Pass this around ....
You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door.
Half-awake, nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers.
At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way.
With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun.
You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it.
In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar.
When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire.
The blast knocks both thugs to the floor.
One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside..
As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble.
In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless.
Yours was never registered.
Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died.
They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.
When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.
"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask.
"Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing.
"Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper.
Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys.
Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them.
Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested numerous times.
But the next day's headline says it all: "Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die."
The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters.
As the days wear on, the story takes wings.
The national media picks it up, then the international media.
The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.
Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win.
The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects.
After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.
The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.
A few months later, you go to trial.
The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted.
When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you.
Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man.
It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.
The judge sentences you to life in prison.
This case really happened.
On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England , killed one burglar and wounded a second.
In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.
How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire ?
It started with the Pistols Act of 1903.
This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license.
The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.
Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.
Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw.
When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.
The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control", demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.
For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens.
During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.
Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We cannot have people take the law into their own hands."
All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences... Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars..
When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities.
Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply.
Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.
How did the authorities know who had handguns?
The guns had been registered and licensed.
Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?
WAKE UP AMERICA ; THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION. "..It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.."
--Samuel Adams
If you think this is important, please forward to everyone you know.
You had better wake up, because your president is going to do this very same thing over here if he can get it done...
And there are stupid people in congress and on the street that will go right along with him.
9 comments:
A few overlooked comments...from the BBC:
When his trial began in April 2000 Martin argued that he had genuinely been acting in self-defence.
But it emerged the pair had been shot as they tried to flee through a window.
'Mind of a child'
Jurors also heard that Martin had a history of gun-related misbehaviour, including firing upon a car six years before - an incident which led to his shotgun certificate being revoked.
In court he argued he had suffered from a paranoid personality disorder which diminished his responsibility.
His barrister told the court Martin had suffered sexual abuse as a child and "considered himself a boy of about ten".
(Hey Rich--seems like a pretty "bleeding heart liberal" defense to get the charges dismissed, doesn't it? Wow--you'd rail BIG TIME if some murderer used the same defense.)
As for the oft-repeated Chicken Little-esque crap about "Obama's coming for your guns, I say, "Bullshit."
Mr R,
I checked 3 different websites to try to verify your account, because I do find the BBC to be very liberal and biased
- Snopes.com
- FactCheck.org
- TruthOrFiction.com
don't back you up. Further, when reading the British paper Telegraph, the response seems to be very sympathetic in that now there is movement towards more rights for the right to self defend.
You are using a fallacious argument in that I never said Obama was coming after anybody's guns. Obama can't even get the real unemployment rate down, which he promised and his Keynesian economic strategy is failing.
Anybody who doubts this administrations agenda on the second amendment can Google Eric Holders comments on the Supreme Court decisions on right to carry; Chicago and impending in Washington.
Respectfully,
Rich Michaels
p.s.
Interesting read on the backlash. OH - btw, that maggot robber was arrested again? Huh. Imagine that.
Throw innocent people in jail ... let the perps run free!! Gotta love Libs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/tonymartin
LMAO - here's part of that story...
#
Martin burglar back in custody
5 Sep 2003: Brendon Fearon, the man shot and wounded by Tony Martin during a burglary at Mr Martin's remote Norfolk farmhouse, was back in custody last night.
Not sure there's any use in this, because you'll use your right wing bias to dismiss the BBC story anyway, but here's a link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/3009769.stm
Funny.....I can't find anything on Snopes, FactCheck or TruthorFiction to back up YOUR side of the story, either. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find anything on those sites that address this issue. I'll happily look at any links you dig up.
Mr R,
I don't think O is coming after the 2nd Amendment, but the people he puts in power do the dirty work for him. Such as in the recent Chicago and Washington gun-carry legal battles (Google Holder comments). This administration has people with their specific anti-gun agendas.
Back to your comments on the BBC, it is always the first thing for Liberals AND Conservatives to discount "the media," but I must tell you that the BBC has a track record of distorting truths, particularly on the "Global Warming" myth.
I could find NO DENIAL of the accuracy of the original story at 3 places I check regularly:
- Snopes
- FactCheck.org
(forgot third).
I did find some very interesting reading about this story in the British Telegraph.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/tonymartin
Many leftists DO want to dissect the 2nd Amendment. O is too busy trying to figure out how to make failed Keynesian economics work in a capitalist economy. So far it hasn't. Meanwhile, I will continue to support the NRA.
Kindest regards,
Rich
Mr R,
I am using complete respect here and you are resorting to "right wing" name calling. If that makes you feel better, rock on.
The truth is always more complicated than too many conservatives or Libs want to admit.
I sited a specific British newspaper with stories covering other facets of the incident and the public backlash and NOW a "right wing" move towards more rights for self defense. If you want to take on the majority of the population, be my guest.
Respectfully submitted,
Rich
All I have to say is let somebody waltz into my house in the middle of the night they will get a face full of .41 mag with 210 grain hollow point...Let them try and take my firearms away from me and the 2nd Amendment it will be over my dead body..What the Hell is this Country and World coming to selling it's own people out and it's Allies..Wouldn't Washington,Franklin,Jefferson..ect..Be real Proud of what this Government and Country has turned into all they fought for has been thrown right out the window in the last 15+ yrs..How about taking care of it's own Countrymen and STOP worrying about everybody else...Come on People lets get our Country and it's beliefs back in order...Every time somebody speaks his/her mind and somebody doesn't think the same way they are called Right wing or leftist...No they are not that is how they feel and have the right to say it weather you or someone else agrees or not it is Thier GOD Givin RIGHT to say it thats what FREEDOM is...I take your side Rich!!!
How is it that "minority" factions are always getting 'their way'? I 'thought', "public majority" rules?! And that our politicians are supposed to represent 'majority' wishes and not their 'own personal agendas'?!
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