Britain is becoming a nation afraid of its young people

Well, i wonder just how many kids ARE made to sit at the table until they have eaten all their vegetables these days? My guess is.. not very many.

 

The London Daily Mail's Simon Heffer writes in this OpinionTelegraph piece that Londoners need to protect themselves because the police won't do it.

"The government absolutely lacks the political will to deal with the violation of one of the most fundamental liberties of the people it governs: their right to feel safe in their own homes.

"Given this scandulous situation, it is time for the Government to confer a new right on the people: the right to bear arms. Gun control in this country is in any case a joke. There is far more gun crime now than there was before the idiotic law passed by the Major government to ban handguns after the Dunblane massacre.

"The police obsessively regulate shotguns and rifles held by sportsmen who have no intention of killing anyone with them, while failing utterly to control illegal weapons. In America, the two states with the highest level of gun ownership -- New Hampshire and Vermont -- have the lowest levels of crime.

"One of the most murderous places in the United States, Washington, D.C., has the most rigorous gun control in the Union. For a householder to shoot a burglar in most states in the U.S. is regarded not so much as permissible as part of his civic responsibilities.

"If that means criminals getting killed or horribly injured, so be it. As the saying goes, they have a choice: their victims don't."

 

The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies. Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the proposition that people don't need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.

This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal security was ranked first among an individual's rights by William Blackstone, the great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in his moment of need. A century later Blackstone's illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey, cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."

But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual's right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."

 

Hahahaha!!! You are obviously not aware of just how amusing Simon Heffer and the Daily Mail are. Watch a few episodes of I'm Alan Partridge to educate yourself.

 

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

 

RESULTS ARE IN ON BRITISH GUN LAWS

Many advocates of gun control point to Great Britain as an example of a gun free paradise where violence and crime are rare.

Well, there may be trouble in paradise. Our friends across the Atlantic did tighten their already strict gun laws, with the Firearms Act of 1997, making self defense with a firearm completely impossible for ordinary people. Obedient British subjects generally maintained a stiff upper lip as they surrendered their guns and their rights. How much did crime drop as a result of this sacrifice? It did not drop at all. In fact, according to the local newspapers, England is being swept by a wave of crime, including plenty of gun crimes.

The London Times published a story on January 16th that sums up the situation rather well. The headline reads, "Killings Rise As 3 Million Illegal Guns Flood Britain". Armed crime rose 10% in 1998 and the numbers for 1999 may be even more dramatic. The British experiment with gun prohibition has resulted in the same outcome as other forms of prohibition. Since guns are banned, every criminal wants one and it is very profitable to smuggle them in. According to a police spokesman, weapons from Eastern Europe, some still new in their boxes, are turning up during investigations. Criminals now have unprecedented access to high quality guns at affordable prices.

The Manchester Guardian, on January 14th, laments the fact that their city is being called "Gunchester". Police sources were quoted as saying that guns had become "almost a fashion accessory" among young criminals on the street. Some gangs are armed with fully automatic weapons and the generally unarmed British police say that they risk confronting teenagers on mountain bikes brandishing machine guns.

The Sunday Express sent a team of reporters out to investigate the problem and their story of June 20, 1999 said, "In recent months there have been a frightening number of shootings in Britain's major cities, despite new laws banning gun ownership after the Dunblane tragedy. Our investigation established that guns are available through means open to any criminally minded individual."

The government is expected to respond by further tightening the laws on weapons of all sorts. Additional regulations controlling knives and airguns are said to be in the works, although this might be likened to beating a dead horse. The very act of armed self defense is already punishable by law. That right has been handed over to the government in return for a promise of protection.

Perhaps motor vehicles need to be more heavily regulated as well. According to a commercial security report titled "New Wave in Retail Crime", British bandits are using vehicles to smash storefronts in a type of crime called "ramraiding", which would be impractical if shopkeepers had the option of arming themselves. The report states that, "Many retailers have actually gone out of business because of the repeated attacks on their premises."

This recent rise in crime is part of an upward trend that correlates well with the gradual tightening of gun control over the last several decades. The relationship between increasing gun control and rising crime is well documented in a scholarly 1999 report by Olsen and Kopel, "All the Way Down the Slippery Slope - Gun Prohibition in England".

