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There is no tradeoff between freedom and security. That is the contention put forward by Jonathan Wilde of Catallarchy.net in this essay about why a society that allowed the private ownership of nukes might be safer, yes safer, than ours. It was inspired by the comments to Perry’s Samizdata posting where he describes himself as a “social individualist.”  June 28th, 2003 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Well, that didn’t last too long. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s moderately good news comes today’s customary bad news. Again, I was sort of expecting this to happen and now that it has happened it proves that my ‘Glumness Meter’ is actually quite reliable:
Which goes to prove I suppose that you just can’t keep a bad man down and that the word ‘absurd’ is fast becoming redundant in this corner of the world.
Which he doubtless enjoys best when practised simultaneously. Still, I’d best temper my comments regarding Mr.Fearon lest he ‘win the right’ to come after us with a defamation suit.
I must be honest, when I first heard the term ‘burglar’s rights’ being bandied about I thought it must be some kind of blogosphere joke or a bit of British tabloid ribbing. Turns out they actually mean it. I should have known better than to assume that parody could actually be a match for reality these days. I suppose some clarification of this decision is required. Please note that Fearon has won the ‘right’ to sue Mr.Martin. That does necessarily mean that his claim will succeed. However, as regards that latter prospect, my ‘Glumness Meter’ is already twitching ominously up in the high eighties. June 13th, 2003 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
When I first heard about this case, a few days ago, I was glumly convinced that this man would be convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. I was wrong:
It remains to be seen whether or not the Crown intends to pursue any other charges against Mr.Parkin but there is no mention of this either way in the story. All I can say is that I certainly hope not.
Given the Judge’s direction, I think it is a little premature to assess whether or not this marks any sort of change in the judiciary’s institutional anti-self-defence culture. Probably not. But at least this man is not languishing in prison for defending his property and that is good news. June 13th, 2003 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Should people be allowed to own their own cruise missiles? It’s a favourite question among libertarians discussing gun control, and always good for a chuckle. But now we are going to have to grapple with this issue for real. Says Bruce Simpson, 49:
→ Continue reading: So how do we feel about cruise missile control? June 4th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
June 3rd, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems that the United States government has decided to disarm the Iraqi populace as part of its newly found desire to restore order. This smells like the sort of thing that could lead to disaster, for all the usual reasons – only outlaws will have guns and whatnot. And if any population needs to be armed as a check on a potentially tyrannical government, it is the population of Iraq. It almost seems like a clerical error – surely the guys who were the driving force behind the invasion over at Central Command aren’t gun control nuts, are they? This seems like a good basis for a lively discussion here at Samizdata. Robert Theron Brockman II May 21st, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
As a rebuttal to all those bloggers who think that the BBC has a left-wing bias, I refer you to this hysterical nonsense:
How can they possibly expect any halfway sensible person to believe rubbish like this? Don’t they realise that our government has enacted the most draconian and prohibitive anti-gun laws in the developed world? No, scrub that, the entire cosmos. So this cannot possibly be happening. It is nothing but a tissue of bald-faced lies. In fact, it’s probably a fabrication by some bunch of swivel-eyed, right-wing, warmongering lunatics intent on trying to give the completely false impression that our noble and progressive anti-self-defence laws are not working. Do not click on the link. Do not read the article. I do not want our readers minds to be poisoned by this filthy propoganda. Go away. Move onto the next posting. Find another blog. Now! May 21st, 2003 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tony Martin will not be released from jail. He will remain inside for the crime of defending his property for the full five year period of his sentance (he was initially sentanced to life). The people who make up the parole board which has just decided that he poses an unacceptable threat to people who may in the future break into his home are wonderful examples of what Sean Gabb describes as The Enemy Class. I strongly suspect their treatment of Tony Martin, found guilty of shooting dead a serial burglar in August 1999, has more to do with the fact he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any wrong doing in his act of defending his property from predators. That a group of parole board members whose salaries are paid by the state predating taxpayers should think that way is perhaps not such a surprise. As I said before, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. As the political process in Britain has decayed to the point that there appears to be no political cost to the established power elite for the de facto criminalisation of self-defence (never mind that the state can gun you down in the street with scarcely a murmur), and de jure criminalisation of defending your own property, be it from the state or criminals (and the difference between them narrows daily), I wonder if people may simply start going out of their way to avoid involving the state in the aftermath of any act of self-defence. As people seem to be unclear who to blame for the state deciding it is easier to prosecute law abiding homeowners than to go after housebreakers, and thus most seem unclear who are the correct people in need of having bricks thrown through their windows given that voting seems to make no difference, I expect sales of shovels, bin-bags, deep freezers, hacksaws and baseball bats to start increasing in high crime areas. There may even be a business opportunity for specialised discreet garbage disposal companies to assist this possible future trend. The core of that problem is rooted in the contempt for private property found amongst the statists who make up the majority of the political class in Britain. Never forget that defending yourself is the ultimate expression of self-ownership and that is something the British state cannot tolerate, particularly the overt socialist parts: these people support ‘democratic’, which is to say political, control of the means of production and that includes your body. Just ask Tony Martin… the state is not your friend. May 8th, 2003 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
For a measure of the institutional senile dementia that grips the British state, you need look no further than here:
Whilst it should be clear from this that the lunatics have indeed taken over the asylum, the pathology at work here should be clear. Private property, far from being the bedrock upon which western liberal civilization is based, is instead seen as having no genuine value at all to those who see ‘The State’ as the axis around which all revolves and nothing whatsoever that is distinctly separate called ‘civil society’. Thus private property is seen as a distasteful aberration that does not really make any sense, at best ‘property which the state does not yet own’. Therefore to use force to defend that which has no real value is clearly unacceptable. As the people who think that way have made sure they have a near monopoly on the means of violence and coercion, that does not bode well for… well, anyone who is not happy to just be an drone-like adjunct of the state. May 5th, 2003 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
And she is in need of your assistance. Psychotic ex-boyfriend. Restraining order about to expire. Needs to move. Pronto. Go here to help out. 
Blogatrix in need of assistance… its a Blog-eat-Blog world out there. April 20th, 2003 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
In what I am sure will be a crashing disappointment to lots of people who go around calling themselves ‘human rights campaigners’, the British legal system has opted not to further persecute a victim:
I cannot really bring myself to call this justice because if there was even a smidgeon of justice then Tony Martin would not have been incarcerated in the first place.
It is not just the law that needs changing. April 15th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
People in Baghdad have been protesting to US troops regarding the breakdown of law and order in that city and elsewhere in Iraq. The solution is simple… when the protesters turn up, lead them to one of the large piles of abandoned small arms dotting Iraq, issue each one of them with a Kalashnikov, 30 rounds of ammunition and a fluorescent yellow armband with the letters INW (Iraqi Neighbourhood Watch) in Latin and Arabic letters, and then tell them “Scram… this is your city so take care of the problem yourself and only call us if things get really out of hand”. At a stroke the Iraqis are given the means to stop the looters, they are empowered to take their post-Ba’athist future into their own hands and they are shown that the coalition is serious about Iraqis running Iraq. Will this mean some weapons get into the hands of the wacko bad guys? Sure, but those guys are already armed. However the upside is that for every one of them, there will be many dozens of normal armed Iraqi people who just want to live a normal life and who then will be able to say “never will be suffer this nightmare again”… and say it with a Kalashnikov in their hands. Ba’athist or Islamist thugs swaggering around your neighbourhood? Now that the Iraqis have had a taste of freedom, let them cap those bastards. All political power does indeed grow out of the barrel of a gun… so lets make sure everyone has one. April 14th, 2003 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
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