A woman is seriously ill in hospital after been hit by a stray bullet fired as a result of a gunfight in South London
A man is also fighting for his life after being shot on the doorstep of his home in Berkshire
|
|||||
|
Strange how this issue is kept strictly off of the political and media radar. Not a word about it on the BBC But this is from the London Evening Standard
Is it possible that we taxpayers could have body-armour as well? Or would it be unsafe in private hands? January 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 On Saturday night, 3 men were shot in Palmers Green, North London. One was killed, the other two are in serious condition Last night, a man was shot and seriously wounded by an armed intruder in Brixton, South London The Metropolitan Police have announced a London-wide campaign to tackle the growing problem of gun-related crime January 17th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I’m new to bloggery, so please everyone bear with me while I get the hang of it. Guns. Much is made by libertarians of mass civilian gun ownership, and this does matter, especially politically. But with crime, the mere right of civilians to own a gun, even if most of us choose not to exercise that right, is, I surmise, critical. If you are thinking of becoming a career criminal, then the difference between a world in which just a few civilians are weird enough to own guns and crazy enough to use them against intruders, and one in which such people are so rare as to be for all practical purposes non-existent… is all the difference. It’s the difference between being shot on about your hundredth robbing expedition (i.e. quite soon), and not being shot ever. The difference between half the population being armed and all of it being armed is, in contrast, not much of a difference. So, you get to do about one unmolested robbery before the hospital or the morgue beckons, instead of no robberies at all. Not a big distinction. I sense that we in Britain have perhaps – what with all the new restrictions following the Dunblane massacre – moved from the first of these two gun-worlds to the second. For decades, the number of robberies you could hope to get away with before getting seriously hurt has been climbing steadily, but you still had to be very short-sighted to become a robber. That didn’t stop everyone, but it did stop most. Gun wimps like me could live safe from most potential robbers, because the robbers didn’t know for sure that we were all gun wimps. Now, everyone’s a gun wimp. Now, I surmise, robbers can reasonably hope to rob for life. I have a personal stake in this. On the radio a couple of years ago I announced that there was a big increase in violent crime under way, not because I knew this to be true, but because for the sake of my argument I needed it to be true. (I wasn’t expecting a gun argument, and hadn’t been attending to recent crime news properly.) Sadly, it seems that I was right. January 14th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The following is the text of a letter sent to the London Daily Telegraph and published on 5th January 2002
It appears that some people (albeit a few) are starting to get it January 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I’ve stayed aloof from the flying fur up to this point, mostly because I’ve been preoccupied with critically important holiday activities. So many pubs, so little time! But the holiday season is now past and I find myself in stable condition and on the road to full recovery… so it is time to roll up the sleeves and get blogging. Everyone seems to recognize that Ruby Ridge and Waco were important. I think some writers have skirted the edge of just why that is so without actually stating it: they were liberty’s canaries. No one who has read about the Branch Davidians will argue David Kouresh was other than a wacko. He was a religious nut. He was at the outer limits of American society, His death showed us precisely where that limit sat and was a clarion call to those of more moderate beliefs. It showed them they had better join in holding the line or else soon find themselves on the wrong side of it:
I am not saying that the government actions were equivalent to the full blown horror of Nazism. They were not. They were however equivalent to the earliest, most tentative steps of it. Americans are not quite as sanguine about their governments’ motives and actions as Father Niemoller, nor are they disarmed or unwilling to fight if push comes to shove. We need armed nuts; they serve a valuable purpose. To quote myself from a discussion on the politics of space over a decade ago and why we needed our own unreasonable extremists in that endeavour:
David Khoresh provided us a warning. He showed each of us exactly how far from the edge we stood and left us to decide what to do about it. The fact that American citizenry are armed means there is a very real set of checks and balances between citizen and government. The founders and the framers of the Constitution intended this to be so and that is why there is a Second Amendment in the hallowed Bill of Rights. This is why I do not believe the United States is even remotely near a revolutionary situation. There are no problems there which cannot be dealt with in a civil and civilized Constitutional manner. I would go so far as to say no sane person should wish the line be crossed. Revolutionary results are unpredictable. Once a society has broken down into factions that solve all problems by weight of arms rather than by law, it can be beastly difficult to recover civil society. January 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Besides the oversights and misreads by Charles Dodgson that Perry has already pointed out, Charles also missed the whole point behind my argument when he says
I was more hopeful in this bit where Charles stumbled upon the truth but then he picked himself up and hurried away as if nothing had happened.
