our friend Sean Gabb is no stranger to radio or TV broadcasting. Indeed, so commonplace are his incisive contributions to both that Sean himself appears to regard them as somewhat mundane.

But yesterday was different. Yesterday, Sean travelled the studios of BBC Radio Oxford to take part in a phone-in debate on law and order. One of the other studio guests was none other than Tony Martin. As Sean himself says:

This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the case. Let alone driving - I might have walked the entire circuit of the M25 to be with him. So off I went.

If it is possible to be incandescent with envy then I am.

As is his custom, Sean has written about his afternoon with Tony Martin:

There is in any society an implied contract between state and citizen. We give up part of our right to self defence - only part, I emphasise - and all our right to act as judge in our own causes. We resign these matters to the state and obey its laws. In exchange, it maintains order more efficiently and more justly than we could ourselves. In modern England, the state has not broken this contract. If it had simply given up on maintaining order, that would be bad enough - but we could then at least shift for ourselves. No, the state in this country has varied the terms of the contract. It will not protect us, but it will not let us protect ourselves. If we ignore this command, we can expect to be punished at least as severely as the criminals who attack us. That is what the Tony Martin case is all about. This is not just a matter for the country. The towns have it just as bad, if not worse. If you are a victim of crime anywhere in this country, you are in it alone and undefended. Call for the Police, call for a home delivery pizza - see which arrives first.

Sean has a gift for commentary which few can emulate. This article, as with so many of his other writings, has all the solemn dignity and moving power of a hymn. His melancholy conclusions alone deserve the widest possible audience if only as a chronicle of these troubled times. Seldom has the phrase 'read it and weep' been quite so literal.

[Update: I think 'whoops' is the appropriate phrase. I drafted this and posted it up without realising that Brian was doing exactly the same thing only marginally sooner. But even duplication can be quite instructive as both Brian and I live up to our respective reputations of him being optimistic and me being pessimistic in response to precisely the same article.]

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The latest Free Life Commentary is the occasional essay series written and e-published by the Libertarian Alliance's Sean Gabb. In the latest, number 112, he descibes how he yesterday spent An Afternoon with Tony Martin:

Since time immemorial, on the third Thursday in September, Thame in Oxfordshire has hosted what is now the largest agricultural fair in the country. From all over England people come to buy and sell things and to see one another. There are tractor displays, and cows, and horses, and stalls selling clothing and food and drink, and vast car parks for the thousands of people who attend.

I was there yesterday at the invitation of the BBC. Bill Heine, a populist libertarian from America, has a show with Radio Oxford, and is in the habit of getting me on air every week or so for five minutes at a time. Yesterday, he wanted me not on the end of a telephone, but in person. Without offering the usual fee that I charge for leaving home, he wanted me to drive for a round trip of 300 miles to spend an hour live on air discussing rural crime and the right to self defence. For that distance and that time, regardless of fees, I would normally have refused. However, this was different. One of the other guests was to be Tony Martin.

He is the farmer who shot two thieves in August 1999, killing one and wounding the other. He was put on trial for murder and convicted. On appeal, his conviction was changed to manslaughter, and he was eventually released on Friday the 8th August this year, having spent more than three years in prison. He could have been released last year, but the authorities argued at the parole hearings that his lack of repentance made him a continuing danger to any thieves who might try to break into his home. He is presently facing a tort action for damages from the thief he neglected to kill – the man is claiming for loss of earnings and for reduced sexual function. His legal fees are being charged to the tax payers.

This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the case. Let alone driving – I might have walked the entire circuit of the M25 to be with him. So off I went.

And so should you, by reading the whole thing. Sean took photographs of the event, or persuaded others to take photos in those cases where he was a photographee. Sean, to those who have known him at all long, looks impressively slim, while Tony Martin looks pleasingly plump despite his ordeal by injustice, and subsequently by celebrity.

The piece may be about a rather doleful subject, namely injustice and official stupidity. Nevertheless I found that reading it made me feel quite cheerful – cheerful that such men as Tony Martin exist, cheerful that I have a friend like Sean Gabb who is prepared to go to all that trouble just to lend him moral support and then to write about it, and cheerful that I now have the chance to give the whole event another little boost, thanks to Samizdata.

