McArdle & Instapundit On Self Defense Laws & The Racial Grievance Industry

It is not exactly a secret, at least among those outside the racial grievance industry, that Florida's Stand Your Ground law played no role in the Zimmerman trial. It is perhaps less well known, but equally true, that blacks are disproportionately the beneficiaries of self defense and stand your ground laws since, unfortunately, they are most often the targets for violent crime. Regardless, the uniform complaint from the grievance industry is that the jury verdict was wrong and unfair, racist laws must somehow be changed. Megan McArdle, in her most recent effort, has done a superb job of explaining self defense laws, how they impact on the burden of proof at trial and laying out the case for why they should remain unchanged. In her estimation, such laws strike the most fair and just balance that we, in our imperfect world, can make between punishing the guilty and allowing the innocent to go free. My own take on all of this was that the calls of the racial grievance industry are merely an effort to incite blacks into believing that they are under attack from an America that is 1965 Mississippi writ large. I did not take their calls for changes to the law seriously. But Instapundit goes the extra analytical step. He sees the calls to redo the law as both real and insidious. Says he:

But, to be fair, many of these people would be happy with special rules for black youths, or battered women, or whatever, so that they get the result they want. And if the categories don’t fit, well — you can always re-arrange them ad hoc, as the media did when they turned part-black, part-hispanic George Zimmerman into the reincarnation of Bull Connor.

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Stand Your Ground: Holder's Pandering And The Reality Of The Black Community

Eric Holder's latest paen to the vociferous racial grievance industry is to suggest that Stand Your Ground laws play an unfair role in violence against blacks. As I said the moment Holder made the claim, the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus will eat this up. It will give many in their constituency the illusion that their leaders are taking a firm stand against something implicated in imaginary rampant white racism. Of much greater import, I opined that those who would be most hurt by removing Stand Your Ground laws would of necessity be blacks - that group of people far more likely to suffer violent crime, and indeed, to suffer it from other blacks. And lo and behold, this from the Daily Caller:

African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population, despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your Ground” would help African Americans.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites. . . .

But approximately one third of Florida “Stand Your Ground” claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times. Additionally, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white.

African Americans used “Stand Your Ground” defenses at nearly twice the rate of their presence in the Florida population, which was listed at 16.6 percent in 2012.

So Hodler takes a law to task as racist that actually protects law abiding blacks most of all. What a nightmare.

There are several inexcusable obscenities in American society. One is the endless cycle of poverty, single parent homes, criminality and poor education effecting a large strata of black society. Another is the racial grievance industry that does NOTHING beyond paying lip service to these conditions. It paints a picture of America still in 1950's Selma with the deeply racist Bull Connor Democrats still in control. I truly hope that there is a special place in hell for the leaders of the racial grievance industry. They are causing untold harm to our nation and, even worse, they are devastating to black culture and society.

Related: Speak of the devil, I just now saw this from The Hill:

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are readying a flurry of bills in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal on charges in last year’s fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.

The lawmakers are drafting proposals intended to rein in racial profiling; scrap state stand-your-ground laws; and promote better training for the nation’s neighborhood watch volunteers, among other anti-violence measures. CBC members had remained largely silent throughout the trial, but following the verdict, argued forcefully that, decades after the civil rights movement, the nation’s criminal justice system still discriminates against blacks and other minorities.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an icon of the civil rights era, said the decision “seems to justify the stalking and killing of innocent black boys and deny them any avenue of self-defense.” Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), head of the CBC, decried “the presumption of guilt so often associated with people of color.”

“George Zimmerman targeted Trayvon Martin as a potential criminal because Trayvon Martin is black,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told MSNBC Monday.

“Anyone who denies that racism isn’t alive today, particularly in the so-called justice system, is exceedingly delusional,” said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who wore a hoodie on the House floor last year in a demonstration.

“This verdict points to the reality that there are far too many walking America’s streets wearing a hoodie, carrying snacks and soft drink, which can result in a ‘death sentence’ particularly if they are young, black and male.”

Leading the legislative charge is Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a CBC member, who for years has pushed legislation to curtail racial profiling in the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

Conyers’s proposal is still being crafted, but past iterations have barred any law enforcement agent from targeting people based solely on race, gender or religion. It would also mandate race-sensitive training as a condition of receiving federal funding and require the Justice Department to provide Congress with periodic reports detailing discriminatory profiling practices.

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), a CBC member who represents the district where Martin lived, said problems would persist until Congress acts.

“Until we pass meaningful laws against profiling, Americans will continue to be singled out and arrested for driving while black, shopping while black, walking while black and just plain being black,” said Wilson, who’s also working on the racial profiling bill. “My own children, and nearly all of the young men I know, have been stopped by the police at least once, for no apparent reason.”

Right - because laws against profiling will help blacks every bit as much as repeal of stand your ground laws. Compare and contrast the black murder capital of America, Chicago, a place more deadly than for Americans than Afghanistan and a place that studiously does not "profile," with, and I hate to say it, but Nanny Bloomberg's New York City. Under Bloomberg, NYC has instituted a highly aggressive stop and frisk program - something that clearly falls in the CBC's definition of profiling. That program has had a tremendously positive impact on crime in NYC, to the benefit of all but, particularly, to blacks and hispanics. This from NPR:

Closing arguments are set to take place Monday in the federal class action trial involving New York City's stop-and-frisk policy. The trial has been going on for two months in Manhattan.

Plaintiffs in Floyd v. City of New York claim the New York Police Department, its supervisors and its union pressured police officers to stop, question and frisk hundreds of thousands of people each year, even establishing quotas. They argue that 88 percent of the stops involved blacks and Hispanics, mostly men, and were in fact a form of racial profiling.

The police and the city argued that these policies were goals, not quotas, and have made New York the safest big city in America.

"I can't imagine any rational person saying that the techniques are not working and that we should stop them," says Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The city also argued that these stops took place in high crime areas where the crime was often black on black or Hispanic on Hispanic. As NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told public radio station WNYC: "Ninety-six percent of the shooting victims in New York City are black or Hispanic. Crime is down in this city in the last two decades 80 percent."

So the CBC and Eric Holder want to ritually sacrifice George Zimmerman, they want to repeal all stand your ground laws, and they want to end "racial profiling." Not a single one of those actions will help, in any way, the black population of our nation. To the contrary, each in their own way will do significant damage to the black population - including the sacrifice of the racially innocent George Zimmerman. But all will help the racial grievance industry to gather money and stay in power. Bastards. Absolutely worthless bastards.