The traditional view of England as a low crime society has also been seriously damaged by the 1998 study titled, "Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales", which is available from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. This report concludes that English crime rates in the period from 1981 to 1996 were actually higher than in the United States due to differences in the way crimes are reported.

The negative result from gun control laws should not surprise us. American cities have had similar counterproductive results whenever gun control has been implemented locally. Recent reports from Australia tell exactly the same story.

It is no coincidence that crime typically goes up after a government enacts new gun restrictions. Several American researchers and criminologists have explored this effect. Whenever people give up their right to self defense in return for a promise of government protection, the results have been negative. No amount of social engineering will change this basic consequence of human nature. Unfortunately, the downward progression of gun control goes only one way. British subjects will never regain the basic human right to armed self defense.

Proponents of gun control in America have a lot of explaining to do. Unfortunately, with the aid of their media allies, this new information will probably be ignored completely or brushed off with a few carefully chosen sound bites.

 

British Gun Controls -- and the quasi-independence of some small islands:
I recently received this article from an overseas friend, and received permission to post it. It does not exist anywhere else on the Web. The article details the experience of a competitive handgun shooter from the Isle of Man who was returning from a competition in the Channel Island of Jersey, and had to pass through a London airport. Following the shooter's tale of woe, I explain how it is possible that handguns are legal in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, even though they are banned in the United Kingdom.

How Irrational Fears of Inanimate Objects Divert Resources & Delay ‘Planes

by John Partington, Isle of Man Pistol Team Member

Flying back from the Commonwealth Shooting Federation (European Division) Championships in Jersey in May 2003 we, the Isle of Man Shooting Team, had to change ‘planes at London Gatwick Airport. What should have been a straightforward exercise in which all our checked luggage would be transferred automatically to our next ‘plane, as per the tags attached in Jersey, became a highly-stressed, worrying farce in which the comic element only became apparent some (considerable) time later.

As our pistols are illegal in England, all the gun and ammunition boxes were dealt with very carefully when we booked in at Jersey Airport. They should have stayed airside at Gatwick and been transferred direct to the Isle of Man ‘plane. Unfortunately, as we were going through the luggage pick-up Hall, there on the carousel were our 3 cases with big Firearms stickers plastered all over them and 2 more boxes clearly marked Ammunition. Just going round and round.

We informed Customs that we needed someone to take charge of the boxes as, if we touched them in England, we would be committing a serious firearms offence (illegal firearm possession is liable to a sentence of 14 years). I showed Customs our 3 IoM Firearm Certificates. The Customs office gave me permission to collect all 5 cases and take them to be X-rayed and checked in. When I put the boxes through the X-ray, the operator informed me that there were guns in the cases and they should not be there. This valuable new information was, of course, a great help! The operator then ‘phoned the senior Customs officer and the Armed Response police unit. The police arrived first and told the operator that there was no problem as they had been notified in advance and, as far as they were concerned, everything was in order. Then a senior Customs officer re-checked all the paperwork and the serial numbers that had already been checked in Jersey, then added a security sticker to each case to prove they had been through Security.

By now time was running out, but we had been effectively forced to enter England with our guns and now had to locate and reach the check-in desk for the Isle of Man flight.

I had the unique experience of an armed escort: one policeman in front of me and one behind. One of the policemen decided that there was no time for the lift so, with a forceful, “We will use the escalator. Follow me!”, he was off at a trot. "Stand back!" he shouted as we raced up the escalator, two steps at a time (with me as the filling in a Police sandwich), "Make way, make way!". I pulled both my Achilles tendons trying to keep up with this super-fit escort team.

Eventually, in pain and out of breath, I reached the Check-in desk.

“What's in the cases marked firearms?”, asked the gentleman at the desk.

Me - a gasped “Guns”.

Check-in - “We will need to check them”.

Me – “But that was done 5 minutes ago, coming in”.

Check-in – “That is not my responsibility. I have to make sure that everything going out is in order”.

Me – “The cases have been sealed with Security stickers and it is plain to see that they have not been broken”. At this point there was an announcement on the Airport Tannoy system, calling me to go to Departure immediately as the ‘plane was ready to depart, which I drew to the attention of the gentleman at the Check-in desk. At my request he then made a ‘phone call to hold the ‘plane.

Check-in – “You have pistols in these cases”, he informed me (this was, of course, a frightful surprise to both the police and myself).