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According to FEE Missouri has joined the free states:

Concealed-Handgun Law Passes in Missouri (9/12/03)

Lawmakers today granted most Missourians the right to carry concealed guns, overriding a veto by Gov. Bob Holden (D) and reversing the outcome of a statewide election on the issue four years ago. Missouri becomes the 45th state to allow concealed guns, although nine sharply restrict permits, according to the National Rifle Association. (Washington Post, Friday)

I understand Michigan is also very close to falling in line.

Correction: It's Wisconsin, not Michigan

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The British media this morning, including the Daily Telegraph is reporting that Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of a heightened terrorist threat in the event that we went to war in Iraq. And the coverage implies that somehow that it was a great scandal that he failed - allegedly - to make this warning public.

I don't know. It should have been blindlingly obvious to all that by threatening to topple Saddam, terror groups with a vested interest in his staying in power would try to foil said effort by attacking us.

Of course it is a repeated refrain from the tin-foil hat brigade on the pacifist left pessimistc right and head-in-sand Raimondo libertarian sect that if we act, we will only make Islamic groups even angrier. Problem is with this argument is that it is a "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of position. If we act - such as topple Saddam - the Islamo-loons will get mad. If we do nothing, they will hold us in contempt and attack us again for being weak.

Personally, I can live with their hate. They hate us anyway, so we might as well give them something to actually hate us for, by trying to establish liberty and prosperity in the Middle East.

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The latest news in the Tony Martin/Brendan Fearon saga is in today's Sun. There are pictures of Tony Martin dining out with the lady who works for his publisher ("Valentina Artsrunik"!), as they prepare Martin's forthcoming book for publication. Excellent. Martin deserves a bit of the high life.

But more intriguing to me was the sidebar story on the right. Journalists must spend an awful lot of time ringing borderline celebs for juicy quotes only to be given either waffle or nothing. But this time, if that's how it happened, they struck gold:

COMIC Paul O’Grady last night warned would-be burglars: "Break into my house and I’ll shoot you."

The 48-year-old – telly’s Lily Savage – threatened to do a Tony Martin after talking to pal Cilla Black about the £1million burglary at her house.

The comic lives in a plush £1million riverside flat overlooking London’s Tower Bridge. He said: "I’ve just bought myself a gun. After what happened to Cilla, I’m not taking any chances.

"If I’m lying in bed and any gob-sh**e burglars are in my house, thinking I’m not going to do anything, then they’ll be in for a shock. I’ll shoot them in the kneecaps and feed them to my pigs.

"I’m with Tony Martin on this one. If you’re in my house and you shouldn’t be, then I’ll shoot you, simple as that."

I particularly enjoyed this last bit:

A spokesman for O’Grady said last night: "What he was saying was done tongue-in-cheek."

After all, you wouldn't want your client becoming too popular with the general public, now would you?

How about a compromise. If Paul O'Grady is burgled, he can shoot the gob-sh**e burglars in the kneecaps. But then afterwards a spokesman for O'Grady can say that he only shot the gob-sh**e burglars tongue-in-cheek.

And when the O'Grady pigs eat the gob-sh**e burglars, they will likewise only be joking.

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I'm shocked, shocked:

A man attempting to sue farmer Tony Martin for loss of earnings is back in custody after allegedly breaching the terms of his release from prison.

Brendon Fearon, 33, of Newark, Notts, appeared before the town's magistrates accused of stealing a Toyota Landcruiser on Aug 24.

He had been serving part of an earlier prison sentence on licence at his home and observing a 7pm to 7am curfew. He did not enter a plea at the hearing and spoke only to confirm his name and address.

Prison sources confirmed that Fearon is back in custody for allegedly breaching the terms of his licence and will be transferred to prison tonight.

There will probably be comments to the effect that here in the great state of (state your state) we do things better and this varmint would be dead by now. Personally, weighing up the evidence and taking a considered and reflective view of the matter, I agree. Tony Martin injured this person in circumstances of maximum fear and confusion. Had he shot him dead, on purpose, in broad daylight, it would have been no more than this nasty parasite deserved, and it would also, in my further opinion, have been "reasonable" (the key legal word here), in self defence against the inevitable next attack.

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Once again, the British police risk life and limb to protect us from those who would do us harm:

A father and his son were confronted by armed police after a young boy was seen playing with a toy gun in a car.

