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 because 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. The 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 street 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
side arms 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."
By the way all of Tony Martin's
neighbors have 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
