Tag: UK

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Better Late than Never.

But still about 20 30 years too late: The UK Countryside Alliance organizes the First-ever National Shooting Week.

The first-ever National Shooting Week was launched on Monday 21st May at the National Shooting Centre at Bisley, known as ‘the home of shooting’.

From Saturday May 26th to Sunday June 3rd, thousands of people across the UK will try one of the most exciting Olympic sports during National Shooting Week.

Shooting schools and clubs are putting on more than 200 open days across the country so the public can try shooting for the first time.

I will be fascinated to see what the turnout for this looks like.

(via Uncle.)

UPDATE, 5/28:

Minister urges teenagers to take up shooting

(UK Telegraph, 5/27/07)

Anti-gun campaigners have accused the Government of making a U-turn on firearms after a minister urged teenagers to take up shooting to improve their behaviour.

Richard Caborn, the sports minister, has backed a drive by shooting groups to increase participation in the sport among children as young as 12. He believes that the sport helps young people to become more responsible and disciplined, and vowed that significant funds would be made available to help boost participation.

I’ll believe that when I see it.

Handguns were banned in Britain in 1996 following the Dunblane massacre, in which 16 children and their teacher were killed at a primary school.

Previously, the Government has taken steps to crack down on shooting by increasing the age limit for buying air weapons, as well as banning handguns.

After five gun murders in February in London alone, Tony Blair warned that 17-year-olds could face mandatory five-year sentences for possessing illegal guns.

What? The ASBOs are proving ineffective?

“We want to boost the number of people who take part in shooting sports, particularly among young adults,” Mr Caborn told The Sunday Telegraph. “We are investing £600 million in developing medal winners for 2012 and shooting will benefit greatly from that.”

Schools have been encouraged to increase the involvement of young people in shooting sports and Mr Caborn welcomed the first National Shooting Week, which begins this weekend, as a good way to raise levels of participation.

Though according to the first commenter to this post, none of that £600 million apparently went towards advertising National Shooting Week.

He has already upset the anti-gun lobby by supporting moves to relax the ban on handguns in the hope of boosting Britain’s chances of winning pistol-shooting medals at the 2012 London Olympics. Lending his support to the week-long campaign has raised its fears further. However, a Labour Party document, for which he wrote the foreword, argues that there is a need to work with shooting organisations to develop ways “to demystify firearms”.

How did this guy end up as a minister in Britain’s government?

The party has published a Charter for Shooting, which it released after promising in the 2005 general election to ensure that country sports would be protected.

In the charter, it says that Labour is fully supportive of shooting organisations. -“Government ministers have noted the benefits of introducing young people to the sport in terms of developing habits of safety, self-discipline and responsibility,” it says.

However, Gill Marshall-Andrews, the chairman of the Gun Control Network, said that she was alarmed by Mr Caborn’s backing for National Shooting Week, which aims to introduce people to shooting for the first time and improve people’s understanding of guns.

“The Government should be ashamed of itself for putting its energies into encouraging people to take up shooting when we should be ensuring that there are fewer and fewer guns available,” she said. “By backing this initiative they’re sending out the wrong message.”

Ms. Marshall-Andrews? They’ve tried that. And failed miserably. Repeating the same actions over and over while expecting a different outcome is defined as “insanity.”

Mrs Marshall-Andrews accused the Government of helping to make guns seem acceptable and of creating a society in which they will become prevalent.

And this is the part I love:

Since 1997, firearms crimes have risen from 12,410 to 21,521 in 2005/06 (an increase of 73 per cent), including incidents involving handguns, which have nearly doubled in this period, from 2,636 to 4,671, despite their being banned.

(Emphasis mine.) “Will become prevalent”?

However, according to David Penn, the secretary of the British Shooting Sports Council, an umbrella body for shooting groups, there is no correlation between gun crime and the level of gun ownership.

“To own a gun, people have to go through rigorous checks and it takes a long time,” he said. “People who argue that these guns are falling into the wrong hands obviously don’t understand the real statistics.”

• Ministers are dragging their feet over the introduction of laws to tackle imitation firearms, campaigners claim. Legislation banning the import or manufacture of realistic fake guns, of the kind used by criminals to threaten victims, was approved by Parliament last year. However, the measure is not due to take effect until this autumn.

Yes, banning look-alike guns is really going to help. What’s next? Banning “super-soaker” squirt-guns?

Better Late than Never

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Via Joe Huffman, a London Sunday Herald op-ed that I found quite surprising. I’m going to copy the whole thing here for archival purposes without comment. (Yes, I know. Unusual for me.)

Dunblane made us all think about gun control … so what went wrong?
By Ian Bell

ALMOST 11 years now. Kids grow up, life changes, leaves rot on the branch, and all memories decay. Stuff happens. Almost 11 years ago, on the morning after, I told myself that I had sworn off the vampire habit. You know the sort of thing. Something vast and terrible and inexplicable happens. The journalist dusts down his purple prose and sets out, consciously and deliberately, to feel everyone’s pain. Inexcusable, really.

For example: they gave me a prize for Dunblane. To this day, I have never understood why I am the only person I know who finds the fact unsettling. WH Auden, born a century ago last week, said famously that poetry makes nothing happen. He should have tried journalism.