Me – “That is why the police are here”.

Check-in - “I need to check that all the numbers are correct … ”.

When I eventually limped to my seat, my colleagues, long sitting comfortably in theirs, had already seen a funny side that, sadly, eluded me for several days.

Results?

Flight held up for 15 minutes at one of the busiest Airports in the world; several Police and Customs officers diverted for an hour or so from looking for NON-DECLARED contraband, or wanted persons, or some other useful activity; 2 strained tendons and a month’s quota of worry.

Postscript

… and that wasn’t the end of the story. When we reached the Isle of Man, a pistol box with 3 pistols and a rifle box with 2 rifles, were both missing. Inevitably this led to many ‘phone calls, discussions with airline and security staff – and a great deal of worry. A day later, they turned up, but without any explanation. Perhaps the spitting cobras had gone for a walk.

[Back to Dave from here on:]

How did it come to be that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man (in the Irish Sea) are not subject to the handgun prohibition enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, at the urging of Prime Minister Tony Blair?

The answer is that the Jersey and the Isle of Man are not part of the United Kingdom. They are dependencies of the British crown, but they have no representation in the U.K.’s Parliament, and U.K. laws do not apply to the islands’ internal affairs. (Although such laws could theoretically be imposed by the Queen’s Governor-in-Council, they almost never are.)

Before the Norman Conquest of England, Jersey was ruled by the Plantagenet family of Normandy, which also ruled other parts of France. William the Conqueror (the Norman king) took over England in 1066. The Plantagenet family (and the other families which succeeded them on the English throne), eventually lost all of their old pre-1066 possessions—except for the Channel Islands. Although the wicked King John lost Normandy in 1204, Jersey and the other Channel Islands stayed local to the British crown, in exchange of guarantees of great local autonomy. The islands changed hands several times between England and France, giving the Islanders leverage to continue to insist on autonomy in exchange for fealty. (There are are some other islands in the Channel which are part of France, and others--the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Islands--which are part of the United Kingdom. "Channel Islands" is a term which applies only to the semi-independent islands.)

The Channel Islands now have two entirely separate, self-governing Bailiwicks. The Bailiwick of Jersey (one inhabited island and two uninhabited ones) and the Bailiwick of Guernsey (seven inhabited islands).

So the Channel Islands recognize themselves to be governed by Queen Elizabeth, but not, in internal matters, by Tony Blair. They rely on the U.K. for defense and for many external affairs issues, but do have the authority to communicate officially directly with foreign governments.

How do Channel Island gun laws differ from those of the U.K.? Derek Bernard, a pistol shooter from Jersey, explains:

Guernsey does not allow self-loading, centre fire rifles; Jersey does. Guernsey copied the UK 1988 Act [a ban on such guns] in this regard in the mid-90s. Guernsey, through the huge, almost unconstrained power of being able to add “conditions” to Firearm Certificates, rather than through statute, prevents the storage of ammunition at home and introduced a bureaucratic nonsense whereby the Certificate-holders who cannot be trusted to hold the ammunition at home, issue it to each other at the designated storage site. This adds considerable bureaucracy to the process of shooters travelling to away matches. It also prevents home loading, which would be critical if there were many active centre fire pistol shooters left; but, since the few that are left seem “happy” to use factory ammo, it doesn’t seem to cause much heartache. In Jersey, home storage and home loading are allowed within the specific quantities on the Certificate. For some years Jersey authorities have normally granted whatever quantities have been requested. The awful power to add conditions is universal in all 8 jurisdictions in the British Isles.

In Guernsey the licensing authority is the Police force, as in the UK. In Jersey, the Connetable (Mayor) of each of the 12 Parishes, is the licensing authority, but they will normally follow any recommendation of the Police that may be made with the report on criminal record. The Guernsey Licence has to be renewed every 3 years; the Jersey every 5 years.

