Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.law-enforcement,alt.politics.british,uk.politics,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns From: [r--s--l] at [eternity.demon.co.uk] (Russell Earl Whitaker) Subject: Part 3 of 3: The Case Against Gun Control Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 00:51:31 +0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- crime is negligible: firearms homicides have not increased since records began in 1931, and armed robberies are so few that they are not even recorded separately. Denmark is second only to Switzerland in its level of private firearms ownership, and considerably ahead of the USA. It has a Home Guard of 75,200 the members of which store semi-automatic rifles and sub-machine guns at home and can be mobilised in one hour. In 25 years, only 13 homicides have been attributed to the 60,000 of these Home Guard weapons. Norway and Sweden also have Home Guards which store military weapons and ammunition at home: the misuse of these weapons is almost non-existent. The US government's Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship has sponsored civilian military arms to rifle clubs and semi-automatic rifles to individuals. In 1965, the Little Report, sponsored by the US Department of the Army, "failed to uncover a single incident where DCM arms have been used in crimes of violence".49 Before its present official attitudes to civilian firearms use developed, Britain used to have a similar system. From 1859 until the end of the First World War the government kept a quarter of a million Rifle Volunteers under arms; in 1900 Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, said that he would laud the day when there was a rifle in every cottage in England.50 Our present system, in which nearly all peaceful citizens are both disarmed and ignorant about firearms as a result of government policy, would lead to a disastrous situation if Britain should ever be faced with invasion. The people would be virtually incapable of organising effective guerrilla resistance to an invader, or of providing auxiliary forces to the regular army, because of the resources and time needed to train people in the use of weapons, quite apart from the availability of these weapons themselves. Should the regular military forces be defeated, the people would be completely at the mercy of an invader. (One of the most fraudulent aspects of the position of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is their claim that they support the possibility of guerrilla warfare as a major aspect of Britain's defence after the unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from NATO which they propose. I have often discussed the issue with CND supporters, and when I press for details of how this guerrilla force is to be organised, these are either vague or non-existent. When I ask whether they would encourage the widespread civilian ownership and use of military firearms, and the training of individuals in guerrilla warfare by official and private sponsorship, they react in a hostile manner to the very proposals they were arguing for - in a vague and offhand way - only minutes before!) The private ownership of firearms by civilians can be remarkably effective in resisting even a modern technological invader. For centuries the Afghans and Pakistanis have been skilled both with using firearms and making copies of standard models in primitive workshops with simple tools and materials. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Afghans, despite their enormous technological inferiority, were able to offer immediate effective resistance and quickly developed rifles that could fire the same ammunition as the Soviet AK47. While their eventual success in forcing the Soviet forces to withdraw was due to the later availability of sophisticated modern weapons such as the Stinger missile, this would have been impossible without the early stages of military resistance made possible by the widespread knowledge and ownership of firearms. WOMEN AND GUNS "Be not afraid of man, No matter what his size; When danger threatens, call on me And I will equalise." (motto engraved on a 19th century Winchester rifle)51 Although capitalism has succeeded in giving women throughout society a wide degree of independence, for example through labour-saving devices, it cannot alter the biological fact that the average man is some 50% physically stronger than the average woman, nor that the average attacker, burglar or rapist is probably rather stronger than this average. And there is no doubt that the threat of attack is very real in Britain today, and poses a major restriction on the effective freedom which women enjoy. But women are not permitted to take any measures for their own protection. In 1981 in Yorkshire, at the height of the murderous rampage of Peter Sutcliffe through the county (that is, before he had been caught), one woman who carried a small clasp knife in her handbag as a protection against the "Yorkshire Ripper" was convicted and fined for carrying an offensive weapon! This situation could be transformed by the introduction of the legal right to own and use firearms and other weapons for self-defence. The possession of firearms by women would provide a virtual revolution in