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The Racial Grievance Industry & A Juxtaposition Of Three Cases - Zimmerman, Scott & Spooner

What do George Zimmerman, Roderick Scott and John Henry Spooner have in common? All three are men who shot and killed boys who were below the age of 17 and of a different race.

Zimmerman of course shot Trayvon Martin, black, during a brutal attack that left him bloody. The penultimate issue for the jury was whether Zimmerman was under a "reasonable" belief that he faced a threat of imminent bodily harm. That the jury did so has caused the racial grievance industry in the U.S. to go into overdrive.

John Henry Spooner is a an elderly white man in Millwauke who shot and killed an unarmed 13 year old black boy - and his neighbor - outside of the boy's home because he suspected that the boy had stolen some of his guns. He goes to trial tomorrow. There is no claim of self defense. It appears from the few facts known that this was murder, pure and simple.

Roderick Scott is a black man in Rochester, New York who came upon three 16 year old white boys whom he believed (or observed, not quite sure) were stealing from cars in the area. Brandishing a gun, he ordered them to stay in place until the police arrived. According to Scott, one of the boys charged him, saying that he was going to "get" Scott. Before the boy so much as touched Scott, he lay dead of a gunshot that Scott claimed he fired in self defense. Unlike Trayvon Martin, the person Scott shot had no history of any troubled past. Like Trayvon Martin, the boy's parents are inconsolable, believing their innocent son was murdered. Scott was acquitted of manslaughter charges yesterday following a jury trial.

Now, I admit, I only know about the facts of Spooner and Scott cases from news stories, not from the jury trials, so the thumbnail sketches that I have given above do not tell the whole story, and indeed, could well be biased. That said, let's assume the stories are accurate. Which of these two cases would you think would be national news and why?

Zimmerman did, of course, but the other one is, it may surprise you, the Spooner case, which is being billed by Yahoo News at least as "a case that bears some striking similarities to George Zimmerman's." No, there are virtually no similarities between the Zimmerman and Spooner cases. But the Zimmerman and Scott cases are indeed photo negative similar. Both were within the bounds of reasonable questions of fact on manslaughter and self defense - and both have been answered by a jury. These cases are indeed strikingly similar.

Yet you likely won't hear a single person on the left who knows of the Scott case. You will not hear of it on the national news. The Rev. Al will never mention it. And rest assured that the NAACP will not be making it their raison d'etre to insure that Scott is punished under federal civil rights laws. There will likely not be death threats against Mr. Scott, nor will he have to spend the rest of his life being hunted by the members of the racial grievance industry. And indeed, the Scott case is strictly making it to the local news - it appears nowhere on Yahoo news, ABC, CBS, NBC, or even for that matter, MSNBC.

There is probably no greater proof of how the racial grievance industry is manipulating blacks and this nation than the treatment of these three cases.

And there are others. Former representative and army officer Allen West - a man who believes that Zimmerman should have been given a trial, but solely for manslaughter - in fact points out that the Zimmerman case is no longer about justice. It is only about power and money for the racial grievance industry. Where is, he asks, the NAACP in respect to outrageous black on white violence, or for that matter, the statistically significant problem of black on black violence?



Where are they indeed.

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Milwaukee County Sheriff - "Simply Calling 911 & Waiting Is No Longer Your Best Option"

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. has released a public safety announcement calling on citizens in his community to be armed, trained and responsible for their own safety until police arrive. You can hear the 30 second ad here. The text:

I am Sheriff David Clarke and I want to talk to you about something personal - your safety. It's no longer a spectator sport. I need you in the game. But are you ready?

With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you could fight back.

But are you prepared? Consider taking a Certified Safety Course in the handling of fire arms so that you could defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family.

We're partners now. Can I count on you.

The Sheriff is pretty clearly getting in a dig at budget cuts to his department. Regardless, he could be manned at 100% and his advice would still be wholly valid. Just remember, it took police 20 minutes to make it to Sandy Hook after they were first called about a shooting. They got there in time to clean up after the massacre.

Police will always respond minutes or more after an incident has occurred. During those first critical minutes, the only thing protecting you and your family is you.

And that is Clarke's justification for the ad:

"People are responsible to play a role in their own safety, with the help of law enforcement," Clarke said. "I'm here to do my part, but we have fewer and fewer resources. We're not omnipresent, and we have to stop giving people that impression."

"After sitting down and thinking about this, I'm thinking `Hey, I've got an untapped reserve over here, and it's the public,"' Clarke said.

It's a bit sad that Clarke only came to these obvious conclusions after budget cuts, but better late than never. Not surprisingly, the Sheriff's ad has generated howls from the left, with the most pointed criticism coming from Milwaukee's Democrat Mayor, Tom Barrett. "Apparently Sheriff David Clarke is auditioning for the next Dirty Harry movie."

Obviously Barrett's a horse's ass, but his response is telling. Is there any doubt that virtually everyone on the left who thinks of armed private citizens thinks of Dirty Harry or something in a similar vein? The left hates what they can't control - and there is little more out of their control than an armed citizen.

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The 2nd Amendment - The Wrong Conversation For The Last Time?

Two very good posts make the argument that "gun control" is not the "national conversation" we need to be having in the wake of Sandy Hook. At the American Thinker, Randall Hoven makes the point that we are in the midst of declining rates of crime, even as gun ownership in the U.S. has been liberalized in a number of states. Addressing FBI crime statistics, he notes:

. . . the murder rate [in the U.S.] is historically low and is already trending downward. In fact, the murder rate in 2011 was the lowest since 1961: 4.7 murders per 100,000 people. In only 5 years since 1910 has it been lower: 1955-59, when it was only slightly lower at 4.5 or 4.6. . . .

Hoven compares our murder rate against those of Europe. He notes that the U.S. murder rate is not high in comparison to Europe as whole. Moreover, Hoven the decidedly not politically correct fact that when you parse the U.S. murder rate, it shows that over half of all murders are committed by blacks, even though they constitute only 13.6% of the population. Discount for that fact, and the murder rate in the U.S. drops to 2.6 per 100,000 of population, a rate in line with Western European nations. This suggests that any honest conversation about gun violence in our nation would needs to begin with addressing problems unique to blacks in our nation. Lastly, Hoven notes:

[T]here is no evidence here that the availability of guns leads to more murders. Two of the most heavily armed countries, Finland and Switzerland, have murder rates of 2.2 and 0.7, among the lowest in the world. On the other hand, every country with a murder rate at least 5 times greater than the U.S.'s has at least 5 times fewer firearms per person than the U.S.