Kevin and Jason Price were ordered out of the car and onto their knees after police were told a weapon was seen pointing from the window.

But in fact it was a £15 plastic ball bearing rifle bought for Mr Price's seven-year-old son Connor, who was sitting in the back.

Police have defended their actions, and say they have to treat reports of firearms seriously.

No, more likely it was another opportunity to put on a public display of virility against a soft, safe and easy target.

Is there no end to this absurd hysteria? Are there no depths to which this official paranoia cannot sink?

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Anyone who isn't exhausted by this subject, will be after slogging through the comprehensive job of heavy lifting over at a spin-off post on the Smallest Minority blog.

This is the post I would have put up if I wasn't so damn lazy. Many statistics, and a heaping helping of good sense. Extra bonus points for the Jesse Jackson quote!

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To follow up on the discussion under Good news on guns, which drifted (and I do mean drifted) into comparisons of US and European crime and the unfortunate concentration of violent criminal activity in the US in the black community, I ran across a summary of statistics at the Useful Fools blog. You really should read the whole thing, but the relevant points are:

Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):

4161 - US
7736 - Germany
6941 - France
9927 - England and Wales

Thus the US has a substantially lower crime rate than the major European countries!

. . .

[The US] murder rate is high largely due to the multicultural nature of our society. Inner city blacks, members of a distinct subculture, have a vastly higher criminal and victim homicide rate than our society as an average:

Homicide Offender Rate/100,000 by Race in US (2000):

3.4 - White
25.8 - Black
3.2 - Other

It is often hypothesized that blacks are overrepresented in murder statistics due to racism on the part of police and the justice system. If this were true, one would expect that the race of victims would have significantly different distribution than the race of the perpetrators, but this is not the case:

Homicide Victim Rate/100,000 by Race in US (2000):

3.3 - White
20.5 - Black
2.7 - Other

Thus if you remove homicides committed by blacks (total: 21862, Blacks:9316), and assume a proportionality between number of offenders and number of offenses, you can extrapolate US homicide offender rate of only 2.6/100,000, lower than Germany (3.27) and France (3.91).

I asked John Moore, the author of the Useful Fools post, to give us links to the studies or data that he used, but he replied that he had gathered the numbers from a Interpol and FBI stats without keeping the links. Tsk, tsk, John! I had hoped to track down the data myself, but have been unable to do so, and am unlikely to get a chance anytime soon. The data is consistent with a number of other items that I have read over the years, so I think its legit, but caveat blogster.

The data can be read to support any number of things, as I am sure the comment mob will demonstrate soon. I tend to look at it as consistent with my preconceptions (yet another reason why I think that the data is probably good - it makes me look smart!). First and foremost, though, I think it refutes the notion that "cowboy" America is a violent and dangerous place. It is also consistent with the view that, in America at least, more gun control equals more crime, as the high crime areas (large urban centers) labor for the most part under the very restrictive gun controls (and have for decades).

In short, it is safer to be free and self-reliant (that is, armed) than to trust the state to provide safety and security from crime.

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As I walked along Sumatra Road yesterday in the early evening, a burglar alarm rang out in a house about ten along from where I'm moving out of. Out of twenty houses along that stretch of the road, there have been half a dozen burglaries in the last two months (including my Moslem neighbours who were robbed whilst they were at evening prayers in the mosque in late June, and myself two weeks ago).

The modus operandi is identical and no fingerprints are ever found, suggesting that either the burglar is a police informant (so they don't want to catch him because British police are not allowed to employ an informant with a criminal record), or he wears gloves and has some skill. The 'local' police based three miles away admit that they are surprised at the recent crime spree in the neighbourhood: burglaries may have trebled in the area this year.

Today, having dialled 999 and explained that there had been a number of burglaries in the area I gave my name and address and assumed that a normal response would occur: either nothing or at least 20 minutes response time. I cannot honestly say that the service was worse than I expected.

When I called back I was told that the control centre would not send anyone unless there was evidence that someone was actually inside the property. I asked if this happened frequently and was told that 95% of alarm call-outs were a waste of time. If this is so, I'm surprised that burglar alarms are even allowed in this country.

