Tag: Leviathan

The Tottenham Outrage

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The Tottenham Outrage

One hundred years ago today, on John Moses Browning’s (PBUH) 54th birthday, two Latvian Anarchists attempted to rob the payroll of Schnurmann’s Rubber Company in Chestnut Road, Tottenham, England. The payroll was worth about £80, or roughly $8,800 today. Armed with then-still-new semi-automatic pistols, the two robbers, Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lapidus tried to make their escape, starting a shooting-spree that resulted in twenty-four wounded (seven police officers) and two dead – one police officer and one 10 year old boy. The police officer’s reported last words were, in fine British tradition:

“Come on, give in, the game’s over!”

Here’s a photo of the firearms in question:


The top one looks like one of JMB’s early works. If anyone can identify them, I’d be grateful.

One robber killed himself just before the angry crowd could do it. The other was captured after he shot himself, and he later died of his injuries.

The Tottenham Outrage is cited by a lot of us in the gunnie world because it is an example of how things used to be, and how – many of us believe – it still ought to be. The Tottenham Outrage was a living demonstration of Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Modern Policing, first published when he established London’s first “modern” police force in 1829; most especially Principle #7:

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

During the incident, average people going about their daily lives joined in the pursuit of the robbers. A party out bird shooting at nearby Lockwood reservoir reportedly exchanged fire with them. The Tottenham police, in the tradition of British police to this day, did not go armed. Officers, unable to find the key to the locked firearm cabinet in the station house actually had to smash the doors off to get to their weapons, but brother officers already in pursuit instead borrowed firearms from people on the street – something literally unimaginable there today, and literally unremarkable back then.

A mere 100 years ago today.

I’m Late on This

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I’d blame it on work, but I received a nice email from reader Steve Vaujin on Tuesday about the topic, and I’m only now addressing it. I know all of you are already aware, but here it is again:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent. – Found on inauguration day at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/

So much for believing in the Second Amendment.

“Closing the gun show loophole” means “Ending private-party sales. All sales must go through an FFL.” This will, of course, get the support of many of the (remaining) FFLs. And it will be the first step to an eventual national registration system.

“Making guns in this country childproof.” All 300 million of them? Will this be like “childproof caps” that only children can actually open? Or does it mean “won’t go bang at all“?

“…support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.” Now, if you’re an optimist, you read this as “making the expiration permanent,” but we all know better than that. No, this means a new, IMPROVED “Assault Weapons Ban.” One that will, you know, actually ban something.

Oh, and “addressing gun violence in cities” – where it’s largely committed by and committed upon a tiny, easily identifiable demographic, but instead the .gov wants to put in place sweeping, highly restrictive laws that will affect everyone but that demographic.

The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!

Well, there’s a great big hole in my collection that I need to fill. I’m not a fan of the 9mm Europellet, but I have been waiting and looking for a nice custom Browning Hi-Power to fill that niche – a 13-round capacity model, with a bunch of spare magazines. When I take newbies out to shoot, the lack of a 9mm has presented a problem as I work them up from .22LR to .45 Colt. (Hmm . . . And now .260 Remington?) I think this weekend I will go shopping for an EAA Witness in 9mm, and all the spare magazines they have in stock.

Who knows, maybe I’ll stumble across that Browning!

(*Sigh* – I was looking forward to at least a few more years before the .gov finally got around to passing enough laws to make me a willing felon . . .)

Job Creation

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Job Creation

Glenn linked to this fascinating (in a weirdly sick way) graph courtesy of Fabius Maximus:

President Obama talks a lot about “job creation.” It looks like Bush and his predecessors have all done a bang-up job of that! I guess Obama is going to turbocharge it?

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a coworker several years ago. His mother works for the Census Bureau. Her job has great benefits, lots of holidays, generous vacation and sick leave, and an excellent retirement plan. For about two and a half years at a stretch, her job is quiet and undemanding. Then, for about eighteen months it’s hectic, and the hours can be somewhat long, though she is compensated for the overtime. At one family gathering, during the slow period, she commented to all that working for the .gov was just terrific, and “I don’t know why everybody doesn’t work for the government!”

Into the short silence that followed, my coworker replied, “We do. For about the first five months of every year.”

Anybody expecting it to exceed six in the not-too-distant future?

The American Form of Government

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The American Form of Government

Many of you, I’m sure, have seen this, but it was new to me. It runs 10:35, and is worth your time if you haven’t seen it before:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DioQooFIcgE&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]
There’s an entire year of Junior-High Government class in just over ten minutes. One that, sadly, I don’t think gets taught much of anywhere anymore.

Quote of the Day

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I called it. Not exactly; back when I was cautioning friends and co-workers not to be too confident about the change-over date, I expected a Democrat-dominated Congress (rather than an incoming Democrat President) to push the date back, frettin’ about the “technologically disenfranchised poor,” or, as PBS President Paula Kerger whines chides us,

she’s especially concerned that children in less-affluent homes that rely on free television might lose access to PBS educational shows for kids.

Especially Sesame Street. Awwww. How ever else will they learn that it takes a village — or a city block of slum tenements inhabited by creatures from a drug hallucination — to hammer a child’s mind into uniformity and compliance? – Roberta X, DTV Cutover Delay?