Bookworm Room takes note of these numbers, and then looks beyond the murder rate to total violent crime statistics, where the most disarmed societies experience are some of the most violent. Ultimately, she concludes:

[I]t’s very hard to avoid looking at the above data (fewer guns and more crime versus more guns and less crime) without coming to the conclusion that, in a nominally Judeo-Christian society with a rule of law, guns add to, rather than subtract from, public safety.

As both Bookworm Room and Mr. Hoven point out, in light of the above, talk of greater restriction on gun ownership is not the conversation we need to be having. As Bookworm Rooms adds:

Do we want to debate gun control, which is the current nomenclature of choice, or do we want to debate lessening violence overall? The former discussion presupposes government restrictions on gun ownership, with the only question being how much restriction the government can and should impose. The latter discussion, however, forces people to confront the fact that the best way to lessen violence would be to arm more law-abiding citizens, rather than to leave guns as the exclusive preserve of the criminal and the insane.

I would add that this should be the last time we have a "gun control" conversation. Unless something happens to change the makeup of the Supreme Court between now and 2016, or unless John Roberts decides to make more political, rather than judicial decisions, the major push of the "gun control" crowd should be foreclosed, assuming the Court continues the logic of its seminal 2nd Amendment decision, Heller.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, the left is pretending that the 2nd Amendment is a nullity. Just the other day, as NY's Gov. Cuomo announced sweeping new restrictions on gun ownership in his state, he attempted to justify it by distinguishing his restrictions from anything that would impact on hunting. But the Supreme Court, in Heller, ignored hunting. As the Court made crystal clear, the 2nd Amendment's purpose, distilled to the modern era, is to allow individuals to defend themselves against “public and private violence.”

With that in mind, when you hear a primal scream from the left that “assault weapons” are only meant for killing people, the correct response ought to be . . . “and your point is?” When one is forced to defend against "public or private violence" with a weapon, the idea is to end the threat as soon as possible. THAT is precisely within the ambit of the 2nd Amendment. And indeed, a strong case can be made that there is no more family friendly weapon for effective self defense in the home than an AR15.

Moreover, the Heller decision directly addresses what type of weapons are within the ambit of the 2nd Amendment. Heller explicitly gave its approval to continuing restrictions on machine guns and sawed off shot guns. But as to other weapons, Scalia characterized the argument that the 2nd Amendment applied only to 18th century weapons as “bordering on frivolous.” As he explained,

Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, . . ., and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, . . ., , the Second Amendment extends, prima facie,to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

Given that semi-automatic weapons have been around in the U.S. for over a century – and given that the AR15 has been in civilian circulation for half a century – it is questionable indeed whether any limitation on ownership of semi-automatic “assault rifles” would be held constitutional by the SCT.

Lastly, as to states that give government officials the power to subjectively deny concealed carry permits for reasons other than a criminal background or mental illness, we await a future Supreme Court decision. The operative language of the 2nd Amendment gives a right to “keep and bear arms.” As the Heller decision explained, to ”bear,” in 18th century parlance, meant to “carry.” Being forced to leave your weapon at home, thus limiting your ability to defend outside of the home, conflicts with both the language and intent of the 2nd Amendment. This surely points to the fact that “may carry” laws are likely to be held unconstitutional.

We do need to have a conversation about violent crime. And it needs to be one that includes all the relevant facts, whether politically correct or not. Hopefully, we will soon arrive at the point where the contours of the 2nd Amendment are fleshed out, and a tragedy like Sandy Hook serves as an impetus and oppurtunity to discuss actual solutions to such problems, not as an opportunity to be exploited by a ghoulish far left bent on making of the 2nd Amendment a nullity.

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Some Thoughts On Guns & The Left

From Bookworm Room: "Over the course of twenty-five years, I've come to understand that an armed citizenry is the only defense against a tyrannical government; that a weapon is the only way to give an advantage to a small woman (or man) being attacked by a big man (or woman); that the fastest way to stop a murderous gunman is to be lucky enough to have a sane gunman in the same crowd; and that an armed society is a polite society."

- The story of the Georgia woman who protected her family by emptying a .38 caliber revolver into a criminal had a good ending - but it is also a cautionary tale. The intruder took 5 shots with the .38 and still was able to walk away. If there had been multiple intruders or if she had missed with a few shots, the outcome might have been much different. I say again, particularly for women and teens, the single best weapon for home defense is an AR15. It has no recoil, much greater stopping power, and carries significantly more rounds.

- From Instapundit:

DO NOT TRUST CONTENT FROM BRADY CAMPAIGN: FactCheck:

Rep. Donna Edwards said that “since Columbine, there have been 181 of these school shootings.” That’s an inflated figure. She used a list of “major school shootings” supplied by the Brady Campaign that included incidents that were neither shootings nor at schools.

Other than that, the list was accurate!

- Looking at all of the gun control ideas being tossed around by the left, not one of them appears as if it would have actually stopped the Sandy Hook massacre.

- Gabby Giffords has a particularly obnoxious column in the USA Today. She says:

Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission. Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.

Given her description of those who disagree with gun control legislation as being an "ideological fringe," one can pretty much bet that her idea of a dialogue is "shut up and listen to me." Come to think of it, that is the same format the left uses for bipartisan compromise.

- Lastly, I still haven't come to grips with Obama's reelection, nor the fact that over 50% of the people who went to the polls pulled the lever for this utterly incompetent far left ideologue. Our nation is in far deeper trouble than I suspected on 6 Nov., 2012, and I really wonder if we will ever come out of it. Moreover, I strongly suspect that Obama will lead us into a Constitutional crisis during his four years, whether that is over guns or the debt ceiling or some other aspect in which he goes around Congress to impose his will by fiat on our nation, I don't know. But it is coming. I fear for our nation.

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What Happens With Guns & Self Defense When The Left Rules Unconstrained? Look To The UK

Britain is a country to watch very closely to see what awaits the U.S. Britain embraced socialism in the immediate aftermath of WWII. And while Britain has dispensed with much of socialism's economic policy, it is still firmly embracing far left social policy - some aspects of which are Britain's policies towards guns, self defense and criminal justice.