Facts: In mid-March of 1996 Thomas Hamilton, 43, warped, morally crippled, dead in his soul, certainly disgusting, the suicide-in-waiting who should have done us all a favour in the privacy of his own nightmare, went into the precincts of Dunblane primary, and into the gym class, with all his precious sex-toy handguns.

He killed 16 infants, then their teacher, then himself. He accomplished all this with four weapons, in three short minutes. Lots of official things – never adequately explained, for my money – had gone wrong before the event. Somehow that ceased to be the point. Half the world was staggered, but Scotland went into a state of near-clinical shock. The human ability even to begin to pretend to comprehend was defeated.

All over the country, people did irrational things, knowing them to be irrational. They turned up at schools, 100 miles from the scene, just to convince themselves that their own infants were safe. They called home from work, or called people at work, simply to prove that sanity still prevailed. Many could not face the idea of the working day. Strangers in the street, caught unawares by the news, were in tears. If you happen to be too young to remember, trust this: I’m not making it up.

Explanation and analysis, journalism’s default responses, were worse than pointless. Those rituals, too, seemed insulting. Joining the world’s media on the streets of Dunblane to ask people “how they felt” was worse than ghoulish: I refused that request. To their credit, nobody pressed the point. There was still the usual column to be written, however.

In fact, over the days and weeks that followed, there was more than one. I allowed myself two simple, possibly simplistic, strategies. First, I was not ever going to attempt to “explain” Hamilton: the bereaved deserved better. Secondly, in my small way, I was going to take on anyone who failed to support the banning of handguns.

There was a lot of American comment, predictably, and much of it abusive. The clichés appeared as if by return of post. “Guns don’t kill people,” they wrote. “People kill people.” So why – this struck me almost as the definition of self-evident – did Thomas Hamilton feel a need for four of the damnable things?

Then the Duke of Edinburgh, and the field sports people, and the target shooters entered the fray. The royal consort, with his usual sensitivity, expressed the view that things were getting out of hand, and that a more considered response was required. I can clobber royals in my sleep.

The most troubling questions came, instead, from those who answered my simplicities with one of their own. They didn’t oppose a ban, as such. They merely wanted to know why I was so sure that legislation would work.

That seemed obvious. It even seemed faintly stupid to think otherwise. No guns, no gun-killings. Remove the threat: wasn’t that one of the jobs of government?

Sceptics were more subtle than I allowed. What they meant was that it is easy to impose laws on the law-abiding. Criminals, by definition, don’t take much interest in well-meaning legislation. If they chose to arm themselves while the rest of society was, in effect, disarming, outraged newspaper commentators and their quick fixes might merely make matters worse.

I’m still not convinced, or not entirely. A rueful young man in Los Angeles told me once that his city boasted more cars than people, and more guns than cars. “Current population?” he added. “Eleven million, give or take.” To him, the notion of a country patrolled by unarmed police officers was a kind of fantastic dream. To him, equally, the fact that nice kids could lay hands on the family pistol – bought for “self-defence” – and die while simply messing around in the back yard was not an example to be envied, or copied.

“You know what guns do?” he asked. “They go off. You know what guns are for? To kill. That’s their purpose. Only the rhetoric is harmless.”

Back then, I believed every word. America had, and has, too many of the instruments that Thomas Hamilton found so alluring. Yet almost 11 years on, what do I read, and what do I say?

I read of three London teenagers murdered in the space of 11 days. I read of firearms “incidents” spreading like an epidemic across our cities. I read of Tony Blair holding a Downing Street summit on a crisis that seems – call me naive – a greater threat to many communities than any terrorism.

What I say then becomes obvious: my idea didn’t work. In fact, I begin to thread certain fears together, like links in a chain. Here’s one: if even London teenagers can provide themselves with the means to kill 15-year-old Billy Cox in his bedroom, guns have become commonplace, so commonplace that every would-be terrorist worth his salt must be armed to the teeth. Bans have failed utterly.

That’s a nightmare for another day, however. We can worry about what might happen after we think of what is actually happening.

David Cameron’s Tories argue the issue is societal, a problem of parenting and family breakdown. John Reid, home secretary, speaks of people “working together” for a gun-free world while he hints at new laws. Menzies Campbell, of the Liberals, says we need more and more effective policing.

Each of these opinions may have some value. I’d like to think so. Yet why do they sound like the words of men who have only the faintest idea of what life might be like in Harlesden or Moss Side? It is entirely proper to talk of youths who have become detached from society. You may, however, need to qualify the statement with a question: who is detached from whom?

A weapons fetish escalates for a fairly obvious reason. Many things may have changed since my working-class youth, but I am certain that one piece of logic persists. If he is armed, you had better be armed too. Knives become swords, swords become pistols. Status, respect and “security” follow. If you live. Having a father in the household, or access to a youth club, or hopes of a decent education can seem minor, by comparison, on a dark Saturday night.

