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Police in Manchester will be patrolling the streets armed with machine-guns in response to a massive upsurge in gun-related crime
You see, gun control really does work! April 30th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 You know those “what I’ve always said” things, which actually thousands of others have been saying for even longer. Well I’ve always said that we, the forces of enlightenment, the good guys, need to get our hands on more stories where the gun hasn’t been in evil hands and done harm, but in good hands and done good. And when we do get our hands on such stories we should spread them in all directions. So here is just such a story (“Woman shoots, kills armed intruder in West Seattle”) from the Seattle Times, picked up by a very promising blogger fellow named Glenn Reynolds, on a little thing he calls Instapundit. This Reynolds chappie has a definite future as a blogger. The Instapundit hit rate will now explode … April 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
And it’s getting closer to home. A man in his 20’s has been shot dead on the dancefloor of a North London nightclub. The club is situated about 400 yards from my front door. April 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
Harry Browne’s American Liberty Foundations has successfully raised funds for another TV ad and it will be airing today, Saturday the 20th, on the Fox News Channel. “Intruder” will air three times so look for it in these slots:
It’s absolutely guaranteed to drive the anti-gun crazies over the edge. April 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I received the following short notice from Jim Babka this morning:
So if you are in the USA, please keep your eye out for Friday’s LibertyWire! April 16th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Thieves tried to grab a diamond necklace from U.S. entertainer Liza Minnelli while she was honeymooning with her new husband David Gest. The Oscar-winning star was the victim of an attempted robbery when the car in which she was a passenger stopped at traffic lights in Holland Park, west London. That should boost the British tourist trade – not! March 22nd, 2002 | Comments are closed
The splendid Julia Gorin puts the boot in right where it is needed regarding the psychopathology of the Anti-gun male
Read the whole thing. Prepare to laugh until it hurts. March 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
‘Crypto-Libertarian-in-denial’ Brian Linse is mistaken as to which weapon was the result of the humourous ‘which weapon are you?’ test: Dale Amon was the H&K PDW…my result was  Alas as Brian points out, the only weapon I can legally own in Britain is… a squirt gun. At least if I am attacked by a female mugger, I can try to instigate an impromptu wet tee-shirt contest. March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Rob Smith writes in with an view of the stupidity that transcends mere national borders. David Carr preaches to a deaf, dumb and blind audience when he presents the gospel truth about the necessity of private gun ownership in a free and peaceful country. As an American, I have witnessed countless assaults on my Second Amendment Constitutional rights by anti-gun fanatics who are totally convinced that guns themselves are evil. No logical argument, no perfect example and no amount of evidence will ever dissuade these people from believing that they are saintly and correct. They hate guns, they fear guns and that’s all they need to know. What is happening now in Great Britain happened in Chicago, Washington, DC, and every other American city that banned gun ownership by private citizens. Murder rates doubled. Burglaries skyrocketed. Crime ran rampant. But the people who banned the guns don’t see that their actions caused the problem. No, they attack the problem they created by demanding more gun laws. I reside in the great state of Georgia, where the town of Kennesaw made national news in 1982 by passing a law requiring every head of household to own a firearm. (Okay– a lot of that was a political stunt pulled by the mayor after Morton Grove, Illinois made national headlines by banning private handgun ownership. Morton Grove didn’t see an increase in crime, but 80% of the people in Morton Grove didn’t turn in their guns, either.) When they heard that Kennesaw was about to REQUIRE gun ownership, news reporters and anti-gun hand-wringers immediately left Morton Grove and descended on Kennesaw, where they all predicted a New Dodge City, with shoot-outs on the streets and gutters running red with blood if the law passed. It passed. From 1981 to 1985, violent crime dropped 71% in Kennesaw. Burglaries dropped 65%. Between 1981 and 1993, the population of Kennesaw doubled and burglaries dropped 16%. Nobody reports the success of the law because the results run contrary to “conventional wisdom” about how private citizens behave when they own guns and how criminals react to that fact. I have heard that the definition of a fool is someone who repeats a mistake, hoping for a different result the next time. Anti-gun fanatics are fools. The deaf dumb and blind never learn. Rob Smith February 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed
In the early Spring of 1998, when I was still a jobbing scriptwriter, I was invited to a showbiz party held in the home of a TV producer who had hired me to work on some his projects. During the course of the evening I got into conversation with an actress who had just finished filming an episode of a TV cop drama. She told me that she had been trained to handle a gun convincingly and I replied that that was the type of training we could all do with and for real. I could not have caused her more offence if I had stuck my hand up her skirt.