I pointed out below that Britain, a country where both the law abiding and the police are near wholly disarmed, is suffering from a rate of violent crime over five times that of the U.S. The British are left with no means of making themselves equal in force to potential criminals at the point of a crime, and as one British Police Inspector wrote the other day, the "thieves rule this country at night, not us." The left in Britain look askance at anyone who might try to defend themselves, and this is coupled with a far left leaning judiciary that is more protective of the criminal than the law abiding.

Britain still allows individuals to own shotguns for hunting purposes under very strictly controlled conditions. Self defense is not considered a legitimate reason. Thus, when, horror of horrors, a Brit with a shotgun uses it to defend the lives of himself or others, he becomes the criminal.

Case in point, Mr. Bill Edwards owns a farm in Yorkshire - one that has been repeatedly raided by thieves. He also owns a shotgun for hunting and pest control on his farm. Several months ago, he and his mother were out walking on the farm when they came upon a thief who was stealing various items. When they confronted the thief, he jumped in his van and accelerated towards them, putting them in fear for their lives. Edwards fired the shotgun at the thief to get him to turn away - which he did, unharmed. The Daily Mail explains the rest:

A farmer accused of attempted murder after catching an intruder red-handed spoke of his outrage last night after the thief walked free with a £100 fine.

Unemployed criminal David Taylor was captured when Bill Edwards confronted him on his isolated woodland property.

Mr Edwards, 21, fired his shotgun at a van driven by Taylor as the thief accelerated towards his mother, Louisa Smith, 50.

Taylor was caught after a high-speed chase but it was the farmer who endured a horrendous ordeal at the hands of police who arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder.

Last night Mr Edwards labelled the experience ‘four months of hell’ and attacked the ‘pathetic’ punishment handed out to the intruder.

The former public schoolboy said: ‘It’s completely changed my view of the police. They treated me like a criminal. The police have acted like bullies who have turned someone who was very supportive of their work into someone who wants nothing more to do with them. They can’t protect the public but don’t allow the public to protect themselves.’

Speaking about the sentence, he added: ‘It is hard to find words to describe how ridiculous the sentence is. I’m absolutely disgusted.

‘We have had four months of being treated like criminals only to see the real criminal let off with a measly fine which will be paid for by the taxpayer since he is on state benefits.’

Mr Edwards and his mother feared for their lives during the confrontation on their land on the outskirts of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, last August. . . .

Mr Edwards said his family has lost thousands of pounds through theft and damage caused in a number of raids on their land.

They caught Taylor and an accomplice loading stolen metal cables into the back of his Ford Transit after spotting that outbuildings had been tampered with. The thieves jumped into the van and drove it towards the pair as they desperately dialled 999 for help.

Mr Edwards fired his shotgun, which was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot, several times, hitting the van’s windscreen and bodywork. No one was hurt. Police eventually caught Taylor when Mr Edwards gave chase and gave a running commentary on his mobile phone. But the crook was only charged with metal theft.

Mr Edwards' shotgun was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot when he fired it at the van.

He was accused of attempted murder after firing his shotgun at a van driven by thief David Taylor as he and his mother feared for their lives.

Meanwhile Mr Edwards and his mother were arrested, held overnight in cells and left on bail for four months. Mrs Smith was arrested on suspicion of possessing a firearm with intent.

It is believed police have a recording of the 999 call in which the shots can be heard as Mrs Smith shouts: ‘He is trying to kill us, shoot his tyres.’

But even now the farmer has not had his shotgun and other weapons returned to him which he uses to control pests on his land and as a hobby. Scarborough magistrate Mike Dineen fined Taylor £100 and ordered him to pay £34.99 for damage caused to the farm gate and padlock when he rammed through it to escape.

Taylor left court grinning and sneered ‘lucky you’ at Mr Edwards after finding out the attempted murder allegation had been dropped. [emphasis added]

Moments earlier his solicitor Ian Brickman said the thief ‘is in many ways the victim in this’ and was left so ‘traumatised’ he cannot work. . . . [emphasis added]

If the left in the U.S. had their way, I have little doubt that we would resemble the U.K. today, both in gun control policy and self defense laws. The question to my mind is, when does something like this become so intolerable that the people revolt? When are judges and prosecuting attorneys going to be held liable for caring more about the welfare of the criminal than the law abiding.

At the core of the social compact between the people and its government is that the government will administer justice fairly so that the injured do not have to resort to vigilante justice. When the government systemically fails in their duty, when thieves rule the night and the criminals go unpunished, how long will it be before the law abiding have had enough, and take justice into their own hands as to the criminals, and aim violent retribution at Judges and prosecuting attorneys for their utter disdain of the law abiding.

At any rate, the UK is very much a cautionary tale for us as to the wages of left wing control and what that means for crime and self defense. I await the day when the law abiding among the UK revolt against this insanity, and the UK becomes an object lesson for the left of the bankruptcy and immorality of their ideology.

Related Posts:

- Guns, Equality, The UK - Where "The Thieves Rule This Country At Night," & An Insane NTY News Analysis - Boy Uses AR15 To Stop A Home Invasion

- Larry Correia's Brilliant Essay On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

- Thoughts On Gun Control From The Late Paul Harvey

- The Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban As An Answer To Sandy Hook

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

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Guns, Equality, A Land Where "Thieves Rule The Night," & An Insane NYT "News Analysis" (Updated)

There is an old saying, God created man, Samuel Colt made them equal.

We saw the exercise in equality play out in the news just the other night when an intruder broke in on a woman and her two young children. They tried to hide from him in an attic crawl space. He sought them out. The woman had a .38 caliber revolver that she emptied into him, then escaped unharmed with her children. In another story in the news, a young woman in India and her boyfriend were on a bus, unarmed, when they were attacked by several men. The men beat the boyfriend, then gang raped and disemboweled the woman.

[Update: This from Instapundit - GOOD: Delhi Gang-Rape: Indian Women Stocking Up On Guns For Protection. God created man and woman. Col. Colt made them equal.]

Those are anecdotes. So what happens on a meta-scale when a nation is disarmed, and people are unequal to the criminal element? For that, we can compare the U.S. and the U.K.