Saying so solves nothing, obviously. Perhaps journalists, far less politicians, should make that confession now and then. We could all demand a better world – preferably by tomorrow lunchtime – but always bear our fallibility in mind. It goes back to the question I refused to attempt almost 11 years ago. If I could not explain Thomas Hamilton any more than I can explain the killers of Billy Cox, perhaps I have nothing useful to say about anyone’s desire to kill.

I can guess, for all that, that there is something unreasonable, even bizarre, about declaring a youth crisis if teenagers are simply as we have made them. It’s Tony Blair’s fault, if you like. It’s my doing, if you prefer. It’s schools, or a lack of discipline, or insufficient policing, or new sets of laws, or just society.

If that last word still means anything, however, then we are all, in fact, culpable. Who turned Thomas Hamilton into a beast? God isn’t talking. That leaves the rest of us. I cling, nevertheless, to one near-instinctive conclusion from 11 years ago. Guns breed guns. When they enter a society they multiply like a pestilence.

Let’s concede that all the bans have failed. That doesn’t mean we should also fail to ask a practical question. Britain has become a security state in recent years. Nobody strolls unmolested through customs these days. There are terrorist suspects, so they say, at every turn. So why, precisely, are handguns still getting into this country?

OK, one comment: Why are they getting into the country? Simple economics. Suppy and Demand. Same reason illicit drugs are getting in.

He doesn’t quite get it, but at least he’s finally asking the right questions.

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Once Again, It’s Not About Guns. It’s About Control.

And the hand-wringers can’t see the forest for the trees, just the way governments like it. Insty points to a Telegraph op-ed that persists in repeating the “Do it again, only harder“ mantra. At least they got the title right:

Gun laws that constrain the law-abiding

For James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, Michael Dosunmu, 15, and Billy Cox, 15, the hand-wringing by police and politicians over the escalation of gun crime comes a little late: all three have been shot dead in south London over the past 10 days.

Public revulsion over such criminality is, shamingly, blunted by the fact that they appear to be victims of ethnic gang crime. Society at large sees it as “their” problem, not its own. Such a view is criminally complacent.

Don’t feel too bad. We do it here, too, which makes me even more certain that “gun control” isn’t about reducing crime. If its adherents were interested in reducing crime, they’d target the crime, not the tools.

We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

You don’t say!

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns – either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe – with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licences, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

All of which was predicted prior to: the ban on full-auto weapons (1937), the ban on semi-auto long guns (1988), and the ban on all handguns (1997) – none of which even slowed the rate of increase in gun crime noticeably. But they did disarm the law-abiding, which is just another reason we don’t believe the opposition when they tell us they aren’t out to take away our guns. This fact also shoots in the foot every mayor and every governor who blames “lax gun laws” in neighboring states for the high crime in their own inner cities – where gun control laws are nearly as strict as England’s. If an island can’t keep them out, nobody can.

To the realist, that means it’s time to pursue another vector. To the politician it means “Do it again, only harder!“

Even more disturbing is the insouciance with which guns are used. An 18-year-old Angolan refugee was sentenced to life this week for shooting dead a woman holding a baby at a christening party, in what was otherwise a “routine” robbery.

Seems a resonable sentence, no?

The truth is that the laws relating to possession of guns are nowhere near tough enough. Possessing a firearm carries a minimum sentence (ministers insist on calling it “mandatory”, but it is not) of five years. That means release, in normal circumstances, after 30 months.

Let me do the math here… (carry the six,…) Um, thirty months isn’t five years, it’s two and a half. Is this “new math”? No, it’s just the UK’s version of “criminal justice.” Continuing:

For those aged between 17 and 21, the minimum sentence is three years, which means release after just 18 months. Such piffling sanctions hardly amount to an effective deterrent to these young hoodlums. The police want the five-year minimum sentence extended to everyone over 17 and the Government should not hesitate to meet that request.

Don’t you mean “thirty-month minimum sentence”? After all, it’s not like a “life sentence” really means, you know, life. I wonder how long it will be before that Angolan refugee gets out to try again?

But more is required.

Of course! “Do it again, only HARDER!

In particular, the ludicrous inhibitions placed on the police when it comes to exercising powers of stop and search have to be lifted. So must the post-Macpherson burden of political correctness, which makes any police officer think twice before challenging a young black man on the street. There is a wider failure here.

Right! The police must be allowed to be more intrusive without fear of censure! Actually, it might be OK if they were just allowed to treat criminals like they get away with treating the law-abiding.

This Government came to power with high hopes of ameliorating the social crisis in Britain’s sink estates. These were “their people” and they would be rescued.

Isn’t that what they always promise? Remember Mencken:

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Or, graphically:

(Chip Bok, Akron Beacon-Journal)

Amen.

But the fractured families, the inadequate schools, the crippling impact of welfarism, the appalling living conditions – all have stubbornly resisted New Labour’s lacklustre efforts.

(My emphasis.) Well, a little recognition of reality at last.

Conditions in many inner cities have actually worsened. And what a price we are paying.

But your solution? “Dedicated frontier police?” “Mandatory five-year (30 month) sentences”? Greater police powers? It’s just more of the same. Another Menckenism:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Well, not all of them are imaginary. Some are real, and some of those are generated (or worsened) by government, but those that aren’t imaginary are too often blown out of proportion for just the reason Mencken mentioned. But government “leading people to safety”? That’s the promise – one that government cannot deliver on 24/7/365. Instead, it disarms its citizenry and does its dead-level best to convince them that they’re not qualified to defend themselves.