So the solution is obvious: if a neighbour is burgled, call the police saying that you've shot a burglar, give the address you think the burglary is in progress, then drink a couple of glasses of whiskey, before the cops arrive to either protect their informant or crush an attempted self-defence, so you can claim to have been confused. Do NOT try to get in a car. You don't want to risk losing your driving license.

As for being burgled myself, does anyone know a pig-farmer?

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It would be quite wrong to suggest that the issue of self-defence (and the law relating thereto) is a libertarian issue. But it is probably true that, for many years, there was next to no debate about it as an issue outside of libertarian circles.

For free market advocates, self-defence (and the natural right thereto) is not just an important issue, it is a cornerstone of individualist philosophy. Yet, while libertarian scholars and writers debated passionately about the issue, it barely registered a blip on the radar of wider public interest.

That is, until a certain Tony Martin shot two intruders who had broken into his remote Norfolk farmhouse, killing one of them. The news that he had been arrested and charged with murder, led to a broken-dam deluge of furious and passionate debate about the right of self-defence and which flooded every medium.

Overnight, it seemed, self-defence had become a ‘hot’ topic, not least because, as with so many debates, it has tended to generate more heat than light.

I do not intend to simply re-hash the Martin case and the various reasons why his actions either were or were not justified. That has already been done in some length here and elsewhere. What I want is to examine the reasons why practical self-defence has, to all intents and purposes, become illegal in the UK.

The obvious starting point is the law itself. While I believe that broader phenomena have played their part in creating the current situation, it is critical to examine how they worked to shape both law and custom as it stands.

There is not, as such, any statutory right of self-defence but self-defence is permissible under the terms of S3 (1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967:

A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large.

Thus a person may use force to prevent the commission of a crime which includes a crime being committed against that person (such as assault, rape etc). However the crucial caveat is that the use of force must be limited to ‘such force as is reasonable in the circumstances’. This means that a person who is subjected to an attack must have regard to proportionality in their response to that attack. Their actions can, and will, be judged objectively after the event.

It is often said, indeed it is widely assumed, that the 1967 Act merely codified the previous common law position. But, on closer scrutiny, I think that claim holds no merit. The English common law (which, in theory at least, still exists) managed to establish some important and meritorious distinctions reference to which can be found in The Law of the Constitution by A.V. Dicey (MacMillan, London 1885).

That is not to say that the lines were straight or the issue black-and-white. In fact, Judges struggled to maintain a balance between the individual right and wider public interest.

Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians. Over-stimulate self-assertion, and for the arbitrament of the Courts you substitute the decision of the sword or the revolver.

Despite grey areas (which are unavoidable), the Courts dealt with self-defence cases by eschewing dogma in favour of applying common-sense principles. The result of this was the emergence of two separate doctrines. The first, according to Dicey:

In defence of a man's liberty, person, or property, he may lawfully use any amount of force which is both "necessary" - i.e. not more than enough to attain its object - and "reasonable" or "proportionate" - i.e. which does not inflict upon the wrongdoer mischief out of proportion to the injury or mischief which the force used is intended to prevent; and no man may use in defending his rights an amount of force which is either unnecessary or unreasonable.

Clearly the 1967 Act is a codification of this doctrine ("legitimacy of necessary and reasonable force").

However, Dicey goes on to describe a second doctrine ("the legitimacy
of force necessary for self-defence."), thus:

A man, in repelling an unlawful attack upon his person or liberty, is justified in using against his assailant so much force, even amounting to the infliction of death, as is necessary for repelling the attack - i.e. as is needed for self-defence; but the infliction upon a wrongdoer of grievous bodily harm, or death, is justified, speaking generally, only by the necessities of self-defence - i.e. the defence of life, limb, or permanent liberty.

A far more robust doctrine and one which does not require of the citizen the employment of either proportionality or reasonableness provided the use of force is strictly in defence of life or limb.

Dicey concludes from these two doctrines:

If, however, it be necessary to choose between the two theories, the safest course for an English lawyer is to assume that the use of force which inflicts or may inflict grievous bodily harm or death - of what, in short, may be called extreme force - is justifiable only for the purpose of strict self-defence.