introducing real equality between the sexes in this area. In 1966, following a major increase in rapes in Orlando, Florida, USA, the local police began a well-publicised training course for 2,500 women in firearms. The next year rape fell by 88% in Orlando (the only large American city to experience a decrease that year) and burglary fell by 25%, although none of the trained women actually fired their weapons: the deterrent effect was enough. Five years later Orlando's rape rate was still 13% lower than it had been before the training, while the surrounding standard metropolitan area had undergone a 308% increase.52 If the authorities here are unlikely to take such an enlightened attitude, at least they can remove the legal impediments for groups of women, private entrepreneurs, or others to organise such training, and for the purchase of weapons to supplement it. If they refuse to do so, at least victims of assault, robbery and rape will know who is partly to blame through the denial of the legal means of self-defence. Indeed, if the authorities would hesitate immediately to abolish all laws restricting the ownership of weapons, a more "Fabian" approach suggests itself. On a provisional basis, the legal right to possess firearms and other weapons could be given to one group which even the authorities must agree is both particularly vulnerable and particularly unlikely to use weapons for criminal purposes: old age pensioners. If after, say, two years, this resulted (as the reader will agree it doubtless would) in a decrease in the number of attacks on pensioners, the same right could then be extended to all women. Again, if after a two year experimental period attacks on women were reduced, the political atmosphere would surely be improved for the restoration of everyone's right to provide for their own defence. THE GUN CONTROL DEBATE NOW British firearms legislation, then, has not been based on either reason or evidence. So how have such strict controls, which have effectively removed what was once regarded as a fundamental right of every individual, achieved the status of law with the almost unanimous approval of all major political parties, the police, the media and (taking their cue from them) public opinion? This is not an area which can be addressed with anything like scientific precision, but I believe it can be largely summed up, first, by a 20th-century official British attitude one might describe as "political fetishism". Britain has for centuries been, on the whole, a "law-abiding" and deferential country in the sense that the bulk of the population will go along with virtually anything the authorities demand; many, indeed, will go beyond that. This therefore creates in the authorities a fallacious assumption that the act of removing or restricting by law an object, or tool, that is used for something they disapprove of, will of itself remove the intention of and ability to perform the unapproved act. Even if only a small minority are committing the unapproved act, the large majority must be punished in advance for the actions of the few - must, in short, be punished for doing something that they as individuals have not done. That this is a peculiarly British attitude is demonstrated by a comparison with France. France is by no means a free country - the absence of individual civil rights against the police and the criminal justice system would rightly appall any informed Englishman, as would the bureaucratic interference which, for instance, requires parents to name their children only from a state list of approved names - but this "fetishistic" attitude is largely absent. There is a liquid which can be used to remove the ink stamps on official documents, season tickets, and so on, without damaging the design of the paper underneath. Freely available at any stationers' in France, it is banned in Britain. In Britain, the taxation on alcoholic drink is continually increased to discourage its consumption, and the hours at which it can be bought still restricted, yet the incidence of drunken violence continues to rise, a phenomenon almost unknown in France, where alcoholic drinks are much cheaper (and which has diminished drastically in Scotland, where licensing hours are almost unrestricted). Again, France has no film censorship and most television channels regularly show "pornographic" material that would be unthinkable on British television, yet the believed link between pornography and sexual crimes, taken for granted here, hardly exists in France (which has a much lower rate of sexual crime): at rape trials in Britain, for instance, the defendant usually attributes partial blame to having seen a pornographic film; this is a rare defence in French rape trials. This sharp difference is clearly visible in weapon control. In any knife shop in France, the visitor can find freely available for sale all manner of "offensive weapons" that it is a criminal offence to buy or possess in Britain, from flick-knives (known as switchblades in America, where they are banned in every state but Oregon) to Mace and nunchakas and other Kung Fu weapons. Yet France has a rather lower rate of violent crime than Britain. Another broad characteristic, specific to British socialism since at least the First World War, is a belief that the common