In the U.K., gun ownership is virtually banned. Even the police force in the U.K. is, for the most part, unarmed. Raw figures show that the UK has a lower homicide rate than the U.S., 1.2 per 100,000 of population in the U.K. versus 4.8 in the U.S. But when it comes to violent crime overall, the UK is a much greater hotbed than the U.S., with 2,034 violent criminal incidents in the U.K. per 100,000 of population versus 486 in the U.S. An anecdote from a British police officer gives a chilling feel for the ramifications of a disarmed society - where the criminals are very often more powerful at the point of the crime than either the citizens or the police. This from the Police Inspector Blog:

An ATM raid is where a gang steals a digger, a flatbed truck and some old 4X4 vehicles. They then drive in convoy, at night, to an isolated bank or other ATM site, use the digger to smash the ATM out of the wall, load it on to the flatbed and ‘make off’ to a dump site.

At the dump site, which will be a field or a clearing in a wood somewhere, the kind of place they also use to burn the metal out of stolen cable, the ‘engineer’ will be waiting in another 4X4, ready to cut the ATM open and release the cash. The cash is then divided and the gang abandon all but the getaway vehicles and run for home.

This is a high value business. Some ATM’s have up to £1/4 million inside if they are ‘hit’ at the right time. Every county police officer knows where I am coming from with this. Here is the bad bit for us.

If an insomniac wandering about in the early hours sees such a raid and calls it in, we have to respond. When we eventually arrive, single crewed or if we are lucky, double crewed, if the offenders are still there or if we come across the convoy ‘making off’ we can expect to be met with extreme violence by at least eight hardened criminals. They are better armed than us and will ram our family saloon cars off the road in an instant.

If police officers are caught in the open they will be met with baseball bats, iron bars and firearms. They will also be heavily outnumbered. Even if we manage to get one of the counties very few police dogs to respond, the dogs can be stabbed or shot and the handlers beaten half to death. This has happened in Ruralshire. With our tiny numbers of police available for such a huge county, our pathetically underpowered vehicles and our uniquely unarmed status, the thieves rule this county at night now, not us.

It would seem that disarming the populace has the effect of making them game animals for the predators. And the same holds true for the police. It has the point of making the law abiding citizens unequal when it counts most, when their lives and liberty are on the line.

Equality is perhaps the greatest good - so the progs assure us. They demand equality for women, for minorities, some even for flora and fauna. You have to wonder why these calls for equality end completely when it comes to the ability of the average law abiding person to protect their lives and liberty?

Update: As we prepare for the upcoming Obama push to limit the availability of guns to law abiding Americans, the NYT continues their daily rhetorical support for such measure with a "news analysis" piece, More Guns = More Killing. Even for the wildly partisan NYT, this one should win an award for its over the top and under sourced claims.

The NYT notes that the NRA solution to Sandy Hook style massacres is to expand legal gun ownership among the law abiding and to put armed individuals in our schools. The Times then tries to make the point that more guns just means more killing by using the examples of Latin American countries, all with unstable governments, poor economies, many with massive problems of narco-terrorism, and several with left wing insurgencies, such as FARC. They are not quite relevant comparisons to the U.S..

The NYT also relies heavily on quotes from David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He makes the remarkable claim that “[t]here is no evidence that having more guns reduces crime. None at all.”

The NYT let's that statement stand, apparently unable to find anyone around their water cooler who might contest it. To assist the NYT on this, let's point out that one who would contest it would be professor and author John Lott, who has studied the correlation between gun ownership and violent crime and written extensively on the topic. This from an interview with Prof. Lott:

There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.

Question: What is the basis for these numbers?

Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Question: Your argument about criminals and deterrence doesn’t tell the whole story. Don’t statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?

Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don’t understand is that this “acquaintance murder” number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. “Acquaintance” covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

Question: But how about children? In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won’t tragedies like this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn’t this be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of “shall-issue” laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent. . . .

Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won’t more guns put more women at risk?

Lott: Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

The NYT brings up Australia as proof that gun bans are effective.

After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. Before then, Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent, and there have been no mass killings, said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.

They don't quite tell the whole story. The homicide rate in Australia, low in 1996 at 1.9, increased in the three years after their gun ban before dropping to 1.3 in 2007. Regardless, overall, violent crime in Australia has exploded since gun control was imposed, with the sum of violent crime, including sexual assaults, robberies and assaults, increasing about 20% in just 12 years.

In comparison, the violent crime rate in the U.S. has fallen precipitously in the same time frame:

Indeed, it would seem Australia is going through much the same experience as Britain, with a fairly low homicide rate, but a disarmed populace increasingly suffering at the hands of violent criminals who hold the upper hand at the point of their crimes. When "thieves rule this country at night," that is not a society in which I would like to live. Nor would most of the NYT's employees, I would imagine, were the violence ever to be directed into their fantasy world.

Back to the article. The NYT writes:

“To put people with guns who are not accountable or trained in places where there are lots of innocent people is just dangerous,” Ms. Peters said, noting that lethal force is used to deter minor crimes like shoplifting. . . .

There are a number of responses to this. The NYT provides zero facts to justify Ms. Peters bald assertion. According to Dr. Lott, statistically, the degree at which civilians with gun permits criminally misuse their weapons is very low, and indeed, no higher or lower than that level of misuse among trained police officers. Moreover, according to at least one retired LAPD detective, it is quite likely that gun permit holders are actually more experienced with their weapons than the average police officer. This bald claim by Ms. Peters is just pure arrogance combined with a mistrust of the unwashed masses.

Lastly, there is this gem from the NYT.

“If you’re living in a ‘Mad Max’ world, where criminals have free rein and there’s no government to stop them, then I’d want to be armed,” said Dr. Hemenway of Harvard. “But we’re not in that circumstance. We’re a developed, stable country.”

The canard in Dr. Hemenway's analysis is glaring. Criminals will always have "free reign" for a period of time when a crime is being committed - at least if the intended victims are unarmed or otherwise unable to mount an effective defense. Police respond after the fact, when the criminal's carnage has either been done or been stopped. For example:

1. Sandy Hook Elementary School was a "gun free zone" where the teachers and staff were prevented by law from carrying concealed weapons. Once the shooter gained access to the school, police were notified. It took police twenty minutes to arrive, during which time the shooter killed 26 children and teachers.

2. In Texas, two men attempted a home invasion. Inside the home were a teen age boy and his young sister. The boy retrieved his father's AR15 and proceeded to shoot the criminals, protecting his life and the life of his sister. Police arrived in time to take the suspects to the hospital.