But extreme force is expressly stated to be ‘justifiable’ in those circumstances and, indeed, this doctrine was reaffirmed by the ruling of Lord Chief Justice Parker in the case of Chisham (1963 - 47 Cr App Rep 130):

".... where a forcible and violent felony is attempted upon the person of another, the party assaulted, or his servant, or any other person present, is entitled to repel force by force, and, if necessary, to kill the aggressor ....".

Note that there is no mention of either ‘reasonableness’ or ‘proportionality’.

Put simply, the two doctrines combined represented a judicial recognition of the difference between crimes of a life threatening nature and crimes of a non-life threatening nature. In the case of the latter the force used had to be proportionate and reasonable. In the case of the former, no such qualifications applied. So, for example, a shopkeeper cannot take out a gun and shoot someone who has been merely pilfering from his shop because the act of pilfering does not represent a threat to the shopkeeper’s life and limb. However, if the criminal enters the shop wielding a knife to use on the shopkeeper then, under the common law doctrines, the shopkeeper would be permitted to shoot the miscreant dead.

In my view the fault of the 1967 Act was in ignoring the important ‘second doctrine’ of the legitimacy of force necessary for self-defence and instead using the ‘first doctrine’ as a blanket provision. By doing so the Act also extinguishes the previous recognition of the practical difference between life threatening and non-life threatening crimes. This means that the citizen is in a weaker position post-1967 because he or she required to respond ‘reasonably’ and ‘proportionately’ regardless of the nature of the threat he or she may be facing.

However, my opinion is that the British citizen today has been put in an even more helpless position than they should have been by the 1967 Act and this is due to the pre-eminence of various political and cultural phenomena.

All the common law described by Dicey is predicated on the firm assumption that the ordinary citizen had not just a right to prevent crime but even a duty to prevent crime. Truly the law was in the hands of the people although they were still required to abide by it. Today, this assumption has been turned completely on its head and although it is difficult to identify the precise provenance of this change or any specific turning point, what does seem clear is that, sometime during, or possibly just after World War II, the business of crime prevention and self-defence was wholly nationalised.

The change in attitude can be illustrated by the extract from a speech given in 1953 by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe:

The government do not wish to lend themselves to the support of the proposition that it is right or necessary for the ordinary citizen to arm himself in self-defence. The preservation of the Queen's peace is the function of the police, and... …it would be a great pity if anything were done explicitly by statute to condone actions which imply the inability of the forces of law and order to maintain the Queen's peace."

[This extract is taken from the book ‘Guns & Violence: the English Experience’ by Joyce Malcolm]

Fyfe was most likely referring to the issue of gun-control but the attitude he exhibits is, I suggest, typical of the political attitude to the subject of self-defence in general. The prevention of and resistance to crime was no longer the duty of the citizen nor even the right of the citizen; it was now seen as being wholly the function of the state to be exercised as a monopoly by its various agencies.

Thus, the citizen who ‘takes matters into his own hands’ is so deeply offensive. Aside from the question of any mischief he may or may not have inflicted upon his tormentor or assailant, his worse ‘crime’ lies in the usurpation of a power that the state regards as being within its sole competence.

The law is now in hands of the government. The citizen is merely required to obey.

Every British government since at least the 1940’s has held as a core belief that safety of the citizen and the prevention of crime is a matter for the government and the government alone. Indeed, so deeply ingrained has this assumption become in every branch of the state that, in practice, any action taken by the citizen that is more than mere token resistance is regarded by the police and the judiciary as unreasonable. The same culture has fuelled the missionary zeal with which the British state has pursued (with great success I might add) the complete disarmament of its citizens.

But even that is, perhaps, not entirely the picture for I find it hard to believe that the post-1960’s ascendancy of post-modernism has not also left its mark. I say this because of the number of times that, whenever the issue has been the subject of public discourse, I have heard self-defence described as ‘vigilantism’ or ‘retribution’. This is a squalid and reprehensible distortion of the truth but it is one which is entirely consistent with a philosophy by which acts of resistance to barbarism are ascribed a far worse degree of moral turpitude than the manifestations of barbarism itself.

My opinion is that the law should be changed to take into account the greater breadth and depth provided by the common law tradition. But the law itself is only a part of the picture because the real problem has been caused by an unfortunate agglomeration of Conservative Paternalism, Labour Statism and moral relativism that has abolished self-help, stripped the citizen bare, and delivered each one of them up as the ‘slaves of ruffians’.

