Think the government can't take your guns??? Read on. England is not the only country to do this and they are not the only country that has seen exponential increases in crime and criminal confidence!!! Just set back and do nothing and we will see this country fall into the same scenario as others. There is no way that the criminals will not have weapons!!!!! Whether they have guns, knives, or crowbars, it doesn't make any difference, you will not be able to defend yourselves against them.

Most law abiding citizens in this country who have guns are well
trained not only in how to use the gun, but when and when not to use it for self defense. It has been the law in many states that anyone wishing to have guns or hunt or target shoot must have a class before they can get a license for a handgun or a license to hunt. I took my class at Williams Gun Sight Co. in 1953. It was a volunteer class at that time, but when I hunted in Colorado I was required to give proof of a training course in gun handle. No one can tell me that the guns in this country are going to commit a crime. The crime is committed by a person and it is his/her decision to use what ever means of committing that crime.

Ask yourself where we would be today if it had not been for the armed citizen during the revolutionary war for our independence. They were not given weapons just to fight a war. Their weapons where their own!!!! It was those weapons and it was those determined men that gave us the freedom to have weapons and to live a life free of government interference. Please take some time to study what has
happened in England, Australia, South Africa and for that matter Germany during the reign of Hitler. Every time weapons were taken away their freedom and safety have suffered. Wake up American it can happen here!!!! Everyday there is some citizen or government official trying to eliminate your 2nd amendment rights!!!!!


"Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence. "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those that matter - don't mind... and those that mind - don't matter."

... You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door. Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers.

At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun.

You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar.

When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside.

As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble.

In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered.

Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.

When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask.

"Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing. "Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them..

Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested numerous times. But the next day's headline says it all: "Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die."

The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters.. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media.

The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.

Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win.

The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects.

After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.

The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later, you go to trial.

The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted.

When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you..

Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man.

It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.

The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England , killed one burglar and wounded a second.

In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term..

How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire ?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903.

This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns..

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw.

When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.

The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control", demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland ,Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.

For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens.

During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.

Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We cannot have people take the law into their own hands."

All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities.

Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply.

Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.

How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?

WAKE UP AMERICA; THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

"...It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.."
--Samuel Adams
=-======================
Asking our British readers, is this all true ?

Sarge



:shock:

You can't seriously think that it is ok for it to be illegal to defend yourself and your family in your own home.Just look at nature.Every animal on earth uses what it can to defend itself when attacked...whether it be claws,teeth,beaks or even taking flight or running.Unless said animal is caught by surprize,it doesn't just stand there and get eaten.

rixpix You know it. I went to the gulf at the tender age of 50 and found that one really can't shoot a rifle to well with bifocals!

But, I can still acquire a target picture and hold it for at least 4 rounds. I find the Baretta model 96 9mm so well balanced that it is my favorite side arm.

Here in Miami the jewlers don't wear watches, don't show flash, and all have concealed weapons permits and carry.

What a horribly dangerous profession you chose.

You probably know the jewler who was in the so miami shootout in the mid 90s. In fact I would not be surprised if we knew each other or had mutual friends.

.

You missed the humor there, I was picking on you in reference to the history of Australia. You know, how it was settled as a British penal colony at Botany Bay? :lol:
I was suggesting (in jest) that we pack them up and send them to you.

My brother in law knows him. I was in the jewelry business in Pennsylvania and California. I all but retired from the business and was working in advertising until recently when my brother in law in Miami needed help. It is a highly dangerous profession these days. Back when I was in my teens and getting my degree in PolySci I started part time then after school I just kept getting offers. So I stayed with it for a number of years. I don't recommend it as a career choice at all.

- Re the legal hunting rifles, the system worked- you did not have to give them up.

I'm in Canada too and am so glad we don't have the paranoid gun mentality I see in the US.(Though it's beginnng to infect us.) I feel safe almost anywhere. I do, in fact, walk down dark alleyways sometimes. I don't have a weapon and it'd be extraordinary if a ne'er-do-well in the alley did. If he did, he'd get my wallet. So what? The feeling of peace and security is worth a hundred times what I carry in my wallet. Last Fall I did have a contretemps with two guys in a dark path in a small park. The discussion got heated but no-one had weapons. And we all walked away unarmed and unharmed.