Yes. The state places many regulations on the use of your property after you buy it. It does not stop you from acquiring it nor does it specify from whom you can buy it or to whom you can sell it. In most states the local government is more concerned with collecting sales tax on the transaction than on who was involved in the deal. Indeed, all the use regulations only apply if you intend to operate the auto on public roads and lands. Keep it in the garage or drive it only on your property and you often don’t have to deal with any of that. With guns, laws were originally of a similar “use type” and codified what was already common sense, i.e. no shooting in town, etc. The current trend in firearm regulation, however, interferes with the acquisition and possession, not just the use. That is a very important difference. I believe the technical term is prior restraint but perhaps a Constitutional scholar out there could clear that up. This issue actually runs deeper than guns. It touches upon the fundamental worldview of individuals, states and the balance of rights. Are we subjects with a few privileges doled out by an over-riding state or are we citizens with basic rights that our chosen leaders must observe? As you probably guessed, I lean very heavily toward the latter. While I value the US Constitution, I don’t believe it grants us any rights. It simply codifies what our basic rights already are. That’s the bit in the pre-amble talking about self-evident truths and inalienable rights. The US is different from most countries in that the government acknowledges its obligation to recognize those inalienable rights and vows to protect them. To the extent that it limits those rights and the liberties they describe, the government reneges on that promise. I have to ask about this one too:
Why then has every newly installed tyrant and dictator begun their reign by rounding up the guns in private hands? No to dwell too long in the past, but I believe it was Ben Franklin who said “Tyranny can not exist in the United States because the whole body of the people is armed.” (emphasis mine) Charles may not realize it, but he is making our point when he states.
Yup. You have some definite sectarian violence there. But what if the weapons are scattered across ethnic, racial, religious and economic lines and you can’t get one group to turn on the other? When everybody is a potential resister and willing to pay the price, you have to kill everybody to end all resistance. Which brings us to the granddaddy of them all. Do you think the US military would fire on its own citizens? A very similar question was actually asked some Marines during a training exercise in 29 Palms. The exact question is in this article, but the upshot was something like: “Would you fire on citizens who refused to turn in illegal weapons?” 60% said no, 28% said yes, 12% didn’t care either way. The implications of those numbers could fill volumes. But aren’t you just a teensy weensy bit curious why they asked? January 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Take a peek at On the Third Hand and you will see Kathy Kinsley urging the adoption of a weapon that when wielded resolutely against an ‘Islamic’ would-be hijacker, makes even the mightiest of handguns pale into insignificance… after all, a suicidal hijacker is hardly going to be afraid of being shot dead… but the prospect of getting their brains bashed out with one of these babies is likely to reduce them to paroxysms of idiot terror! Does the deviousness and innovation of the post-enlightenment mind know no bounds? Stock up on them now before Charles Schumer starts demanding they be regulated and all purchasers licenced, thereby expanding the remit of the BATF yet further (renaming it the BATFS). It might be a good idea to bury a few in your deep freeze under the frozen peas where Federal snoops will not find them. January 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Charles Dodgson at Through the Looking Glass takes us to task regarding our views on the interblog gunwars. Whilst some of his points just boil down to a matter of opinion, he also spectacularly misunderstands a few things. In this discussion we are dealing not so much with the rights or wrongs of guns but whether there is actually any point in owning arms as a hedge against tyranny.