In the mean time, it offers images like this:

Doesn’t that make you feel safer? Hey, kids, let’s do the same thing here! After all, the (nowhere near) Million Moms chanted “England can do it, Australia can do it, we can too!”

Not on my watch.

The Journey Down the Path of Compelled Helplessness

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The title of this post is from a comment left at On Being Down and Defenseless in Britain over on The Gates of Vienna. The latest outrage from Old Blighty?

Jump up and down and shout to beat street crime

 Witnesses to violent street crime should try to ‘distract’ attackers by honking their car horns or even ‘jumping up and down’. That’s according to Labour’s Police Minister.

 The extraordinary remarks by Tony McNulty prompted an immediate, angry response from law and order experts, who described him as ‘irresponsible’.

 The standard police advice to people who witness violent behaviour is that they should not get involved and immediately call 999.

 But in an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, Mr McNulty said concerned citizens should ‘try some distractive activities’ instead.

Absolutely. Fucking. Amazing. This is the Monty-Pythonesque “You’re Not Qualified” mentality brought to its highest lowest form. Citizens shouldn’t get involved – even to the point of simply making noise. If this doesn’t define “compelled helplessness,” I don’t know what would. I’m reminded of an old post by Dave Kopel at The Corner where a University student told of her introduction to acceptable victim behavior while staying in England:

(The officer) instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.

In other words, assume a fetal position. How appropriate.

The Minister, who is the deputy to Home Secretary John Reid, suggested that ‘simply shouting’ at would-be muggers or ‘blowing your horn’ at them could act as a deterrent. And he said that people who witness an attack in the street should ‘jump up and down’ while waiting for the police to arrive.

His comments come during a deepening crisis in the Home Office and follow new figures showing a sharp rise in violent crime.

Right. Would that be the report indicating that recorded violent crime is down, or the official crime survey report that indicates that violent crime is up? Because, you know, I’m confused. Of course, it’s fairly easy to reduce “recorded” violent crime. Just don’t record them, you see!

The interview with Mr McNulty is part of a Panorama special being screened tomorrow evening which examines the crisis of anti-social behaviour sweeping Britain’s streets.

Law and order campaigners warned that anyone following the Minister’s advice to ‘distract’ robbers could be putting themselves at serious risk.

Which is why “it’s most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can.” Instead, the UK emotionally and legally neuters its populace via an official but unwritten policy of compelled helplessness.

Street criminals routinely carry knives or even guns and there have been a growing number of incidents in which so-called onlookers who intervene have also themselves been attacked.

Because the criminals know they have little to nothing to fear from an unarmed populace unsure of what they can legally do to defend themselves or others, and the police are too overwhelmed to intervene. Besides, they’re too busy running the “Big Brother” video cameras.

The remarks add to the already confusing and sometimes contradictory messages sent out to concerned citizens.

In some cases police publicly praise so-called ‘have-a-go heroes’. But in other situations, people taking the law into their own hands have become police suspects while the original perpetrator has walked free.

Even honking a car horn, as Mr McNulty suggests, can backfire. A motorist who sounded his at a pedestrian who stepped out in front of his car was recently fined by police for ‘excessive’ use of the instrument.

Sweet bleeding jeebus. I rest my case.

Serving police officer Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, called the Minister’s remarks ‘irresponsible’, adding: “Tony McNulty needs to get into the real world. Only then will he realise how ridiculous these remarks sound. The public are not going to jump up and down – they are going to be scared witless.”

Only because you and those like you made them that way. Once upon a time, England was populated by a people with pride and a sense of right and wrong. Apparently between the losses of WWI, WWII, and the increasing control of their everyday lives by a Socialist government, the population has been domesticated. It’s sad, really.

For the Tories, Shadow Police Reform Minister Nick Herbert said: “Jumping up and down and waving your hands in the air in a hopeless manner does seem to be the standard Home Office response to problems these days. The public need some consistent guidance about what they should do in these circumstances.”

Figures out this month showed a two per cent rise in crime over the past year to a total of 2.44 million incidents, with gun crime soaring by ten per cent. And there was a 46 per cent surge in householders suffering the terror of being robbed at gunpoint in their home.

Isn’t England the sterling example that the gun control organizations point to as the pinnacle of achievment? Weren’t handguns banned there, oh, about 1996? Banned not as in “you can’t have any more,” but as in “turn them all in”? Aren’t all other guns there supposedly strictly controlled? Licensing? Check. Registration? Check. “Safe Storage?” Check. No “gun show loopholes,” no “assault weapons,” no “Saturday Night Specials,” no “Pocket Rockets”? Check. Isn’t England an island – without the excuse that neighboring countries don’t share its strict gun control laws? Check.

So, instead they smuggle Uzis in via truck.

Economics 101. Supply will meet demand.