That’s what it is like over here. Anti-self-defence is the default position. It is the accepted norm. It is so universal and unquestioned that even unarmed self-defence is often referred to as ‘vigilantism’. It is uncivilised and neanderthal. We don’t need to defend ourselves; we have our marvelous police to do that for us. Prior to today, promoting the right to bear arms was only marginally less controversial than promoting legalised child sex abuse. Given that context, the appreance of this column may reasonably be regarded as something of a turning point.
One has to be living in Britain to appreciate exactly how ground-breaking that statement is and it is made all the more significant by the source. Simon Heffer is not a Libertarian, he is more of a traditional paleo-Conservative but he is a high-profile commentator and is generally regarded as a serious voice. He is the kind of man TV producers want on their talk shows when they need a bit of gravitas. He can be excoriated and villified and, indeed, he will be both but he can’t be ignored and that matters. Despite this pleasing development, I have a quibble and an important quibble. Mr. Heffer invokes the state to grant us a right to bear arms. This is wrong. It is not a licence and what the government gives, the government can take away again. We already have a right to bear arms, bestowed upon us by our ancient common law heritage and exercisable by the mere act of being born. All the government has done is to deprive us of it. Now, if Mr. Heffer can get his head around that concept as well, we will really be cooking with gas. That said, he is to be heartily congratulated for saying what was, up till now, not even thinkable. In doing so, he has prised open a door that was previously glued shut, nailed over and padlocked. The restoration of our common law rights is still a journey of a thousand miles but the first few steps have been taken. February 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Courteous policemen, red telephone kiosks, afternoon tea, cap-doffing and genteel bucolic stability. That is the cartoon image that many non-British people seem to have of Britain. I don’t suppose they will want to read this
Drug running, gun culture, drive-by shootings, rampant robbery, burglary and car-crime. Not very ‘Mary Poppins’ is it? I would, ideally, like to write something satirical and witty about all this but I can’t. First of all, because the galloping erosion of our civil society is no laughing matter. Secondly, I am just too furious. I am furious at the way that the failure of one government prohibition (drugs) reinforces the failure of another government prohibition (guns) and to the detriment of all. But I am even more furious at the despicable lies that were foisted on us during the campaign to ban private gun ownership. “It will make the streets of Britain safer” they said; “It will put an end to gun culture” they promised; “It will reduce crime” they assured us; “Criminals will find it harder to procure weapons” they proclaimed. Ad-hoc justification was heaped upon egregious falsehood by every politician, pundit, lobbyist, talking-head and self-appointed ‘expert’ as they all jostled with each other for a place in the Pantheon of the Righteous. But they won the day. It was no-contest. We few voices of principled reason were pilloried as apologists for child-murderers and psychopaths and who wants to line up with people like that? So you foreigners can just disabuse yourselves of any lingering image of ‘genteel Britain’. This is a country where, on one side we have a national police force that is overstretched, politically hamstrung, misdirected and, like all nationalised industries, primarily concerned with protecting their own monopoly. They have guns. On the other side, we have growing gangs of ruthless and violent bandits set loose in a playground of grabbable booty. They have guns. In between, is the hard-working, law-abiding taxpayer, naked, and hoping for the best. I do not believe that this is what was intended. February 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I always believed that I would have to live a very, very long time indeed to witness better laws in Russia than we have in Britain. Well, I am a mere sapling of 40 and, to my not inconsiderable amazement, that day has arrived.
Contrast this to the situation in Britain, where, despite a right to self-defence being enshrined in law, the police act with almost indecent haste against any citizen that manages to successfully take advantage of it. And, lest we forget, British citizens may have this wonderful theoretical right to self-defence but they are forbidden to wield so much as a toothpick to exercise it with. I would like to believe that this change of heart by Russian politicians has come about as a result of some great degree of enlightenment but the truth seems far more prosaic.
Facts on the ground have a knack of knocking high-minded ideals off of their lofty perches. If people feel themselves to be in danger they will defend themselves regardless of what the laws say and that puts politicians in a dilemma: do they preside over a state of mass disobedience and resultant loss of legitimacy or do they relent and give the people what they demand? The answer from Russia seems to be that they relent and give the people what they demand. But, we all know what people are like; give them an inch they demand a mile. Now that Boris and Irina have a meaningful right to defend themselves they will beg the question, what with? How long, I wonder, until the State Duma is ‘reluctantly’ allowing Russians the right to bear arms? A point of principle all Libertarians understand as a given is that self-defence is a right not a licence. It it is not within the gift of politicians either to bestow it or expropriate it. But I would be churlish to nitpick over this news. Given the way Russia was ruled just a few short years ago, I can only applaud enthusiastically. February 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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