Guernsey has adopted the UK approach to airguns: outside the Certificate and registration systems, providing rifles have muzzle energies below 12ft/lb and pistols below 6ft/lb. In Jersey everything above "soft air" toys is on Certificate and subject to registration. Until a few years ago Jersey regarded even soft air toys as firearms, which meant that their lawful importation, sale and possession was effectively impossible. Largely as a result the relatively new sport of Field Target air rifle shooting flourishes in Guernsey, but failed to get off the ground in Jersey. Guernsey police "approve" an individual applicant’s security arrangements. This used to be the effective situation in Jersey, but since the 2000 Law makes it clear that it is the certificate-holder’s responsibility to take precautions to prevent unauthorised possession, this inspection has ceased. I am not aware of a prosecution of a certificate-holder for inadequate security since the new Law came in. But in 2002/3 the Jersey Police probably spent about £500,000 searching out technical trivia and prosecuting about 25 people for e.g. Certificates that haven’t been renewed in time. ​

The Isle of Man also appears to have a status by which it is not subject to U.K. laws for domestic affairs. The Isle of Man was ruled by a Norwegian family until 1275, after that by the Scottish crown, and not until 1765 by the U.K.

It is home to the world’s oldest continuously operating parliament, the Tynwald, which has held the sovereignty since 979 a.d. The Tynwald is composed of the Legislative Council (upper house, 10 members; most elected indirectly, plus some ex officio) and the House of Keys (directly elected lower house, 24 members).

"[A]lthough English law does not extend to the Isle of Man, the Manx legal system is based on the principles of English common law," Wikipedia explains.

As in many Commonwealth nations, the legal but rare, course for an appeal of a judicial decision in the Isle of Man is to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. Within the Isle of Man itself, the High Court judges of the Isle are known as “Deemsters” (a Viking-era term).

I am not familiar with the details of the Manx gun laws, other than the fact that handguns have not been prohibited.

Commenters are welcome to share additional information about the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, in regards to government status, and gun laws.

 

As i said before, hilarious..!

 

The truly stunning, amazing and bewildering thing about that article​

is that the Times, which has effectively been the official Labour​

Party newsletter for the last 15 years or so, is actually suggesting​

that banning legally-owned guns might not be the answer to all the​

world's problems. I'm assuming that whoever wrote that article has​

since been sacked and slung out of the National Union of Journalists,​

and will never work in the newspaper business again... Even so. A​

glimmer of common sense in the *Times*, ferchrissake. What is the​

world coming to?​

​

The bullshit about "the main source of illegal weapons being​

reactivated decommissioned guns" is, of course, garbage. There's no​

evidence whatsoever to support this claim - the police have yet to​

produce one re-activated weapon used in crime, but they carry on​

repeating this drivel as they press for still more useless laws in an​

attempt to distract attention away from their own inadequacy.​

​

Yes, it's possible to buy a gun that's had the barrel slotted and​

welded, the chamber and breech face milled out, the action welded &​

pinned shut, action parts removed, hardened steel pins driven in to​

every orifice; and yes, it's possible to turn them back into​

functional weapons - but it'd take half the time to build the​

original design from scratch, starting off with bar stock and piano​

wire, as any machinist will tell you.​

​

Please note that full-automatic weapons, rapidly replacing pistols​

and shotguns as the main weapons used in crime, have *never* been​

legal in the UK.​

​

The point is that there are now at least 3 million illegal guns in​

the UK - at least one gun per thirty people - *one and three quarter​

million* more illegally owned guns in the UK than legally owned guns​

before the ban; draconian gun laws have *increased* the number of​

guns in the country and put them into the hands of the people most​

likely to kill and maim the innocent and helpless, while ordinary​

law-abiding people have no means whatsoever of defending themselves.​

For the first time, schoolkids in the major cities are carrying guns​

in the playground, as a fashion statement.​

​

Does anybody detect a trend emerging here?​

​

It's too late to do anything about this nonsense in the UK, where​

ordinary logic and common sense ceased to function a long time ago.​

Americans, however, should think very carefully about this before they vote.​

 

More gun control isn't the answer ​

By John R. Lott Jr. and Eli Lehrer

Gun control has not worked in Canada. Since the new gun registration program started in 1998, the U.S. homicide rate has fallen, but the Canadian rate has increased. The net cost of Canada's gun registry has surged beyond $1-billion -- more than 500 times the amount originally estimated. Despite this, the Canadian government recently admitted it could not identify a single violent crime that had been solved through registration. Public confidence in the government's ability to fight crime has also eroded, with one recent survey showing only 17% of voters support the registration program.

So, if this hasn't worked, what's the solution? The NDP, which polls indicate may hold the balance of power in Parliament after June 28, has proposed a radical solution: "going across the border to the U.S. and actively engaging in lobbying to have gun -control laws in the U.S. strengthened."