3. In Georgia, a home invasion ended when a woman, defending herself and her two small children, shot her assailant five times. Police arrived in time to take the suspect to the hospital.

4. In Texas, during the Luby Cafeteria Massacre that claimed the lives of 23 people, a diner at the cafeteria who had left her weapon in her car in order to comply with Texas gun control laws at the time, testified that she could easily have stopped the massacre had she had her weapon in her purse. Police response time was about 15 minutes.

5. In Connecticut, during a home invasion by two men, the husband, Dr. Petit, was beaten and put into the basement. There were no guns available to Petit or his family. Over the next seven plus hours, Dr. Petit's wife was strangled and their two daughters, one 11, the other 17, were tied to their beds and raped. Near the end of the ordeal, Dr. Petit was able to free himself and went to his neighbor's house to call the police. The police arrived, set up a perimeter, then stood in place for nearly half an hour, waiting for more back up. During that half hour, the criminals poured gasoline over the two daughters - both still alive - then set them on fire.

The lessons of the above anecdotes are blatantly clear. If you have a weapon, you can defend yourself, your family and others. If you are disarmed by law or choice, then you are wholly at the mercy of criminals. And as the above scenarios makes clear, while we may not live in a "Mad Max" country, there is nothing to keep "Mad Max" from visiting you or your loved ones. Dr. Hemenway has apparently been lucky in his life to date, but that has not been because he has any concept for the reality of crime, violence or self defense.

Related Posts:

- Boy Uses AR15 To Stop A Home Invasion

- Larry Correia's Brilliant Essay On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

- Thoughts On Gun Control From The Late Paul Harvey

- The Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban As An Answer To Sandy Hook

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

Linked at Larwyn's Linx, Nice Deb and the Watcher's Council. Thanks.

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Boy Uses AR15 To Stop A Home Invasion

Thank god that boy had a weapon - in this case an AR15, the same type of rifle used at Sandy Hook - and knew how to use it.

The AR15 has several characteristics that make it an eminently practical weapon for self defense. One, it has virtually no recoil, thus making it something that most anyone of any level of strength can use to fire multiple shots with good accuracy. Two, while an AR15 fires a small caliber bullet - 5.56 - it does so with very high muzzle velocity, 3,110 feet per second. It's stopping power comes causing significant cavitation in the body. In other words, pinpoint accuracy isn't required.

By comparison, the M9 9mm handgun fires a larger bullet, but does so at 1,250 fps. Like virtually all pistols, it has a fairly significant recoil that a weaker individual might have trouble with. To reduce recoil, you have to go to smaller caliber weapons and smaller loads. The smaller the caliber and muzzle velocity, all other things being equal, the less effective will be the weapon when it comes to self defense against a determined attacker.

Bottom line, banning the AR15 and its variants is banning perhaps the single most effective weapon for home defense. That is particularly true for women and teens. Keep that in mind as the left tries to disarm America in the wake of Sandy Hook.

Related Posts:

- Guns, Equality, & A Land Where "Thieves Rule This Country At Night"

- Larry Correia's Brilliant Essay On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

- Thoughts On Gun Control From The Late Paul Harvey

- The Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban As An Answer To Sandy Hook

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

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The Rot Of British Socialism

There is an utter rot at the heart of British socialism. Four stories over the past few days from across the pond highlight that rot - the joint attack on British identity by socialists and Muslims, the refusal to let Ghurkas immigrate to the UK, Health and Safety nazis run wild, and the British government's disarming of its citizenry, leaving them unable to defend themselves when their lives are at stake:

The Trinity Cross is a medal that has been awarded to "62 distinguished residents of the former colony of Trinidad and Tobago over more than 40 years." No longer. It has now been ruled "too Christian" and its design changed after a complaint was lodged by a Muslim lawyer. If the people of Trinidad and Tobago wish not to receive an award of a Trinity Cross, they can certainly refuse it. Why on earth should Britain acquiesce in order to assuage what is clearly just one more in a series of relentless attacks from today's politicized Muslims aimed at discrediting Britain's history and destroying it's Christian identity? Obviously, it suits the socialists of Britain who have in fact, since acquiesced to the Muslim demands. As I pointed out in the post Change and the Cessation of British History, the UK's socialists fully share the same interim goals as the radical Muslims - to defeat Christianity and discredit British history as something evil.

In Britain, immigration is at crisis proportions, largely because EU law mandates open borders. This has led to an ever growing spike in the radical Muslim population. Now, the Labour government has finally seen fit to draw a line in the sand as to that portion of immigration which it can control. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims who wish to destroy Western Civilization, they can immigrate. A few thousand Ghurkas, famed warriors whose regiments have fought and died for British freedom and the protection of Western civilization in all of her wars since WWI, they can't.

It is impossible to imagine a more skewed view. Indeed, the most recent idiotic justification for this policy was offered yesterday by Phil Woolas, the socialist Labour Party's Immigration Minister, who said "I can't say "let the nice people in and the nasty people not". We have to have a law." That statement came on the day another Ghurka died fighting for the UK in Afghanistan.

The socialist chattering class in Britain is so deeply immersed in multiculturalism that they seem congenitally unable to distinguish real friend from real foe. The UK's governing socialists reach out to Muslims without distinguishing between the non-radical and the radical, pretending they are all benign because they see in them a reliable voting bloc. They ignore the brutal reality that the huge portion of radicals among them are a viper in their midst that will, at the first chance, consume them and all of Britain whole. (I wrote on a similar, though exponentialy less severe problem in the U.S. here).

It would seem that the socialist's see their greatest enemy as those citizens within their borders who threaten socialist dogma. Thus we see socialists spend their greatest efforts in a war on free speech and Christianity (see also here) in an effort to destroy traditional society and remake it in their own secular marxian vision. As to actual external enemies, socialists invariably rationalize their hostility as justified using the canard of moral relativism. Thus these socialists clearly feel no great compulsion to act with loyalty to those who have defended Britain's traditional values against an enemy the socialists view as equal or morally superior to Britain itself. It is a travesty and a national disgrace.

Then there are the Health and Safety Nazis - another innovation of the socialists taken with the best of intentions - to protect the public from themselves by exercising intrusive control over their daily lives. The latest comes from Oxford University's Bodleian library, where a series of historic books have been kept on equally historic high shelves that, for four centuries, have been accessed, by step ladders. No longer. The public can't access these books anymore because the Health & Safety Officer has decided that using a step ladder is too dangerous for the general public. Using the dictatorial powers of her office, she has effectively shut down a portion of the library to the public.