Though a change of law may be required, of itself it will not be enough. What is required to reverse this situation is also a change of culture and, above all, a reclamation of the kind of common sense and pragmatism that once informed all those English judges.

[Thanks are due to Dr.Sean Gabb for his invaluable research materials and to Steven Chapman for the quote from Joyce Malcolm.]

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Nice roundup on recent trends running our way on the gun control debate in USA Today.

Democrats, who believe that their calls for gun controls might have cost them the White House in 2000, are less willing to take on the gun lobby. Polls suggest that public fears about terrorism have helped mute the debate.

Meanwhile, the gun industry is racking up legislative wins. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, says there are not enough votes in the House to renew Congress' 1994 ban on certain assault weapons when it expires next year.

And now, gun rights supporters are closing in on what probably would be their most enduring victory.

The Senate is close to passing a bill that would shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from civil lawsuits brought by victims of gun crimes. The measure, which the House passed 285-140 as 63 Democrats voted with the GOP majority, is an effort to shield the gun industry from the type of lawsuits that have been successful against tobacco and asbestos companies.

Perhaps more important than the pure politics, though, is some evidence of a deeper shift:

On the same day last month, five factory workers in Mississippi were shot and killed by a co-worker and five people in a family in Bakersfield, Calif., were killed by gunfire.

Not too long ago, dramatic slayings such as these would have created a new chapter in the national debate over gun control. There would have been angry speeches in Congress and new proposals to crack down on firearms.

I have a nice long day at the range planned on Sunday - the hunting rifles (all four) need to be tweaked out for the coming seasons, and the springs in my high-capacity handgun magazines need to be exercised. I feel bad for my brethren in England, that you are denied the simple pleasure of making things go bang.

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Whilst Tony Martin's case continues to ignite a spark of common sense in the public as well as forcing Blunkett in the face of public outrage to promise new laws to protect the rights of householders, people in the rest of the world (i.e. in the US) continue to defend their own...

The last time police came by his Tripe Street home to investigate complaints about drug dealing in the West Ashley neighborhood, William Gates [ed. no relation!] made it clear to them that he had had enough.

"I told the police, 'Bring the coroner and body bags the next time you come out here,' " he said. "Nobody is going to run me out of my home."

Last Friday morning Gates made good on his statement as he shot a man in his front yard.

Roused from his sleep by the sound of gunfire about 4:30 a.m. Friday, the 67-year-old Gates took up his 12-gauge Browning automatic shotgun, stepped out onto his front porch and fired three blasts at men he said were drug dealers having a shootout in his front yard.

He only wounded the men he shot. But it wasn't for lack of trying. "I shot to kill," he said. "I'm not going to lie to you."

The attitude of the local police was rather different from the one taken by 'best police in the world' towards Tony Martin. While they did not publicly approve of what Gates did, they filed no charges against him. Charleston Police Chief Reuben Greenberg explains:

We have no plans to arrest him. We can't see from where we sit where a crime's been committed. People have the right to provide for their safety, and we believe that is what he was doing.

Are you listening, Mr Blunkett?

Mr Gates vows that he will be ready if friends of the three men try to retaliate, and he smiled as he said he planned to acquire a gun to protect himself.

They better make sure they get me if they come back, because if they don't get me, I'm going to kill all of them.

That's the spirit. And I bet that the 'friends' of the drug dealers will think twice about stepping into Mr Gates front yard. Think of all the taxpayer money saved by not having to 'protect' the harassed homeowner. (In the case of Mr Martin, a team of Norfolk police officers had to install security and surveillance devices inside and outside of Martin's farmhouse and prior to his release Scotland Yard's considered placing him under the witness protection scheme. The cost of giving Martin a new identity was indicated as £500,000, which would be paid by the taxpayer.)

Although the final decision whether to charge Mr Gates will be made by the solicitor's office early this week, something tells me that his story will have a radically different ending to that of the unfortunate Tony Martin...

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'The British police are the best in the world'.

Believe it or not, that was a phrase I heard all the time when I was growing up. It was repeated so often and with such unshakeable conviction that it practically entered the folklore. The police were seen as the very embodiment of the British belief in 'firmness but fairness' and their stewardship of a remarkably pacific country was as much a given feature of life as clement weather or fertile topsoil.