That is a strange way of looking at it, blaming the victims for, well, being the victims. It is rather like saying if people didn’t have valuable stuff worth stealing, they would not have to worry about being robbed. Certainly the US security apparatus is more than capable of picking off groups like the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver if it is thus inclined, no argument there. Of course I would argue that looking at those incidents is rather incomplete unless you look at all the consequences, namely Oklahoma. One does not have to agree with or admire Tim McVeigh to see that the action he took in response to those events does seem to have raised awareness amongst the jackboot tendency in all governments that there can be costs to the application of tyranny beyond immediate calculation. If a few more Waco’s were to happen, I have no doubt more Oklahoma’s would have followed. Guns themselves are just part of the equation. It is just a matter of whether a critical mass of a society is involved or just a disliked fringe like the Branch Davidians.
Actually I suspect he is probably arguing for incremental civilian disarmament, but we’ll let that slide for now.
It seems to have worked in Northern Ireland, regardless of whether or not you think Sinn Fein’s objectives are admirable or not. No superpower assistance required.
Now here is where Charles really blows it. He seems to be describing a scenario in which a tyrannous US state is able to turn the US military, not just the thugs of BATF or the FBI, against a section of their own people without question. And just whose ‘home ground’ is Charles describing? The home ground of the families of those self same people in the US military. It is one thing killing Afghans from 20,000 feet up. It is rather different telling folks in the US military to fire on people in Kansas or Florida.
Here Charles has a very strange view of the nature of insurgency. The US had air superiority over South Vietnam too and it was that sort of thinking which lost that war. The US military has lots of lovely ammo and in such a scenario, that is where much of the insurgent’s supplies would come from… this is ‘Insurgency 101’ stuff to be honest.
Actually I was referring to the Algerian war of independence against France, not the current fun and games. And interestingly many French make the same claims that ‘France won the war but just lost the will to fight’. Funny that.
And here Charles entirely misses the point as well has having a rather poorly informed view of the realities on the ground. The political policies of the IRA are not the issue in this discussion, their methods are. The fact is, Northern Ireland is the best analogy of all. The British have been unable to force its rule on a significant armed section of society and if circumstances ever drove a significant section of US society to do the same, all the fancy toys in the hands of the US military would count for as much as they do for British Army in Northern Ireland. As for what armed violence has achieved, would you argue that the civil rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland are not better now than they were in 1968? Of course they are. And why do you think that is? Reasoned political discourse backed up by women singing kumbayah? I don’t think so. If enough people support it, even if it is only a minority within a minority, as is the case in Ulster, violent insurgency does indeed work. I am not arguing that is what the US should be headed for, of course not, but the fact is that arms in civilian hands are far more effective against one’s own state than a foreign one and all manner of fancy tanks, ICVs, artillery, aircraft etc., do not make a damn bit of difference in those sort of situations. The RAF has air superiority over Ulster too. January 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Just a brief exchange of munitions this time as I am up to my eyeballs in editing something for Natalija (which she keeps changing every 15 minutes). Esteemed ace meta-blogger Tony Adragna from Quasipundit replied to my remarks below thusly:
Quite so. But I have never been against the regulation of the actions of armed people (as in ‘a well regulated militia’) because I do not want to see my neighbour’s teenage son riding down genteel Cheyne Row on his mountain bike firing off a Kalashnikov in a fit of youthful exuberance. What I oppose is anything that would inexorably lead to prohibitions on ownership. I have no problem with seeing unreasonable endangering behaviour with weapons punished severely, just as my support of free speech does not extend to support for fraudulence and criminal liable… I have no desire to see voices licensed, just their misuse punished. The key difference between Switzerland and the USA, is that the Swiss state does not pose a serious risk to the right of its citizens to be armed with military weapons… I am not completely uncritical of the structure of the Swiss state either but there is no Swiss version of a powerful figure like Senator Charles Schumer or his myriad of political and media supporters. The same cannot be said of the USA circa 2001 AD.