This mentality, of not trusting the average person to take care of themselves, is a hallmark of the socialist left. Under Health and Safety laws, it simply stifles daily life. Its consequences turn deadly, however, when the government takes away all means for a person to defend themselves from society's predators. In Britain of today, you cannot protect yourself with a handgun as they are illegal. You cannot use a taser to momentarily stun an attacker, they too are illegal. You cannot even use pepper spray, as even that is illegal. What is left to allow the weak to defend themselves from the strong, the prey to fend off the human predator?

Well, there is the government, acting through the police. But police act retrospectively to arrest for crimes committed. They are not, as a rule, a particularly effective means to stop attacks before they happen. By the very nature of crime and predation, the chance of police being on the scene and able to intervene to stop an attack as it occurs is infinitesimal. And thus do you have people such as Melanie Griffiths, 39 year old mother of three, murdered in her house by a man who stalked her for over a month and after she called the police and asked for help on the eve of her murder. This from the Daily Times:

Mary Griffiths, a 38-year- old fitness instructor, had told friends that she was concerned for her safety because of the unwanted attentions of a man. At around 6pm on Tuesday she dialled 999 saying she was being harassed and asking for help.

Police assured her they would be with her within an hour, but never showed up.
She was discovered dying from stab wounds to the chest at her home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in the early hours of Wednesday.

. . . IPCC Commissioner Len Jackson said: 'People will be understandably shocked and concerned by this vicious attack on a woman in her own home. It is important that we look carefully at how the police chose to respond to contact from Mary Griffiths prior to her death. 'We will therefore carry out a full and independent investigation into the police response.'

The investigation is far too limited. It needs to include an examination of why Ms. Griffiths was denied all means of protecting herself by the British government. Indeed, as I wrote in the post A Constitutional Lesson In British History, the right to own a weapon for self protection is a part of the 1689 British Bill of Rights and, until less then a century ago, in a much more peaceful and law abiding Britain, anyone could own a firearm and travel about with it. Is the enlightened socialist Britain of today better off? If Ms. Griffith, who had been stalked for some time according to the article, knew full well the dangerousness of her situation, why was she not allowed the tools for her own defense. Are we all children in the eyes of the socialists, unable to live life without their constant adult supervision?

The Socialists of Britain can be credited with solving the class distinction problems that existed in the UK when they took power decades ago. Britain of today is much more of a meritocracy today, and the better for it. But that necessary cure was imposed along with a bevy of unnecessary toxins. Those toxins will destroy Britain if it stays on its current trajectory. I oft wonder when the rank and file of Britain will finally say, enough is enough, and force the issue.

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Brits Get The Right Of Self Defense

Until now, there was only a common law right to self defense in Britian that was at best unclear and which often functioned to make a criminal of a law abiding citizen doing nothing more than acting to protect their person and property. That is true no longer. Britain passed a law in September (I completely missed it) that goes into effect today outlining what appears to be a fairly robust right to self defense. This is superb news for Britain and it is a law I never expected a Labour Parliament to pass. I stand corrected. In a post written within the past 24 hours, Britain's Devil's Advocates, I took the socialists to task for the harm that they were doing to religion and law and order. My comments as to the former stand. My comments as to the latter, many of which were precisely on the British lack of a clear right to self defense, obviously are no longer accurate. It is not often that I am happy to be proven wrong and actually savor the taste of finely cooked crow.
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This from the Telegraph:

Home owners and “have-a go-heroes” have for the first time been given the legal right to defend themselves against burglars and muggers free from fear of prosecution.

They will be able to use force against criminals who break into their homes or attack them in the street without worrying that "heat of the moment” misjudgements could see them brought before the courts.

Under new laws police and prosecutors will have to assess a person’s actions based on the person’s situation "as they saw it at the time” even if in hindsight it could be seen as unreasonable.

For example, homeowners would be able stab or shoot a burglar if confronted or tackle them and use force to detain them until police arrive. Muggers could be legally punched and beaten in the street or have their own weapons used against them.

However, attacking a fleeing criminal with a weapon is not permitted nor is lying in wait to ambush them.

The new laws follow a growing public campaign for people to be given the right to defend themselves and their own homes in the wake of a number of high profile cases.

In 2000, Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer, was sent to prison for manslaughter for shooting an intruder in his home.

Earlier this year, Tony Singh, a shopkeeper, found himself facing a murder charge after he defended himself against an armed robber who tried to steal his takings. During the struggle the robber received a single fatal stab wound to the heart with his own knife.

The Crown Prosecution Service eventually decided Mr Singh should not be charged.

Until now people have had to prove in court that they acted in self defence but the changes mean police and the Crown Prosecution Service will decide on cases before this stage.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said that people would be protected legally if they defend themselves "instinctively”; they fear for their own safety or that of others; and the level of force used is not excessive or disproportionate.

He added the changes in law were designed to ensure the criminal justice system was weighted in favour of the victim.

Mr Straw – and other Labour ministers – have previously repeatedly blocked attempts by opposition MPs to give greater protection to householders.

. . . The new self defence law, which came into force yesterday, is contained in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 and was announced by Mr Straw last September.

He is understood to have decided new laws were necessary after he was involved in four "have-a go’’ incidents, which included chasing and restraining muggers near his south London home.

. . . Mr Straw said: "The justice system must not only work on the side of people who do the right thing as good citizens, but also be seen to work on their side.

"The Government strongly supports the right of law abiding people to defend themselves, their families and their property with reasonable force. This law will help to make sure that that right is upheld and that the criminal justice system is firmly weighted in favour of the victim.

"Dealing with crime is not just the responsibility of the police, courts and prisons; it’s the responsibility of all of us. Communities with the lowest crime and the greatest safety are the ones with the most active citizens with a greater sense of shared values, inspired by a sense of belonging and duty to others, who are empowered by the state and are also supported by it – in other words, making a reality of justice.

"These changes in the law will make clear – victims of crime, and those who intervene to prevent crime, should be treated with respect by the justice system. We do not want to encourage vigilantism, but there can be no justice in a system which makes the victim the criminal.". . .