With both Roberta and Tam in the same domicile, the psychic snark must be oozing out of the walls by now!

UPDATE: See? Here’s Tam:

FDR Jr. at the podium was telling us that we faced an “unprecedented” crisis in our nation, which no doubt made elementary school history teachers cry.

Then he said that the “wait-and-see” approach hadn’t worked. Apparently “wait-and-see” is where you make stupid regulations for things you know nothing about, and throw borrowed imaginary money at irresponsible people in numbers that make astronomers twitch.

So now we’re going to try his way, which is where you make stupid regulations for things you know nothing about, and throw borrowed imaginary money at irresponsible people in numbers that make astronomers twitch.

I see.

It’s Hammer Time!

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Well, the new Congress has been seated, and they’re off! As Glenn Reynolds stated it, “400 bills on first day of new Congress. Hope and Change!” The only tool in the Congressional toolbox is legislation, so they’re gonna legislate! The oft-quoted Rev. Sensing gets cited again:

A long time ago Steven Den Beste observed in an essay, “The job of bureaucrats is to regulate, and left to themselves, they will regulate everything they can.” Celebrated author Robert Heinlein wrote, “In any advanced society, ‘civil servant’ is a euphemism for ‘civil master.’” Both quotes are not exact, but they’re pretty close. And they’re both exactly right. Big government is itself apolitical. It cares not whose party is in power. It simply continues to grow. Its nourishment is that the people’s money. Its excrement is more and more regulations and laws. Like the Terminator, “that’s what it does, that’s all it does.”

And here they are doing it some more, this year to the tune (projected, almost certain to be exceeded) of $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars!) $1,200,000,000,000 ($1.2 trillion) $1,600,000,000,000 ($1.6 trillion) of deficit spending. (Thanks, DJ!)

The Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. in 2007 was about $13.8 trillion.

More to the point, from that same Sensing piece comes the other rationale for so many bills:

More than anything else, big-government activism is the New Deal’s legacy, and IMO, has come to define the governing philosophy of both parties today. The rising tide of big government has swamped us, held only temporarily at bay by the levees of the Reagan years. (And not really even then, since non-defense spending rose during the Reagan administration.)

Because the present-day Republicans and Democrats are both big-government activists, they have a foundational philosophy that is the same:

America is a problem to be fixed, and Americans are a people to be managed.

“It didn’t work last time, but the philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!“

BOHICA!

Quote of the Day

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(Government) is an instrument of force and coercion. And there can never be an instrument of force and coercion which will consciously restrain itself. It must be restrained. Yet there is no tool capable of such restraint. For any type of tool, whatever its nature, which is allegedly formed to restrain and contain government, would, by its own nature, simply become a government’s government.

In other words, the restraining tool for a compulsive instrument would have to contain a greater accumulation of power than the compulsive instrument or it would be ineffective. But this, in essence, would also be a government. It would simply be a larger, more compulsive, more dangerous and more mischievous tool and less subject to restraint than the original instrument of coercion.

The United Nations falls into this category, as does every other prior political organization aimed at universal peace. The United Nations is simply a government’s government. The members of the United Nations are, by definition, not the peoples of the world, but the nations of the world, at present (circa 1959) eighty-two in number.

Individual people cannot belong to the United Nations. Only governments can belong. The delegates to the United Nations are simply politicians who have been appointed by the member governments. And it is in the nature of the United Nations that it will look after the governmental interests of its members. Hence, the things that the member governments desire to do will become the policies of the United Nations.

But the thing all member governments desire to do is to rule their own people and to collect money from them. This is inherent in their natures. So the United Nations, perforce, will aid and abet the member governments in their universal desire to maintain a coercive hold over their individual subjects.

Thus, the United Nations is a government of the governments, by the governments, and for the governments. And it cannot and will not restrain these governments, for the members support the giant, looking to it for backing, even as the individual citizen supports his own government and looks to it for backing. – Robert LeFevre, The Nature of Man and His Government

h/t to Billy Beck for the pointer from a comment to this post at Roberta’s.

I, too, have always liked Professor Bernardo De La Paz’s explanation of his political affiliation of “Rational Anarchist.”

Perhaps “Pragmatic Anarchist” is a more precise term. 😉

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

“I still believe in bipartisanship,” Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said at a Capitol news conference. “But there is an even greater responsibility than practicing bipartisanship, and that is to govern. And that is what we intend to do here today.” – LA Times: California Democrats devise plan to hike taxes

“In every generation, there are those who want to rule well – but they mean to rule.” – Daniel Webster

(h/t – Firehand)

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Look guys, if they don’t obey what’s there now, if they twist and pervert plain meaning to produce the exact opposite of what the Founders intended, what the hell makes you think adding new verbiage is going to make a damn bit of difference?

This action presupposes there’s something wrong with the Constitution, as opposed to the criminals ignoring it.

And it further opens the door for just about damn near anything.

Dumb idea. Even dumber when you consider the Evil Party majority in the current congress, and then realize the proponents of this nonsense are Stupid Party members all. – David Codrea, Idiots

(My emphasis.) Amen.