As it clear from your own remarks that you are aware of your precarious position over exceedingly thin ice, I shall resist the urge to heave a stick of dynamite out onto the lake. Let me put it this way, you have just convincingly made my case for me: I support private ownership of arms because I do not actually think the state can ever be a reliable guarantor of my intrinsic rights. By agreeing that de facto protection from the state by the state does not in reality exist, you are actually saying the same thing I am, which is why I contend the state cannot be trusted to control to whom weapons are doled out. Then you say you are happy with the de jure protection provided by the Bill of Rights, which in the previous sentence you admit means, de facto, not much. Tony, should you ever find yourself in a war zone, I strongly recommend against straw flak jackets that look good when worn and promise you invulnerability to the flying metal fragments of reality. I recommend the kevlar of objectively derived rights defended by a well armed culture of liberty. Accept no paper substitutes. December 30th, 2001 | Comments are closed
It is good to see views strongly and forthrightly put, but without rancour and rudeness. It seems that blog culture is developing along much more civil, albeit robust, lines than the puerile exchanges that characterize UseNet and e-groups. Rather than fire off another long winded broadside in this quite interesting inter-blog debate, I shall confine myself to the most direct remarks by famed meta-blogger Tony Adragna from Quasipundit that are germane to the central argument here. Tony accurately points out that the variously articulated Samizdata positions on gun ownership and that of Brian Linse (and himself) may be irreconcilable, as indeed they are… but Tony also unintentionally shows exactly why that is the case in his characterization of the duel as:
In fact the debate is nothing of the kind. As I has said again and again, the Second Amendment is irrelevant. It is nothing more than a useful 200 year old honoured bookmark to remind people of certain things and has no intrinsic relevance to the discussion. If you genuinely think that the right to own weapons comes from the US Constitution, or that it can somehow protect that right from infringement, then I would urge you to take a look at a 1929 painting by the Belgian surrealist, René Magritte showing a picture of a pipe. In case you cannot speak French, the worlds within the painting translate as “This is not a pipe”. When you understand what that means in that context, perhaps you will also understand what the US Constitution actually is and is not. In the sidebar of the Samizdata is a little phase that explains why I keep hammering away at this point. I refuse to be drawn into defining moral theories which must underpin any legal discussion, within a meta-context in which the state, and its essential nature, is a given regardless of objectively derived first principals. I will not fight my battles on the ground chosen by liberty’s enemies. Tony presents himself as a realist faced with libertarian utopianism, but the reality is actually quite different. Rational libertarians do not advocate either chaos or pious hopes. What we advocate is merely more spontaneous ways of deriving order in which guns tend to feature rather prominently as in reality there is no assumption that people will always act in their rational self interest. Tony correctly sums up both his and Brian’s position with a statist credo of earth shaking clarity and directness (no, I am not being sarcastic, I really mean it):
I shall doubtless be quoting this single bit of text as the simplest and most elegant possible distillation of the ‘Conservative Nicene Creed of Constitutionalist Faith’ imaginable. Evidence suggests the state will take our weapons but fortunately we have the state to protect us from that happening. Tony then consistently applies the same logic to forfeiture laws:
So here we have the contention that the state does indeed take property without due process because unconstitutional laws have been enacted by the state, thus it is fortunate we have the constitution to protect us from the state enacting unconstitutional laws. I rest my case. December 30th, 2001 | Comments are closed
Put those guns down before someone gets hurt! Let poor Brian limp back to his People’s Republic with its People’s Government… we love you really Brian. Although I don’t disagree with the points Perry and Walter have been making (at excessive length), lets not forget that we all find much about the United States that we admire when we compare it to most of Europe. Switzerland also has much to commend on these issues, but then of course as well as having a civilian population armed to the teeth and a very high standard of living, they are having none of this European Union silliness… and their chocolate is better than Belgium too. December 29th, 2001 | Comments are closed
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||