I do not know whether or not it has ever been true but I can understand the reasons why it was so widely believed. There was a time when the British police were charged with enforcing reasonable laws (in what was equally widely assumed to be the 'freest country in the world') and they managed to do so with reasonable efficiency while maintaining a public image of politeness and deference. British 'bobbies' were seen as less 'trigger-happy' and 'gung-ho' than their US counterparts and less corrupt and brutal than their European ones.

Does this axiom hold water today? Someone should ask the staff of Huntingdon Life Sciences:

Staff who work for HLS, the animal laboratory, have been under attack for four years. But the violence is about to become a lot worse, reports Andrew Alderson

On Thursday, 1,200 company employees will be sent a short, factual e-mail by their management. It will warn them that animal rights activists are planning a 48-hour weekend of action from midnight on August 1 and staff should take extra care over their safety at home.

For two days and nights, employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) will face an even greater likelihood of having bricks thrown through their windows, their cars covered in paint-stripper, incendiary devices put through their letter boxes and hooded men attacking them as they walk from the car to the front door.

Just a little bit more than 'campaigning', I'd say. In fact, not only are these criminals prepared to use violence, they are prepared to use murderous violence:

The Telegraph can reveal that the executive was attacked when he heard intruders outside his home and discovered them setting fire to his barn. Assailants knocked him to the ground and left him unconscious besides the burning barn, but he regained consciousness before the flames engulfed him.

It makes for a pretty grim picture, doesn't it. So surely the agents of the most expansive and interventionist state Britain has ever had will leap into action in order to restore law and order and keep up their end of the 'social contract', yes? Er, no.

Police in Cambridgeshire say that they have insufficient powers to tackle persistent, illegal protesters: they admit that with "hit and run" tactics it is hard to make arrests and harder to obtain convictions.

Too much like real hard work is what he actually means.

Chief Inspector Steve Pearl, the head of the special operations unit, said: "We do not have the legal remedies to tackle some of the things that are going on. The law needs to be changed."

Do mine freakin' eyes deceive me or what? Does this state bureaucrat mean to tell us that out of all the various Public Order Acts, Criminal Justice Acts, Police Powers Acts and a whole slew of Anti-Terrorist legislation they cannot find a single provision to deal with a bunch of crowbar-wielding, pyromaniacal thugs who are using violence, vandalism and intimidation to drive a perfectly legitimate tax-paying company out of business?

What on earth was the point of parliament churning out all these vast acres of legislation and bestowing on the police more powers than they have ever had in their history if all they can do in the face of homicidal, snarling domestic terrorists (in the true sense of that word) is to shrug gormlessly and say "sorry, guv, nothing we can do"?

Of course, if the directors of HLS really wanted to ensure a police presence all they need to do is try to defend themselves against one of these attacks. That will bring the squad cars screaming down in a heartbeat. Short of that, they might care to reflect on exactly why it is they are bothering to pay for state protection at all and opt for the self-provision route (e.g. hiring a few guys whose middle names are "the".)

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Tony Martin has no shortage of supporters. Unfortunately, he has no shortage of sworn enemies either:

Relatives of Fred Barras, the burglar shot dead by Tony Martin, last night warned that the Norfolk farmer will be murdered after his release tomorrow.

One cousin of Barras said Martin was "going to get it", while another said a hitman would be hired if the dead teenager's associates failed to carry out a retaliatory attack.

I do believe that threatening to murder someone is a criminal offence. Since these would-be assassins have already revealed themselves to a newspaper, identification should not be a problem and I therefore assume that the police will be rounding these people up.

Or do they only spring into action when otherwise law-abiding people 'threaten' to defend themselves?

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First it was Tony Martin the farmer. Then it was Tony Martin the Political Prisoner. Next, Tony Martin the author:

Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for shooting dead a teenage burglar is planning to write an autobiography called My Right To Kill, it was claimed yesterday.

John McVicar, the former armed robber turned author, said he would be editing the book that Martin will write after his release from prison next week.

Is he accepting advance orders? If so, mark me down for a copy right now.

The farmer's Tory MP, Henry Bellingham, who has consulted him over legislation he wants to frame to give householders greater rights to protect their property, called for the book to be called something "more tactful".