The statistics come against a backdrop of a growing crisis in the Home Office, with Mr Reid admitting he and his ministerial team had failed to make the Home Office ‘fit for purpose’. Mr McNulty was reshuffled from immigration to his current brief last May after the scandal over foreign criminals being allowed to walk free without even being considered for deportation.

Sounds like catch-and-release is popular on that side of the pond as well.

But, as the man in charge of law and order, the 48-year-old MP for Harrow East has continued to be dogged by controversy.

He was recently blamed by the Tories for another furore, this time involving Britons who committed sex crimes abroad being allowed to return home and work with children.

Of course. It’s not like he’s in danger of losing his job or anything. He’s from the government, and he’s there to help you. Good and hard.

Extract from the full Panorama interview

Jeremy Vine: “You see a young man looking aggressive, shouting at an old woman. What do you do? Do you retreat and ring the police?’

Tony McNulty: “I think you should in the first instance. It may well be simply shouting at them, blowing your horn or whatever else deters them and they go away.”

Jeremy Vine: “He’s now hitting her and the police haven’t come. What do you do then?’

Tony McNulty: “The same, the same, you must always…”

Jeremy Vine: “Still wait?’

Tony McNulty: “Get back to the police, try some distractive activities.”

Jeremy Vine: “What? Jump up and down?’

Tony McNulty: “Sometimes that may well work.”

At least he wasn’t advocating curling up into a fetal position. How about grabbing something heavy and beating the sonofabitch into unconsciousness? Would that be excessive?

Edited to add: If you want your blood pressure to spike even further, read up on some other recent outrages carried out by the UK government as chronicled by Irons in the Fire. Read down to the updates. Stow all breakables out of reach first.

KevinLeave a comment

I Wonder If I’ve Frightened Him Off…

A commenter to last week’s piece OK, I WILL Comment on this “Study” was shocked, shocked by the piece and by the other commenters:

It is unbelievable that there are people like you lot who can defend guns as ‘harmless fun’ or seriously state that ‘guns make you safer’. If you weren’t so dangerous the absurdity of it all would be hilarious.

I love how the topic quickly moves from your gun fantasies to your racial genocide fantasies in one swift paragraph.

I particularly like the idiocy of these comments.

“if you’re not a young black male living in an inner city, your likelihood of dying by homicide (regardless of weapon) is about equal to that of someone living in Europe.”

“if you remove the crimes committed by blacks and latinos, the U.S. violent crime rate is almost identical to that of Canada.”

Like duh!! What a surprise eh? So if I remove the most deprived higher crime areas and people from the US figures and then compare it with the average in Europe (that includes all their deprived higher crime areas and population) it is ‘roughly similar. Is there no amount of distortion of statistics you lot will go to to justify your idiocy? Let alone your thinly disguised prejudice against black people. Deny black people opportunities so the majority end up in poverty stricken neighbourhoods with little or no prospects and then when they act all dysfunctional, use this to justify your superiority and racial fantasies. I despair for humanity when there are dumb f***s like you walking the planet.

Boy am I glad I don’t live next door to you guys.

I left a little response of my own in the comments, but, since he so kindly left a real email address I dropped him a note:

Mr. Harding:

Thank you for the heartfelt comments you left at my blog, The Smallest Minority.

Obviously you and I differ vastly in worldview (since you called me a racist dumbf**k, among other things.) Just as obviously, you read very little of my site. Then again, you are apparently a knee-jerk Leftist, so I suppose I can’t expect any better from you.

However, should you care to debate the topic of gun control, I’d be more than happy to have you join me at The Smallest Minority. I find that I learn so much more when discussing the topic with those who disagree with me. Perhaps you’d like to educate me?

Surprisingly, Mr. Harding replied today:

Kevin,

Sorry if my comments were a little forthright and I thank you for responding in a friendly way. I apologise for calling you names, I think I was referring to commenters not yourself, I cannot remember exactly, but I was reacting to some pretty unbelievably frightening comments on your blog.

This stuff about black people and crime. How else could it be described other than racism?

Surely you only have to compare gun death rates between the US and UK to see that limiting guns is the safer option. Guns are so dangerous, they should not be the playthings of people.

I was, of course, moved to answer:

Neil:

Thank you for responding. No apology necessary, though you were referring to me. I have a rather thick skin at this point, and ignorance does not offend me. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge or understanding, not an incapacity for it. Thus, ignorance can be overcome through learning.

No offense intended, but you seem to frighten easily. This is also a indication of ignorance, as humans tend to fear what they do not understand. Let’s take, for example, your comment “This stuff about black people and crime. How else could it be described other than racism?” Well, it can be taken as a description of reality, for one thing. Please, before you click ‘delete,’ allow me to explain.

What you objected to was this comment: “Never mind the fact that if you’re not a young black male living in an inner city, your likelihood of dying by homicide (regardless of weapon) is about equal to that of someone living in Europe.”

To you that was a racist statement. Your comment: “Like duh!! What a surprise eh? So if I remove the most deprived higher crime areas and people from the US figures and then compare it with the average in Europe (that includes all their deprived higher crime areas and population) it is ‘roughly similar. Is there no amount of distortion of statistics you lot will go to to justify your idiocy? Let alone your thinly disguised prejudice against black people.”

