Re: Safe Gun-Free Britain (was Re: Guns [was Re: property Rights])

Michael S. Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Tue, 01 Jun 1999 12:13:15 -0400

Rick wrote:

> > Charlie Stross [charlie@antipope.org] also wrote:
> > >If widespread gun ownership deters crime, then one would expect the USA
> > >to be a crime-free zone compared to the UK
>
> <SNIP>
>
> Remember the Dunblane massacre in Scotland where so many infants were shot
> and killed? After that there was an uproar and the government acted on it.
> Now the UK has probably the toughest gun laws on the planet. Freedom?
> Despite these laws, we are not any less free than those in the US. We're
> just free without worrying so much whether our kids will be shot to death at
> school or whether a burglar will easily shoot us to death when they break
> into our homes.

If Britain is so safe, why are gun crimes still happening? I have not heard of a single instance of a Brit successfully defending themselves in many years.

Additionally, no you are not as free as an American. You are a subject, not a citizen. Your rights only exist as a matter of statute, not as a matter of Natural Law. You did once have a similar level of freedom, but it was severely eroded under Charles I and James I. You have no freedom of speech except for in one location on some stone in a park somewhere. Everyplace else your speech is only what the government allows you to say. The illusion of freedom is not the same as actual freedom. Actual freedom survives tests of its limits. Illusiory freedom triggers additional limitations on that freedom. Granted that things here have been becoming more and more illusiory the last few decades.

> I cannot believe people use freedom as leverage behind having the right to
> carry a gun. It is pointless in this day and age. Sounds to me like many
> people believe they are still living in the world as it was 200 year ago.

Has the human animal significantly changed over the last 200 years? No it has not.

> In the UK, when crimes involve guns special police units take care of it.

As stated repeatedly here, there have been numerous Supreme Court rulings that specifically declare that no police unit or personnel at any level of government in the US is permitted or delegated the authority to protect individuals from crime, or to prevent criminals from commiting crimes. They are only authorized to catch criminals once they have committed crimes. Part of the whole 'innocent until proven guilty' tradition that you all seem to forget so easily. The presumption of innocence dictates that you cannot apprehend anyone for the crimes they have not yet commited. You can only apprehend them while in the commission or after the commission of a crime.

It is a recognized fact that 2.5 million crimes are prevented by private citizens with guns here in the US each year, most of these WITHOUT DISCHARGING THE WEAPON. Some 60,000 people are killed every year with guns. Half of these are suicides and should not be counted as crimes. At least half of the remainder are the offenders being killed by law abiding citizens. Of the remaining 15,000, 90% are themselves criminals who are killed by other criminals, leaving around 1500 innocent civilians who are killed by guns each year. So we have 1500 murders/homicides by guns countered by 2.5 million crimes prevented by guns.

> You see, in the UK they actually employ police officers that are trained for
> those situations. Unlike in the US where people obviously have so little
> faith in the law enforcement agencies that they feel they must deal death
> themselves. As for protecting yourself, chances are, in a situation where
> they police don't have time to respond, you'd probably be dead anyway before
> you have a chance to brand your gun and do that bit of shooting which people
> are just dying to do (no pun intended). Is that a wrong perspective? Well,
> then why dictate you need a gun to 'defend' yourself, what else do you plan
> on doing with a gun?

Its a proven fact that in any given crime situation, a police officer is five times more likely to kill an innocent civilian that a law abiding citizen in the same situation. What sort of special training does it take to do THAT badly? Its also proven fact that a person carrying a gun is 29% more likely to survive a given crime situation than without a gun (you are only 16% more likely to survive if you have a knife.)

Before I carried a gun, I was a victim of crime on three occasions. Only once did I come out on top, after police luckily arrived on the scene. I was getting a bit tired beating on this acid tripping nut job who assaulted me, and probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. Since I started carrying regularly, I have been in two situations that would have evolved into much more severe crime scenes had I not been carrying. On both occasions the situation was dissipated before it got a chance to go far enough.

Rather than a danger to the community, I am an asset. I know the people and the geography, and function much like a plainclothes police officer, although as a private citizen I am limited to making citizen's arrests. The only people in government who will look at me as a threat are the types who have really nasty things in mind to do with their government authority.

Mike Lorrey