This is part of an ironic pattern: When gun control laws fail -- as they consistently do, whether in Canada, the United States or other countries -- politicians seek to pass new laws rather than eliminate the old ones. In the United States, gun -control groups now claim that the 1994 Brady Act implementing background checks and assault-weapon bans failed to reduce crime only because they didn't go far enough; and that city bans on handguns in Chicago and Washington, D.C., failed only because other jurisdictions didn't follow suit.

The same logic applies overseas: With violent crime and gun crime soaring in the United Kingdom, where handguns are already banned, the British government is banning imitation guns. And in Australia, state governments are banning ceremonial swords.

Yet, the laws in Australia, Britain and Canada were adopted under what gun control advocates would argue were ideal conditions. All three countries adopted laws that applied to the entire country. Australia and Britain are surrounded by water, and thus do not have the easy smuggling problem that Canada claims with regard to the United States. The new attempts to ban toys or cast blame on the United States, reek of desperation.

Crime did not fall in England after handguns were banned in 1997. Quite the contrary, crime rose sharply. In May, the British government reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the last four years. Serious violent crime rates from 1997 to 2002 averaged 29% higher than 1996; robbery was 24% higher; murders 27% higher. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50% from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned, the armed robbery rate shot back up, almost back to their 1993 levels. The violent crime rate in England is now double that in the United States.

Australia saw its violent crime rates soar after its 1996 gun control measures banned most firearms. Violent crime rates averaged 32% higher in the six years after the law was passed than they did the year before the law went into effect. Murder and manslaughter rates remained unchanged, but armed robbery rates increased 74%, aggravated assaults by 32%. Australia's violent crime rate is also now double America's. In contrast, the United States took the opposite approach and made it easier for individuals to carry guns. Thirty-seven of the 50 states now have right-to-carry laws that let law-abiding adults carry concealed handguns once they pass a criminal background check. Violent crime in the United States has fallen much faster than in Canada, and violent crime has fallen even faster inright-to-carry states than for the nation as a whole. The states with the fastest growth in gun ownership have also experienced the biggest drops in violent crime rates.

It is understandable that Canadians are focusing on crime as the election nears. Everyone wants to take guns away from criminals. The problem is that law-abiding citizens obey the laws and criminals don't. Even in the unlikely event that a Canadian government were to convince the United States to ban guns, that would provide no more of a magic solution to Canadian crime than its own failed gun registry. John Lott Jr, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, is author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and "The Bias Against Guns" (Regnery, 2003

 

Will you stop cutting and pasting from websites? A link would suffice. What exactly are your opinions anyway? Got any of your own?

 

Failure of restrictive laws does not mean that allowing general gun ownership would decrease gun crime, surely anyone with an ounce of common ?

 

Youre as cold as ice, youre willing to sacrifice our love
You never take advice, someday youll pay the price, I know

Ive seen it before, it happens all the time
Youre closing the door, you leave the world behind
Youre digging for gold, youre throwing away
A fortune in feelings, but someday youll pay

Youre as cold as ice, youre willing to sacrifice our love
You want paradise, but someday youll pay the price, I know

Ive seen it before, it happens all the time
Youre closing the door, you leave the world behind
Youre digging for gold, youre throwing away
A fortune in feelings, but someday youll pay

(solo)

Cold as ice - you know that you are
Cold as ice - as cold as ice to me
Cold as ice

Youre as cold as ice, cold as ice, I know, yes I know
Youre as cold as ice, cold as ice, I know, oh yes I know
Youre as cold as ice, cold as ice, I know, oh yes I know
Youre as cold as ice... (to fade)

 

You never take advice, someday youll pay the price, I know

 

By clever use of statistics i can prove that eaters of trifle will never be involved in gun crime in the UK.

 

This concrete brains dont realise England did not have a serius gun problem or gun related crimes when brits could lawfully own firearms. Are we going to ban School buses becouse some how 1 school bus fell in a river and all kids drown? or Ban Airplanes becouse 1 jumbo 747 full of passenger crash becouse some moron mechanic left 1 bolt loose ?.

 

Keep it up soon either gangs of youths or Mulims well rule your streets.

 

What language are you speaking?

 

And more importantly, do you eat trifle...??

 

..