Here’s what I’ve written about this question at another blog:

Is the incredibly disproportionate level of violent crime in the young urban black male community due to the fact they’re black? Don’t be ridiculous. Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean don’t exhibit the same behavior. (Which is why I don’t use the appellation “African-American.”) Throughout history it has been the poor who have been the primary criminal predators and who have provided the primary pool of victims, regardless of skin tone. If you’re well off, you don’t have to steal, for example. Nor do you feel it necessary to “drown your sorrows” in intoxicants in order to escape the crappy life you live for a few minutes or hours or days.

There’s obviously more to it than just general poverty, though, because the level is so high. I would point to the exceedingly high percentage of fatherless children (due, I believe, to some really idiotic welfare policies), a welfare system that punishes attempts to escape it (I’m sorry, but you make $20 a month too much for us to subsidize your day-care! You’ll have to bear the entire $400/month burden of that yourself!), and a drug policy that makes trafficking in drugs so tremendously lucrative that – in that environment – it appears to be the best (and often only) way out.

Our national history of oppressing blacks, combined with a well-meaning but incredibly flawed social policy, plus a drug policy well-intentioned but completely disconnected from reality have all combined to create the level of violence that the numbers show.

Who is to blame? My finger points at us, because the people we voted into office chose to do what felt good, rather than taking a hard, objective look at what the policies they voted for would actually result in. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it very well: “Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”

Edited to add: If you want further evidence of this, look what our government policies have done for the American Indian populations.

Is that a racist statement? I’m unfamiliar with the European statistics on this, but do blacks represent thirteen (13) percent of the population there? Do they make up 47% of homicide victims overall? Or is there another minority that does? Is there any significant group that inflicts homicide on itself at a rate six times the national average?

Doesn’t this make you wonder if there is something we could do that would directly affect the specific problem of young black men killing each other at epidemic levels? Because “gun control” most definitely does not.

I have compared the death rates between the US and the UK, Neil – something that you, obviously, have not. Ever since we’ve been keeping records, the UK has had about 1/8th the rate of homicides that the U.S. has had, regardless of the gun laws in place at the time. Guns were rarely used to commit homicide even when their possession was wholly unregulated. The UK began its path towards gun-control nirvana starting in 1920. It had no effect on that ratio. In 1953 Parliament passed the Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry an “offensive weapon” without being able to demonstrate a need for it. Offensive weapons included knives, pointed objects, and tear gas along with firearms. Ownership of a handgun for self-defense was no longer considered a reasonable need. After all, you were prohibited by law from carrying it. Curiously, violent crime in England began to climb beginning in the late 50’s, until at the present time you are far more likely to be assaulted in England than in the U.S. – you just don’t kill each other as often, as has been the tradition since the turn of the last century.

One bit of interesting news: The ratio of homicide rates between the U.S. and England is now down to about 3.6:1. Throw in Scotland and Northern Ireland and the disparity is even smaller.

Now, as to your last statement: “Guns are so dangerous, they should not be the playthings of people.” This is the place where our worldviews are most widely divergent. Yes, guns are dangerous. So dangerous that they cannot be trusted in the hands of only the government and violent criminals – because we’ve seen what both of those groups do with such power. “Playthings of people”? Well, I do enjoy recreational shooting, as do a small (but growing) contingent of your countrymen, but “playthings”? I think not.

If some of my commenters frightened you, I’m concerned what these effect these quotes will have:

To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem.
To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized,
merely the domesticated. – Trefor Thomas

To believe one is incompetent to bear arms is, therefore, to live in corroding and almost always needless fear of the self – in fact, to affirm oneself a moral coward. A state further from the dignity of a free man would be rather hard to imagine. – Eric S. Raymond, Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun

In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Playthings of people”? No, indeed. Serious tools. But recreation with serious tools is something we do all the time here.

I would be pleased to continue this conversation, if you are so inclined. But if you feel the need to hide under your bed, I certainly understand.

I wonder if I’ll get a response?

KevinLeave a comment

Which “Gun Culture”?.

In relation to that piece from last Wednesday, I give you a post from Fodder at Ride Fast & Shoot Straight that illustrates the difference between the two “gun cultures.”

Yes, two. Although many people like Mayor Ann Thomas of Haverhill in the UK believe there is only one:

Mayor Ann Thomas said she was “absolutely shocked” at the spate of robberies in Haverhill, but felt it was part of a national increase in gun culture rather than a particular problem in the town itself.

Even England still has two gun cultures:

PUT down those golf clubs and go for your gun: shooting is fast becoming the social networking sport of choice.

A survey of 2,000 companies and 14,000 directors shows that shooting is soaring in popularity. A decade ago, toting a shotgun did not even feature among the most popular recreations listed by company directors. But the survey ranks shooting as the seventh most popular recreation, almost level with gardening.

Anyway, give Fodder’s post a look. It’s perfect visual accompaniment for clueless gun-phobes.

(Sorry about the lack of posting. Very busy, other distractions, etc. More stuff coming. Just maybe not today.)

KevinLeave a comment

Good News from Blighty for a Change.