Alright, how about 'I Love The Smell of Dead Burglars In The Morning'?

Tony Joynes, the uncle of Fred Barras, said it was "absolutely ridiculous" for Martin to stand to profit from his nephew's killing. "This autobiography is making money from death," he said.

Unlike making money from burglary which appears to be perfectly acceptable.

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A great many articles have been written on Samizdata.net about the monstrous Tony Martin case (just do a search for "Tony Martin" and you will see what I mean). I have always thought that he was convicted more for challenging the state's monopoly on force by defending his property rather than for actually killing a man.

Well even the faint fiction of the Tony Martin case being a simple matter of criminal justice (which has come to mean justice for criminals) has been abandoned. The fact he was not going to be released early is old news... the demented fact this was because he was deemed a danger to burglars is also old news.

What is new was revealed in a Telegraph article yesterday (emphasis added):

Ms Stewart [a probation officer] has previously written a report on Martin which was submitted to the Parole Board before its ruling in January. In it she said that Martin's support base in the country had made him more likely to reoffend.

"This is a case which has attracted immense and ongoing media attention and public interest," she wrote. "I believe this has had an impact on Mr Martin's own perceptions of his behaviour and his right to inflict punishment on those whom he perceives to be a threat to his own security.

In short, because he has widespread support from other people who believe he has been shafted by the system, lots of support, in fact political support, he is not going to be released. Ergo, he is a political prisoner. How else can one interpret it given the reason for his continued detention is due to the support of other people?

And let us not forget the other reason: he refuses to repent his 'crime' of perceiving two men breaking into his isolated country home as a threat to his security. Martin does not just have the temerity to demand he has the right to defend his own property, he refuses to apologise for doing so.

At the end of many articles I have written on Samizdata.net I have used the words "The state is not your friend". Probation Officer Ms. Annette Stewart is the perfect embodiment of why I make that sort of remark. She is just acting in accordance with the institutional imperatives within which she works. The system is not just broken, it is insane.

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Colour me cynical but whenever I hear the word 'campaign' these days I generally assume the worst. If it isn't a bleat for some more state nannying then it's a demand for some godawful prohibition or other. I realise how jaundiced I sound but I am confident that an examination of the record of these things over the last two decades or so would bear me out.

However, there are always exceptions:

Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for the manslaughter of a burglar, will campaign after his release this month for better legal protection for householders who defend themselves against intruders, his MP said yesterday.

He will also work for changes in the law to stop burglars obtaining legal aid to sue homeowners for compensation if they are injured during a break-in.

There is an old Japanese saying that time is a slow but fair judge. How sweet it would be if Mr.Martin were to finally triumph over those who have wronged him.

In regards to a proposed change in the law it is my view that while the letter of the law should be examined the weight of the problem lies with its application and the assumptions of both the police and the judiciary. It is well past time that those assumptions were challenged and I cannot imagine a more worthy champion than Tony Martin who, as the saying goes, has been there, done that and got the T-shirt (prison issue).

We at the Samizdata will be keeping a close eye on this campaign.

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We're all familiar with the popular cartoon caricature of Americans as gun-crazy cowboys who would shoot you as soon as look at you and peaceful, sophisticated, post-history Europeans who only need their directives to keep them safe from harm. In fact, I have lost count of the number of sneering British lefty journalists who prefix every reference to Americans with the words 'gun-toting' as a means of driving home the impression that they are dangerous, violent, atavistic non-communautaire people.

True? Well, probably not:

"Contrary to the common assumption that Europeans are virtually unarmed, an estimated 84 million firearms are legally held in the 15 member states of the EU. Of these, 80 per cent - 67 million guns - are in civilian hands,"

Good gracious! And to think that Tony Blair wants political union with these gun-loving maniacs!

Finland, with its strong hunting tradition, has the most legally registered guns in the EU at 39 per 100 people, the UK has 10 - one third of the German and French figures - and the Netherlands has two. Gun laws are tightest in the UK, the Netherlands and Poland, while France has more legal handguns than the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, England, Wales and Scotland combined.

Just one quibble: there are no legally held handguns in the UK at all so maybe France is not quite as awash with hand cannons as the article would suggest. Nonetheless it is clear that most Europeans have not, in fact, been gripped by the same anti-gun hysteria that has swept over Britain.