people whom socialism was supposed to help were purely an object, not a subject. The experience of the "working class" under capitalism, as (incorrectly) interpreted by the early 20th-century socialists, led them to believe that they were not capable of spontaneously organising themselves, and had to have their lives completely reorganised for them by bureaucrats and "experts". The "slums" in which the working class lived could not be improved and had to be destroyed and replaced by high-rise, concrete-jungle council estates. The masses were incapable of acting as informed customers in health, education and welfare, and the "welfare state" therefore gave very little individual choice or control to the people who were made dependent on it and whose taxes financed most of it. It is this general attitude, now recognised as disastrous in so many areas (surviving 19th-century "slum" houses in east London are selling for UKP 200,000 long after high-rise blocks from the 1960s have either collapsed or been demolished), which has helped to introduce such harsh firearms control in Britain. In his excellent Libertarian Alliance essay /Gun Control in Britain/ (1988), Sean Gabb, after demonstrating the absurdities of firearms restrictions, concluded on a pessimistic note: "The Firearms Bill will become law, and after a decent interval will be followed by another, and then by another, until guns are in theory outlawed among the civilian population. There is no opposing the general will on this point. There is no place for fantastical schemes of deregulation. All that can usefully be done is to observe and record the progress of folly - and hope that its worst consequences will be felt by a later generation than our own."53 Surely, however, one cannot allow such ill-informed, ill-thought out, irrational, repressive and unjust laws to continue to oppress the people without challenge. History provides many examples of repressive state actions, such as the witch mania of the 16th and 17th centuries, which commanded general approval in spite of their appalling consequences. They should always be opposed, however difficult the odds may seem to be. Firearms control in Britain is one of those areas where a rigidly statist regime has been introduced which has become almost universal orthodoxy without being introduced on behalf of some ideology or other. As we saw above, firearms legislation was introduced on the basis of unclear thinking, ignorance about the purposes and results of previous legislation, political trade-offs and temporary hysteria. It is precisely for this reason that it is a difficult area to reform. With other areas of statism, such as the nationalisation of industries, or the development of council estates in the form they took, the measures were carried out in accordance with a specific ideology and with specific ends in mind, such as to make industry more efficient and accountable, or to creat an ideal urban living environment. At least when the measures fail to produce the ends for which they were introduced, this can be demonstrated, and the policies altered, as has happened to some extent in recent years. With firearms control, however, no such objective standards by which it can be judged were ever proposed, yet firearms control commands more general political support than nationalisation or council estates ever did. It also encourages the most officious and bloody-minded forms of policing, which undermine civil liberties. Several years ago a 16-year-old boy who habitually dressed in top hat and tails and carried a long walking cane with a large spherical handle was, as I remember reading, arrested by the police and charged with "carrying an offensive weapon". On 30 June 1989 Robert Manning, aged 31, was lawfully shooting pigeons with a shotgun in a field near Coventry when he saw a police helicopter overhead, which contained three policemen, one of them filming him with a video camera. He put the gun down and made querying gestures to the policemen, who told him through a loudhailer to walk to a clearing, remove his jacket and shirt and turn round. He did this, and found himself facing 20 to 25 policemen with police dogs and two with Armalite rifles. One of them told him to march towards them and lie down, whereupon they handcuffed him and removed his boots. The helicopter landed, and he was taken in it to a police cell despite explaining what he had been doing. The police contacted the farmer who owned the field and confirmed that Mr Manning had had permission to shoot there. The police then allowed Mr Manning to leave the station, but refused to return his shotgun, even though he was licensed and had not used it unlawfully. He refused to leave, and returned to the cells until the police finally agreed to let him take the gun.54 It might be objected that if the right of the individual to own weapons is conceded, where does it stop? Are we to accept the right of individuals to have private armies, for example? I would reply that it does indeed follow, while accepting that in tactical political terms the climate is not yet right to put that forward as an immediate demand. Those who express horror at the idea of private armies seem unaware that there already is a legal standing private army, fully equipped and trained as a fighting