I’ve seen this a couple of places. The TimesOnline is reporting an increase in recreational shooting in England. They’re touting it as the new golf, useful for business networking, and (apparently) only for the well-heeled, but note the “and women” line:

Shooting hits spot as networking tool

Richard Woods and John Elliott

Executives and women go for their guns

PUT down those golf clubs and go for your gun: shooting is fast becoming the social networking sport of choice.

A survey of 2,000 companies and 14,000 directors shows that shooting is soaring in popularity. A decade ago, toting a shotgun did not even feature among the most popular recreations listed by company directors. But the survey ranks shooting as the seventh most popular recreation, almost level with gardening.

Oooh! Gardening! Be still my beating heart.

“Though golf remains the directors’ favourite recreation, shooting has come from nowhere and continues its rise, despite the current politically correct climate,” said Allister Heath, editor of The Business magazine, which conducted the survey.

You say that as though you expect the current “politically correct climate” will change along with global warming.

Nor is shooting’s popularity solely down to City bankers blasting off on corporate days out. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) saw its membership rise to 128,000 last year, up from 110,00 in 1996; the number of affiliated syndicates has jumped to 940 from just 370 in 1996.

A recent survey by economic consultants Pacec estimated that 480,000 people now participate in shooting and the sport generates 70,000 jobs. Many of the newcomers are women.

“We have constantly been increasing our membership, it’s across the board,” said Christopher Graffius of BASC. “It is far more accessible than it was.”

It’s true, though, that landed gentry and business big hitters still lead the way. The Duke of Northumberland is rated in this month’s edition of The Field as “a top contender for Britain’s very best all-round game-shot”. Michael Spencer, chief executive of the money broker Icap, is also an enthusiast.

Rupert Lowe, the chairman of Southampton FC, is ranked as one of the finest shots in the country. And Marco Pierre White, the celebrity chef, is such an avid “gun”, as shooters are known, that he takes out his 12-bore up to four times a week during the season.

Now there’s a change. People proud of a “gun culture” across the pond.

But shooting also ranges more widely, partly because farmers have diversified in search of new sources of income.

“Often renting land to a syndicate can be very profitable for them,” said Graffius, “so there are more opportunities for syndicates to shoot than in the past.”

Economics 101. Until the .gov decides to tax that use exhorbitantly for being “anti-social” or some such.

Others suggest that people have discovered shooting is an easier way to network than golf. “When I play golf, most people go in one direction and I go somewhere else,” said Dylan Williams, founder of the Royal Berkshire Shooting School. “The ability to talk to people is negated.

“Whereas here (at the shooting school) you can invite who you want and give them a great day out where they will achieve a great degree of success very quickly.

“People in business say they would shoot even if they weren’t very good at it, because of the people they meet.”

Or, as one of the guys at my work on a trap & skeet team says, “because it’s fun even when you’re bad at it.”

Baron Phillips, a City PR man and keen gun himself, agrees. “It’s become the new networking tool, whether it’s old blue bloods or new money.

“In golf, if you’re no good it’s painfully obvious. In shooting, if you keep missing birds nobody minds, so long as you enjoy the day out in the countryside. There have been stories of groups from American investment banks being sent packing after the first drive of a shoot because they are spending all their time on their mobile or BlackBerry.”

Possibly because the Americans over there have become Anglicized?

Others believe the attractions of shooting go beyond the boardroom. Jonathan Young, editor of The Field, said: “It may be down to people moving out to the countryside. Wives join the tennis club and socially they are fixed. Then the boys turn round and say, what are we going to do? And the answer in many areas is shooting.”

However, more women are also discovering they like the thrill of firearms. Among them is Caroline Stevens, a divorced mother of two from Hampshire, who took up the sport recently.

“I got hooked when I was on holiday in Ireland and was invited on a woodcock shoot,” she said. “It was being up on the open moors, dogs running in the woods, the tension — the whole atmosphere just captured the imagination.”

Stevens paid £60 for a one-hour lesson at a clay shooting school — and discovered a lot of other women were also taking up shooting. “They were divorced women and other women with time on their hands, wanting to do something in a mixed atmosphere.”

Long, long overdue.

Stevens has since obtained a gun licence and bought a Beretta 12-bore. “I love it,” she said.

Campaigners for animal rights are concerned some shoots are so commercial that they have turned into massacres, rather than sport that produces food for the pot. Some 35m birds are reared each year just to be shot.

The animal rights weenies can eat my Birkenstocks. If I owned Birkenstocks.

Snap shots:

People participating in shoots: 480,000

Gamekeepers, beaters, loaders and others directly employed in shooting: 31,000

Jobs supported by shooting: 70,000

Spending on goods and services: £2 billion

A day’s shooting for one: £250 upwards

A day’s grouse shooting for eight on a top estate: £10,000

A shooting estate in Scotland: £3m upwards

Cost of a gun: a few hundred up to £25,000

They left out the cost and aggravation you have to go through to get a license. And they need to get those prices down!

This reminds me of an earlier report indicating that gun ownership was on the rise in at least one county, only in that case it was rifles, not shotguns. The key excerpt of that piece:

The large increase has alarmed anti-gun charity International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), which called for tighter checks on those seeking permission to possess large numbers of guns.

I hope they choke on this news.