Read the entire article. You have to love how the law came about - the Home Office Secretary involved in chasing down criminals personally. One, my hat is off to him for his personal bravery. Two, the fact that his acts led to his support for a change in the law suppports a critical hypothesis that I formed long ago, that the elitist left has only a tenuous hold on reality and that their utopian attitudes change only through the rare personal exposure to reality. Now if Britain would only send the Lord Chief Justice and the Archbishop of Canterbury over to live in Saudi Arabia for a few months and get a chance to gain a greater understanding of Sharia law . . .

(H/T Bookworm Room)

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Britain's Devil's Advocates (Updated)

In the movie "Devil's Advocate," Satan returns to earth as a defense lawyer with the goal of destroying society by destroying respect for the law. Whoever wrote the script was incredibly insightful. Maintaining the rule of law is the foundational responsibility of government. If the government can't provide order, than society breaks down and individuals supply their own justice. A millenium ago, British society gave up, for the most part, trial by combat and private justice when the government instituted a fair system of laws and applied them with some balance. But what has taken the British a millenium to build up, the socialists are destroying at simply an amazing pace. Their new draft police guidelines could only have been drafted by an utter fool or a person bent on the destruction of British society. And what the socialists in Labour are doing to government and justice, the socialist occupying the position of Archbishop of Canterbury is doing to Christianity.
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This from the Daily Mail:

Guidelines ordering police to respond to emergency calls within three hours and to attend less urgent incidents such as burglaries within three days have been drawn up by the Home Office.

The astonishing proposals were designed as 'national standards for local policing' in England and Wales.

They laid down a three-hour target for officers to reach an incident which 'requires policing intervention'.

And they allowed police to wait a leisurely three days where 'there is less immediate need’ for their presence.

The leaked draft targets were to be included in the Government's long-awaited Green Paper on police reform.

But after a barrage of criticism from the Opposition yesterday – which accused the Government of being out of touch with the public – Home Office officials insisted the targets will not appear in the final version of the paper when it is published tomorrow.

The apparent disarray follows Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's startling U-turn over proposals to force knife-crime offenders to confront victims in hospitals. That plan was floated and ditched within 24 hours.

The proposals for response times – part of a ‘Police Pledge’ to the public – appear to be so modest that they would be of little value as performance targets.

. . . The suggestion that householders who have suffered a burglary should wait up to three days for a visit raises serious questions about the fate of any forensic evidence left at the scene.

. . . A major review of policing earlier this year by watchdog Sir Ronnie Flanagan warned that police were becoming increasingly ‘risk-averse’, and that ‘excess bureaucracy’ was encouraging them to ‘overrecord and under-deliver'.

Read the entire article. This all takes on even more sinister ramifications when one realizes that British law essentially has disarmed the populace and that anecdotal evidence suggests that self defense is likely to send you to jail quicker than committing an actual crime. [Update - That is no longer true. Britian's new law of self defense came into effect about ten hours after I wrote this post.]

And even if one is actually are apprehended for a crime, Britain is simply not enforcing its laws with realistic jail sentence. There is an insane leftist bent on emotional catharsis as providing both punishment and redemption instead of the true punishment of repaying a debt to society in a jail cell. You can see it Jacqui Smith's call for the perpetrators of knife crime to be made to "confront" their victims. When I was Britain in 2003, I can recall a plan being debated on the BBC to significantly adjust jail sentences downwards if the perpetrator would issue a formal apology to their victim. Britain's socialists suffer from the dual disabilities of, one, not trusting individuals to manage their own lives - including to be armed and to act in self defense when police are on their three hour meander over to the scene of a serious crime - and two, looking at law enforcement and justice from the standpoint that society is somehow the root cause of crime. This is a disaster in the making. Were the Devil's Advocate based on reality, one could well imagine Satan leaning back in his office next 10 Downing St. feeling quite confident that all was on schedule.

And then there is Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Cantebury, doing to Christianity what Labour is doing to Britain. He is the man who prior to this day had praised Islam, damned America as an imperialist nation to a crowd of Muslims, blamed America for Muslim violence against Christians in the Middle East, refused to proselytize for Christianity among Muslims, and advocated implementing at least parts of Sharia law in Britain. The Archbishop's latest assault on the Christian faith has come in an apologia to Muslims for the violent history of Christianity and what seems an apology for one of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith - the Trinity. This from the Daily Mail:

Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.

Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity's history for its violence, its use of harsh punishments and its betrayal of its peaceful principles.

His comments came in a highly conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders calling for an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'.

But it risked fresh controversy for the Archbishop in the wake of his pronouncement earlier this year that a place should be found for Islamic sharia law in the British legal system.

. . . The Archbishop's letter is a reply to feelers to Christians put out by Islamic leaders from 43 countries last autumn.

In it, Dr Williams said violence is incompatible with the beliefs of either faith and that, once that principle is accepted, both can work together against poverty and prejudice and to help the environment.

He also said the Christian belief in the Trinity - that God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the same time - 'is difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims'.

Trinitarian doctrine conflicts with the Islamic view that there is just one all-powerful God. . . .

Read the entire article. Its hard to know where to begin with idiocy of this magnitude coming from a man charged with defending the Anglican Christian faith.

Let's of over some basic facts for the Archbishop's benefit:

1. The use of force motivated by Christian beliefs is a part of the historical record. The use of force motivated by the desire to impose Islam is a matter of current events. The two are not morally equivalent.

2. Any original sin Christians suffer was wiped off by Christ's forgiveness on the cross. Any historical use of Christianity thereafter as a basis for violence was not done by anyone alive today. There is no need to apologize for it. There is an absolute need to demand that Islam break with violnece in the here and now.

3. A look at the historical record will show that, but for the Crusades, Christianity has been on the receiving end of Islamically motivated violence for approximately 1,300 years.

4. Even the Crusades were not an act of Christian aggression. They were a counterattack initiated after Christian lands had been steadily conquered by Islam for half a millenium and only after the Egyptian Caliph ordered the destruction of the most holy Church in Christendom, the Church of the Holy Sephulchre in Jerusalem.

5. Pretending that violence is not a part and parcel of how some of the sects of Islam interpret their religion today - including Salafi and Wahhabi sects - is suicidal and wholly out of touch with reality.

6. Apologizing for the Trinity is just beyond belief. If the good Archbishop has a firm belief in his convictions, then it would be impossible for him to apologize for his faith.

Archbishop Rowan Williams is every bit of a danger to Christianity as is Wahhabi Islam. Who will rid us of this troublesome priest, eh? That said, I am sure the Devil's advocate would want him to remain in place.

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