The UK has been essentially (citizen) gun free for as long as I know of - the police only started carrying them, except in special circumstances, a couple of decades ago...and while knife weapons offenses are up, it is the high unemployment and drugs that often comes with a social milieu of hopelessness and unemployment that makes people act like animals to survive- gangs and such.

There will always be people who, bent on destroying, will get guns and there will be gun tragedies- we have some in Canada too. This paranoia about the government knowing you have a handgun- a device the sole purpose of which is to kill people - is silly.(Target shootig IS fun but that's not the primary purpose of a gun. Buy an XBox.) My anecdote concerns the crazy people who lived in a semi-detached house next to relatives of mine- drinking and drugs and *registered* long arms, a lovely combination. When the police had to make frequent calls to the address I am glad they knew who had the *registered* guns. (Who gets their knickers in a knot over car registration with the gov't? What about non-elected , non-gov't corporations, far less trustworthy than an elected gov't, having all you electronics, furniture, health records and banking information registered with them? "We the people"? Do you not believe the people control the government? If so, you have a bigger constitutional problem than the 2nd amendment.)

Now, thanks in part to to pressure, "guidance" and (I've read but can't point to right now) funding from the foreign lobby group the NRA, our conservative Federal Gov't has scrapped, on the pretence of high cost and ineffectiveness, the long gun registry. (It DID cost far too much to set up but that happened a decade earlier and the money was spent; the program continued at a modest cost and was consulted by police thousands of times a day across the country, no doubt, something that will make some ideologues shudder. And yet I am safer for it, to the point where (2, I think) provinces are suing the Feds to stop destroying the information. (So much for the "waste of money" argument - after railing against the waste of the setup money they want to flush every nickel down the toilet.)

Back to Canada and intruders. First, you cannot shoot someone "after they rob you". You can defend yourself to the point - and not beyond it - where the perpetrator is not a threat. That could be that he's running away, or you have subdued him- and you must be careful because if you happened to beat him into submission (not usually a wise strategy compared to walking away from the situation if possible) you cannot strike him again after the threat is over. (A high profile case in Toronto a couple of years ago had two shop owners capture a known and repeat shoplifter and restrain him: OK to that point. Then they beat him for some time before calling the police. Charged with assault.) You cannot simply shoot anyone who enters your home. There have been countless tragedies in the US caused by this nonsense.

The US model has everyone armed or assumed to be armed so it is more likely the intruder will shoot the moment he detects movement. So the odds of someone getting shot could be as high as 50-50, compared to my preference where the odds of someone getting my stereo are higher than the odds of someone getting shot.

Frankly, while I admire America and Americans for many things, this Hollywood macho glossed, armed to the teeth do-unto-others-before-they-do-unto you mentality, built on the Cult of the Second Amendment is nonsense. I'll tell you what- if King George ever invades you again, or even if Queen Elizabeth or Margaret Thatcher's ghost invade, I'll come and help you repel their muskets. It's a different world and the US doesn't realize it's sick.

This should inflame some rhetoric and you are welcome to go at it but I no longer hurl rhetoric or URLs around on this issue. I won't change your mind and others won't change mine.

Rabid one your grasp of the intellectual history of the west is most pleasing to one who teaches it.

I think what is so shocking, is the anti intellectual bent of the new right. It does harken back to the dark ages or to a time when independent thinking was antithetical to the culture of the times.

Some 20 to 30% of our population is anti science, anti intellectual (what I call egg head averse), anti progressive (the idea that as a nation we can solve problems and move forward), and gullible to the rantings of a Father Coughlin who is now named Rush Limbaugh.

I have never thought elections in the US to be very important. We are a centerist nation and our policies were mostly middle of the road. We accepted the idea of social security, medicare, R&D, and the building of infrastructure. The idea that we should leave the world a better place than the one we inherited - we were ecologically sensative.

Now for some 20-30% of the population all that is a vast communist plot.

Hard to understand. But, then again Weimar Germany fell in one election and the dark ages once again descended on the most intellectually enlightened nation of Europe.