KevinLeave a comment

“Maybe America still has a lot to learn from England and her villages.”

We have, but it’s not the lesson I think you mean.

I recently received a comment on a post I wrote back in April of 2005, It’s a Cheap Shot, I Know… That was another piece about the flawed idea that laws that disarm the law-abiding populace somehow make that populace safer. Well, the comment I received was quite indignant:

I’m from Abigail’s village and I think she would be horrified that you are trying to advocate carrying arms after what happened to her.

Too bad.

The person the police arrested and released wasn’t the person responsible for the attack – the person responsible for the attack was someone who lated committed suicide in Scotland. He had a reputation for hunting in the woods (armed) and had allegedly a reputation for drinking and drug taking. The guy was deeply messed up but his actions were beyond comprehension, horrific and completely sick.

And the law did a marvelous job of disarming him did it?

Our village and community were in a state of shock along with the rest of our nation. We stood shoulder to sholuder(sic) and all of us sent our prayers for Abigail and her family. I think your use of this terrible horific attack as a justification for encouraging people to carry more weapons in public is also – frankly sick.

And you’re entitled to your opinion. But standing shoulder-to-shoulder and praying didn’t prevent the vicious attack upon her, did it? She and her baby son were alone with a knife-weilding nut. No cops, and no other defenders. Had he wished, her attacker could have bashed both their heads in with a handy rock.

So what’s your point?

How could you pretend to care about Abigail and the people of my village and country when you advocate the carrying of weapons.

Normally that sentence would end with a question mark, but we both know it’s rhetorical. Honestly, I don’t care about Abigale and the people of your village specifically, but I do care about Albion as a whole since it’s the nation that gave birth to the one in which I now live. As Kim du Toit put it:

I could fill these pages with news of similar atrocities happening anywhere in the world—the British Disease is by no means confined to Britain, as witnessed by car-burning being the recreational favorite of French teenagers—but, if I may be frank, I don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to France, to the French, or to any other country in the world for that matter.

But I care, deeply, about what’s happening in Britain nowadays, and if it seems any other way to my Brit Friends and Readers, then I humbly beg your forgiveness.

Continuing:

So please get your facts correct about this case and don’t you dare use this awful incident to promote the carrying of weapons again.

And you plan to stop me… how?

Maybe America still has a lot to learn from England and her villages.

Indeed. We’re learning quite well. Which is why we have “shall-issue” concealed-carry laws in 37 states and unrestricted concealed-carry in two more.

We’ve learned. And we’re still learning.

Abigail herself and her familly have handled this appauling attack with such dignity and courage that they know what courage is and what it means.

People who carry weapons like you will never have an ounce of the courage that she has.

As I noted in my original reply to the anonymous poster, I might not have the courage Ms. Witchalls has had to exhibit in her struggle to recover from her wounds, but Dan McKown has, and he carries a weapon, thus definitively disproving that particular accusation.

I came across a piece at The Ten Ring, Mugging as Amusement. It’s about the trial of the people responsible for another assault on a young woman, Nicole duFresne, in New York City – another “disarmed victim zone.” Nicole died. She was brave, too. I’m sure her friends and family stood “shoulder to shoulder” and prayed for her, as well.

But Denise references this little tidbit from the story:

The group then rode the subway to Brooklyn, where they menaced a girl at the Broadway Junction station and a man who scared them away by reaching into his jacket as if he were carrying a gun.

Imagine that! Someone who was carrying a weapon (or faked it well) and avoided becoming a victim!

What a coward!

Well, that’s the logic my anonymous commenter uses, anyway.

Perhaps England and her villages have some lessons to learn from America? (And that’s not a rhetorical question.

I Wonder if mAssachussetts Will Follow England’s Lead?

KevinLeave a comment

Stumbled across this story today:

Boston pays $3M in wrongful conviction

BOSTON – The city agreed to pay $3.2 million to a man whose wrongful conviction in the shooting of a police officer led the city to revamp its fingerprinting unit.

The settlement with Stephan Cowans, who was freed in January 2004 after more than six years in prison, equaled what’s believed to be the largest amount the city ever paid in a wrongful conviction case.

Cowans, 35, was sentenced to 35 to 50 years in the 1997 wounding of Sgt. Gregory Gallagher after the police department’s fingerprinting unit matched him to a print that the shooter left behind on a glass of water.

Cowans was exonerated by DNA evidence through the New England Innocence Project, and the fingerprinting unit was shut down. A report found that its officers lacked proper training and were unprepared to do complex analyses.

As part of the settlement, Cowans agreed to drop claims against the city, the Police Department and Gallagher, who had identified Cowans as the shooter, Boston city attorney William Sinnott said.

In March, the city agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Neil Miller, who served 10 years in prison after being convicted of raping a college student. DNA tests proved another man had committed the crime.

So, the City of Boston has to shell out $6.4 million for wrongful prosecution and imprisonments? Well hell, follow England’s lead, and charge those men for their room and board while in the slammer! If they gig them at the rate of $125 a night, you’re looking at $273,750 back from Mr. Cowans and $456,250 back from Mr. Miller! Of course, they could use the $685 a night rate…