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 b oth "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 Hungerfo rd 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 sidearm 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. Kinda 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
If you think this is important, please
forward.