The English are an interesting tribe. There is much to like about their country, including the fact that voters repeatedly elected Margaret Thatcher, one of the world’s best leaders in my lifetime.
On the other hand, the United Kingdom has veered sharply to the left in recent decades, and Thatcher must have been very disappointed that her Conservative Party now is but a hollow shell, controlled by statists who actually think people should voluntarily pay extra tax to support wasteful and corrupt government.
And the politicians openly pursue Orwellian tax-collection tactics!
No wonder the country now faces a very grim future.
But the thing that most irks me about the British political class is the fanatical embrace of anti-gun policies. Consider some of these examples.
- There was a proposal to prevent children from watching Olympic shooting events.
- A British veteran of the Iraq war was arrested after his local trainees included a gun when mailing his possessions back to England.
- In an example of private sector political correctness, a bookstore put shooting magazines in the porn section.
- A man got arrested for finding a gun in his yard and turning it over to the police.
- Starting pistols have been banned from some school races.
- A man was arrested for shooting a burglar who invaded his house.
Given these example of anti-gun zealotry, you won’t be surprised to learn that some English pundits think America is primitive and backwards for retaining an individual right to bear arms.
You may be thinking, “so what, they have their bad laws and we have our good laws.” But it seems at least some Brits want to disarm not just their own citizens, but Americans as well.
Writing for the UK-based Guardian, Henry Porter asserts that it is time for the United Nations to somehow undermine private gun ownership in the United States.
…what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? … If this perennial slaughter doesn’t qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.
Mr. Porter doesn’t specify how the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations are supposed to accomplish this task.
Does he want Obama to ram through the U.N. treaty that leftists hope would trump the Second Amendment?
If so, all I can say is good luck trying to enforce gun bans. The American people would engage in widespread disobedience if our own politicians tried to take away our constitutional freedoms.
And if a bunch of U.N. bureaucrats tried to do the same thing…well, that’s such a ridiculous notion that I’m reminded of my fantasy about what might have happened if the United Nations had tried to stop Texas from executing a child murderer who originally was from Mexico.
But the call for UN intervention is not the most absurd part of the article.
What could be sillier, you ask? How about the fact that Mr. Porter implies that gun owners are akin to slave owners. It’s not an explicit accusation, but you can see in this excerpt that he wants readers to draw that conclusion.
Half the country is sane and rational while the other half simply doesn’t grasp the inconsistencies and historic lunacy of its position, which springs from the second amendment right to keep and bear arms, and is derived from English common law and our 1689 Bill of Rights. We dispensed with these rights long ago, but American gun owners cleave to them with the tenacity that previous generations fought to continue slavery.
So if you “cleave” to your guns, you’re on the same level as the people who defended slavery. I guess this is the U.K. version of Obama accusing some Americans of “clinging to guns.”
Ironically, Mr. Porter self identifies as a “journalist specialising in liberty and civil rights.” But he doesn’t specify what side he’s on, so I guess we can assume – based on this column – that he specializes in undermining liberty and curtailing civil rights.
P.S. The Guardian is known as a left-wing newspaper, but I’ve always had a special place for them in my heart ever since one of their writers accused me of being “a high priest of light tax, small state libertarianism.” He meant it as an insult, of course, but I think of it as the nicest thing ever written about me. Even better than this.
[…] If you want unintentional comedy, here’s a column by a British leftist who equates gun ownership and […]
[…] If you want unintentional comedy, here’s a column by a British leftist who equates gun ownership and […]
[…] If you want unintentional comedy, here’s a column by a British leftist who equates gun ownership and […]
[…] A British writer argued that defending gun rights was akin to defending slavery. In reality, the 2nd Amendment has […]
[…] A British writer argued that defending gun rights was akin to defending slavery. In reality, the 2nd Amendment has been […]
[…] instance, when it intervenes in policy (global warming and gun control, for instance, as well as the Internet, the War on Drugs, monetary policy, […]
[…] instance, when it intervenes in policy (global warming and gun control, for instance, as well as the Internet, the War on Drugs, monetary policy, and taxpayer-financed […]
[…] it doesn’t have much power. When it does try to intervene in policy — global warming and gun control, for instance, as well as the Internet, the War on Drugs, monetary policy, […]
[…] it doesn’t have much power. When it does try to intervene in policy (global warming and gun control, for instance, as well as the Internet, the War on Drugs, monetary policy, and taxpayer-financed […]
[…] P.P.S. But let’s not get complacent. Statists may be losing some battles, but they won’t give up in their war against the Constitution. And they’re using government schools to push a fanatical anti-gun agenda. And they’re also working through the United Nations in an effort to get gun control through the back door. Though I suppose we should be happy that American statists aren’t as crazy as their British counterparts. […]
[…] P.P.S. But let’s not get complacent. Statists may be losing some battles, but they won’t give up in their war against the Constitution. And they’re using government schools to push a fanatical anti-gun agenda. And they’re also working through the United Nations in an effort to get gun control through the back door. Though I suppose we should be happy that American statists aren’t as crazy as their British counterparts. […]
It is of great concern that Lurch- I mean John Kerry- signed the UN’s gun monitoring/ registration/ collection treaty. This treaty had previously been abandoned by previous heads of state, and was thought to be dead at one time. It was resurrected when Obama stated that he would sign it. Now we have an issue.
It is highly likely that the current senate will not ratify this treaty. However, the issue is that the treaty is still there, and what is to stop either a run-away leftist group in the senate from ratifying it in some future congress, or perhaps a lame-duck senate in a soon-to-be no-longer democrat congress?
This is very dangerous ground for our rights of self-rule and our individual sovereignty as a nation. Though it is a George Soros dream come true.
Guns schmuns, I was very nearly arrested carrying a perfectly legal (in the U.S.) pocket knife while visiting England. Got wanded before riding the London Eye, and was lucky to only lose the knife. Had to fill in a form with my London hotel address, and my U.S. address.
As an aside, the Americas were saddled with slavery by our British overlords, who then backed the South in our Civil War.
it seems Europe has more than it’s share of incompetent rubes masquerading as responsible professionals… it will not end well…………
It is just the opposite. You should read a fascinating book called Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe. It’s a book about evolution and human development, but it really has something amazing to say about who wants gun control and who doesn’t.
And [spoiler alert], it is the elitists who want gun control because they object to the democratization of the means of coercion.