force with sophisticated, modern weapons and other equipment. Comparatively small though it is, it belongs to the Duke of Argyll, who is the only individual in the United Kingdom legally allowed to keep a private army (the privilege was granted by the Crown to one of his ancestors). Yet I have never heard any report of this army creating any kind of danger to the public peace, or indeed, of anybody making any political objection to it. Given that His Grace's right to maintain an army is given such universal acceptance, if only by default, one could envisage a "Fabian" political process whereby it is extended, over a period of years, first, to all hereditary peers above the rank of baronet, then to the lesser aristocracy, and finally to us common folks, in a process analogous to the progress of the 19th-century Reform Acts and subsequent legislation extending the franchise. LET US ASK THE QUESTION That, I accept, lies in the future. But right now the newspapers are full of tragedies in which the availability of a firearm would have saved lives or enabled people to defend themselves. In two cases in 1989 families living on crime-ridden council estates have been burned to death because they have installed such heavy security, including locked steel bars at the windows and multiple-locked steel doors, that they were unable to escape form their own homes when fires broke out. If they have been allowed to possess firearms for the defence of their home from burglars and attackers, such precautions would have been less necessary. Not content with herding people into the violent, inhuman environments of so many council estates, the state removes even their right to defend themselves with weapons against the crime it has exposed them to. Every week, many shocking cases of violent crime are reported, but I was particularly appalled by a recent case in which three men broke into the home of a 54-year-old Cypriot woman in south London, trying to obtain her life savings of UKP 900, which were hidden in her brassiere. They tortured her for several hours in the most horrifying ways, one of which was thrusting an air pistol up her nostril and firing it, as a result of which she lost the sight of one eye. Nonetheless she never revealed the location of the money, which was all she had in the world. It was reported that the police had no clue as to the attackers' identity. Who could doubt that the outcome would have been different if the victim herself had been armed - with a firearm? By what right do those who make our laws deny such people as this woman the natural right to self-defence? Let us ask this question of our political masters, and put the onus on them to explain why they are denying us the most fundamental human right of all, without which any others are not rights at all but merely temporary privileges granted by the powerful on their sufferance and removeable at will - the right of the individual to arm against all aggression. Type of firearms used in robberies in England and Wales, 1966-1969 Sawn-off shotguns Shotguns Pistols (S1 firearm) Others Total Year No. % No. % No. % No. % No. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1966 53 15.5 18 5.2 269 79.3 340 1967 59 21.3 126 45.6 11 3.9 80 29.2 276 1968 98 25.3 140 36.1 37 9.5 112 29.1 387 1969 100 20.6 173 35.7 30 10.3 161 33.4 464 [From C. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, p. 244.] 25 Robberies in England and Wales in which firearms were used Total Firearms Cases involving Cases involving Robberies Pistols Shotguns Year No. % No. % - --------------------------------------------------------------- 1970 475 163 34.3 88 18.5 1971 572 203 35.4 133 25.2 1972 533 175 32.8 116 21.7 1973 484 181 37.3 112 23.1 1974 645 258 40.0 129 20.0 1975 949 365 38.4 184 19.3 [Extracted from C. Greenwood, "Comparative Statistics", in D. B. Kates, /Restricting Handguns/, North River Press, np, 1979] (26) NOTES 1. W. Marina, "Weapons, Technology and Legitimacy", in D. B. Kates, /Firearms and Violence/, Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, San Francisco, 1984, p. 429. 2. /Daily Telegraph/, 7 April 1987. 3. See D. B. Kopel, "Trust the People", Cato Institute Policy Analysis 109, 11 July 1988. 4. /Evening Standard/, 10 July 1989. 5. C. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, p. 7. 6. /Ibid/., p. 9. 7. /Ibid/., p. 11. 8. /Ibid/., p. 13. 9. /Ibid/., p. 14. 10. /Ibid./, p. 15. 11. /Ibid./, p. 15. 12. /Ibid./, p. 16. 13. /Daily Telegraph/, 5 November 1988. 14. Greenwood,/ op. cit./, p. 23. 15. /Ibid./, p. 25. 16. /Ibid./, p. 25-26. 17. /Ibid/., p. 38. 18. /Times/, 15 September 1988. 19. Greenwood, op. cit., p. 46. 20. /Ibid/., p. 54. 21. /Ibid./, p. 72. 22. /Ibid./, p. 86-87. 23. /Ibid./, p. 243. 24. /Ibid./, p. 243-244. 25. /Ibid/., p. 244. 26. Extracted from C. Greenwood, "Comparative Statistics", in Don B. Kates, ed., /Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out/, North River Press, np, 1979, p. 54. 27. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 246. 28. T. Jackson, /Legitimate Pursuit/, Ashford Press, Southampton, 1988. 29. /Times/, 26 August 1987. 30. /Times/, 7 January 1988. 31. Combined from data in Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 235, 236 and /Times/, 3 November 1988. 32. