Five People Shot In South London

[youngsyr]

Zad said:

deano12345 said:

its all gone a bit Grand Theft Auto: GB

No for nothing is Grand Theft Auto written in Edinburgh, and the console conversions done in Leeds!

Note to others: Just because people break a law, does not make a law wrong.

That may be, but a law achieving no noticeable impact on the its intended purpose does, doubly so if it has side effects that are noticeable.

[Uncle Fester]

Willie Dee said:

Morningside said:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Brixton-F...

It just shows that the current (or ANY) gun law just does not work.

What a dumb statement.

How do you know what the situation would be like given a different law in place?
Does the fact that burglary and murder still occur mean that the laws in relation to such offences also do not work?

Some of these posts are touchingly naive.

We have a government enfranchised to enact legislation based upon the assumption that it is possible to anticipate the effects of the proposed legislative changes. If it were not possible to foresee the consequences then we might as well have a random word generator as a parliament.

The idea that Firearms legislation doesn’t work depends how you measure success and your reasons for enacting it. If your purpose is to reduce gun crime then it’s unlikely to achieve that.

Politicians are little different to anyone else. They have families, ambitions and personal beliefs. I grew up in a family that had an old politician in it. This is like being related to a magician, you get to see how the tricks and misdirection are done. I was young when he died but I got to hear a lot from other family members.

Behind the scenes it’s sometimes comical, sometimes frightening. In my case the guy was a bit henpecked. Things were done to satisfy personal desires, his wife sometimes influenced things inappropriately, but the outcome was often quite good. He was also the last generation in our family to suffer from an unfortunate tendency to consult an invisible friend before making decisions and rely heavily upon the imagined result.

He moved from the Admiralty and took over at the Home Office a few days after a new Firearms act came into force. This meant that he wasn’t directly involved in its drafting, but as part of the Cabinet had discussed the rationale behind it. In addition he was briefed by the Civil Servants when he took over and promptly advised all the Chief Constables that the licences were not to be issued for self defence.

The act had been bought in ostensibly to tackle gun crime (isn’t it always).

In reality it was to head off political problems. At the time it was felt the country was in danger of armed insurrection from groups within, but supported by foreign governments.

A few months earlier they had passed legislation to stop the paramilitary training which the British Union of Fascists had been organising. It was suspected that Oswald Mosley would attempt to seize power and invite German forces to enter as a ‘peacekeeping’ force much had happened in Austria.

In addition they feared Communist influence (particularly Comintern) with organised Labour would attempt to lead the country into Stalin’s control.

In truth had either Hitler or Stalin decided to properly foster armed revolt by their supporters in England then I’m sure they could have arranged enough arms to be smuggled in.

Then there was the Irish problem.

What nobody foresaw was that just three years later our army would be defeated and lose its arms. We would be fighting for our lives, desperate for arms and anticipating invasion, counting upon the citizens as well as regular forces.

The irony of banning self defence was immense. They had slipped a clause in which on the face appeared reasonable and to make perfect sense. They had slipped in a clause prohibiting possessing a firearm with intent to cause death or serious injury.

It wasn’t what the act said; it was what it failed to say that stole the people’s rights. This is a favourite trick. Don’t explicitly ban something; just make the ban a consequence of the interpretation of the law.

Until that time (Protestant) Englishmen had a right to arms for self defence dating back to famous 1689 Bill of Rights. Since the new act prohibited possession with intent to cause death or serious injury with a firearm and omitted to include an exception for self defence, it effectively prohibited possession with intent to defend one’s self.

The previous act had limited this by making Chief Constables responsible for satisfying themselves the applicant had good reason to possess a firearm. The new act prevented self defence being one.

It is fairly easy to establish need for a firearm based upon sporting need, but harder to show that a person doesn’t need one for self defence. The real intent was to prevent anyone from using the justification of self defence to obtain a firearms certificate that didn’t otherwise have an apparent need. The fear that British citizens might use this to generally arm themselves and use firearms to effect political change was the real motivation.

The truth was that some of the Irish, the British Union of Fascists or the Comintern were prepared to exploit the existing legislation, obtain firearms, undertake paramilitary training, seize the country, establish Irish home rule, or hand it over to Russia or Germany. Targeting firearms and disarming much of the population was an easy way to interdict social unrest.

The vast majority of British citizens weren’t after anything so dramatic. They wanted to be able to defend themselves. At the time misusing a firearm could get you hanged so there was a strong existing deterrent to using it in a way that couldn’t be defended in Court as self defence.

Far from being a threat to Britain, most would soon prove willing to fight in order to preserve England against either extreme. The original legislation that entitled Englishmen to have arms from centuries before was really to allow citizens to defend the King and country. When they needed their guns they didn’t have them.

The government feared that left with firearms the country might become so disillusioned with the establishment that they might one day unite to sweep it away. The real problem was that the government wasn’t sure of its support and therefore its democratic legitimacy.

I can’t fault their intention to protect us from the usurpation of British government by foreign sponsored terrorism. But had they been confident of their own legitimacy then they could have tackled the root of the problem which was those who would have destroyed democracy in favour of extremism. But to tackle the political freedoms of extremists is problematical without attacking the freedoms upon which democracy is based.

They opted instead to preserve the illusion of freedom whilst ensuring that no effective action could be taken to change the establishment.

Although Fascism was defeated in 1945 and there was no possibility of Mosley obtaining support the legislation wasn’t repealed.

Eventually the cold war ended and the Communist threat disappeared too, but still no return of our right to arms was forthcoming.

I suspect that today, just as then, the government doubts its legitimacy and is depending upon well established political ruses to maintain their position and is taking the easy way out at our expense.

As for the question about laws such as murder not working, no they don’t fully work either. Even when the death penalty was available some people still committed murder. Yet I suspect that if murder were legalised the consequences would be more murders.

To compare the possession of arms to murder confuses the issue. There is nothing bad that you can do with a firearm that isn’t illegal under other legislation. If you commit murder with a gun then it’s still murder and illegal. If killing is the only reasonable way to defend yourself then that is justifiable homicide and legal even if you use a firearm. Yet to possess a firearm with intent to defend yourself isn’t.

The possession of arms is an essential to the defence of freedom, either against usurpation of power from within or from foreign attack. A right to murder isn’t.