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 237. 33. M. Bateman, /This England/, Penguin, London, 1969, p. 112. 34. /Times/, 15 September 1988 35. Jackson, op. cit., p. 45. 36. /Daily Telegraph/, 27 July 1989, p. 1. 37. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 173. 38. Kopel, op. cit., p. 2-3. 39. /Ibid./, p. 3. 40. Quoted in Kates, /Restricting Handguns/, op. cit., p. 185. 41. /Ibid./, p. 185. 42. R. A. I. Munday, "Civilian Possession of Military Firearms", /Salisbury Review/, March 1988, p. 45-49. 43. /Times/, 26 August 1988, p. 3. 44. Munday, op. cit. 45. /Times/, 26 August 1988, p. 3. 46. /USA Today/, 18 April 1984. 47. Greenwood, "Comparative Statistics", op. cit., p. 37-38. 48. /Ibid./, p. 35-36. 49. Munday, op. cit., /passim./ 50. /Ibid./ 51. Kopel,/ op. cit./, p. 18. 52. /Ibid/., p. 3. 53. S. Gabb, /Gun Control in Britain/, Political Notes No. 33, Libertarian Alliance, London, 1988, p. 4. 54. /Sunday Telegraph/, 30 July 1989, p. 20. FURTHER READING C. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972. The definitive academic study of the problem; a comprehensive historical, legal, statistical, criminological and practical survey of firearms control in England and Wales. Written by a former senior police officer who now edits /Guns Review/, the leading firearms journal in the country and is a voice of reason on the subject. Iconoclastic and indispensable to any understanding of the subject. Don B. Kates, ed., /Firearms and Violence/, Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, San Fransisco, 1984. An encyclopaedic collection of studies by 17 academics and lawyers, covering every area of the issue from a perspective sympathetic to gun ownership. Some of these scholars, including Professor James D. Wright, former president of the American Sociological Association, began their studies advocating stricter firearms control, and became convinced of the opposite case as a result of their researches. A complete demolition of the case for totalitarianism in firearms. Don B. Kates, ed., /Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out/, North River Press, np, 1979. Essays by eight experts on the subject of legal controls on pistols and other firearms. Most of the authors are American "liberals" in law and academe who dissent here from the gun-control orthodoxy of US "liberalism", and explain why. T. Jackson, /Legitimate Pursuit/, Ashford Press, Southampton, 1988. Sponsored by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation as a response to the 1988 Firearms (Amendment) Bill, and covering only sporting guns, this short book, by one of Britain's leading experts on the subject, gives useful technical information about different guns and solid arguments, based on facts, against further firearms restrictions, while being rather defensive and not challenging the basic principles of British gun control. The use of guns for sporting purposes has hardly been mentioned in my essay, which emphasises the use of firearms for self-defence. /Law and Policy Quarterly/, volume 5, number 3, July 1983. An interdisciplinary American academic journal with contributions by eight experts from a viewpoint critical of further restrictions. Some of the essays were later included in /Firearms and Violence/ in extended forms. D. B. Kopel, "Trust the People", Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 109, 11 July 1988. A short pamphlet by an American lawyer that contains most of the relevant facts and arguments in an easily digested form. S. Gabb, /Gun Control in Britain/, Political Notes No. 33, Libertarian Alliance, London, 1988. A short and useful critique of gun control from a libertarian perspective. - --------------------------------------------------------------- Political Notes No. 47 ISSN 0267 7059 ISBN 1 870614 74 7 An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance, 25 Chapter Chambers Esterbrooke Street London SW1P 4NN Copyright 1990: Libertarian Alliance; David Botsford Uploaded for sale on AMiX, with the permission of and by arrangement with the Libertarian Alliance by: Russell Earl Whitaker Communications Editor, EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought AMiX: RWHITAKER [w--ta--r] at [eternity.demon.co.uk] Reproduction is freely permitted, given that the text is not altered in any way. This work is available in the Extropians Market on AMiX. [For information on the American Information Exchange (AMiX), send a request to [a--xi--o] at [markets.amix.com], or call 415-903-1010.] The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, ts Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers. LA Secretary and Editorial Director: Chris R. Tame Executive Editor: Brian Micklethwait FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLJz2u4Tj7/vxxWtPAQEmLQQAptaAuYNQi8CZeaIyVPJOADwRupPEN0XM FY0gYUmhXXFu6gqYNYEpyWc56tPo1BmWZnCC23eiYJY7pZm5C1iRnh/s0EV4/aVq DbIBCPXcKLXhHMntqNe6wnJl9hvkuSUxd1RixE9L5j68rwbCqH4FjC3CaQjU+peI Ux7qzkMdqQ4= =9BBY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Russell Earl Whitaker [w--ta--r] at [eternity.demon.co.uk] Communications Editor AMiX: RWhitaker EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought Board member, Extropy Institute (ExI) Co-organizer, 1st European Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy, London, 20 November 1993