- Who would ever have thought that a British paper would
extol the virtues of private citizens bearing arms?
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- That is what readers of the London Daily Telegraph must
have been asking themselves recently when they read Simon Heffer's article
entitled, "If the state fails us, we must defend
ourselves."
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- If the state fails us, we must defend ourselves: http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/
02/24/do2401.xml
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- It turns out, the state has been failing British citizens
in a big way.
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- Heffer documents several gruesome murders, the most
recent
involving a gang of young thugs who repeatedly stabbed an unarmed, 82
year-old
lady to death.
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- Crime has gotten so bad, Heffer says, that Brits like
himself are beginning to reexamine their long-held assumptions about the
government's role in controlling crime.
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- Heffer used to believe there was an implicit contract
between law-abiding citizens and the state. The people surrender certain
freedoms to the government, and officials would in turn use their power
to control crime.
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- He says it is clear to all, however, that "the state
has broken that contract."
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- Now that crime rates are skyrocketing in England, Heffer
believes it is time for the British government to recognize a new right
for denizens like himself ó the right to bear arms.
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- In one sense, Heffer is wrong. Bearing arms would not
be a "new right" for Englishmen, for the English Bill of Rights
recognized this very important freedom as far back as 1689.
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- But he is correct in another sense. The British
government
consistently denies its people the ability to protect themselves with a
firearm. England enacted a draconian gun ban after the Dunblane massacre,
yet that law has done nothing to reduce crime, Heffer says.
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- In fact, things have only gotten worse. He longingly
looks to America where citizens can defend themselves with firearms, unlike
the situation in England where a homeowner used a gun in 1999 to kill a
lifelong criminal and was then sent to jail for life!
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- Heffer is correct in saying that the British government
has definitely let the people down.
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- But before Americans start gloating about our superior
laws, we should admit that we also know a thing or two about the state
failing its citizens. Take the Los Angeles riots, for example. This month
will mark the ten-year anniversary of these riots ó an uprising
that began after a jury acquitted two cops of using excessive force against
motorist Rodney King.
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- If you owned a TV in April of 1992, you will never forget
the horrible images that blared day and night after the jury verdict was
announced.
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- For several days, Los Angeles was in complete turmoil
as stores were looted and burned. Motorists were dragged from their cars
and beaten.
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- Further aggravating the situation, police were very slow
in responding to the crisis. Many Guardsmen, after being mobilized to
the affected areas, sat by and watched the violence because their rifles
were low on ammunition.
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- Not surprisingly, hundreds of people were injured. More
than a dozen innocent citizens were killed.
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- But not everybody in Los Angeles suffered. In some of
the hot spots, Korean merchants were able to successfully protect their
stores with semi-automatic firearms.
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- "We went through hell," said supermarket owner
Richard Rhee. "No police, no National Guard. We called for help and
they said we were on our own."
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- As it turns out, they did just fine on their own. In
areas where armed citizens banded together for self-protection, their
businesses
were spared while others (which were left unprotected) burned to the
ground.
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- To be sure, the pictures of Korean merchants defending
their stores left quite an impression on one group of people living in
Los Angeles: those who had previously identified themselves as gun control
advocates.
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- Press reports described how life-long gun control
supporters
were running to gun stores to buy an item they never thought they would
need ó a gun. But alas, they were surprised (and outraged!) to
learn there was a 15-day waiting period upon firearms.
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- The situation was truly outrageous. The state of
California
could not protect these people, but in the same breath, it was not letting
those same citizens protect themselves.
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- Simon Heffer is right. English citizens should be
allowed
to protect themselves. But lest we think that England has a monopoly on
stupid laws, let us never forget one of the most important lessons from
the Los Angeles riots: guns save lives, and gun control only encourages
bad people to prey upon disarmed victims.
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- Erich Pratt is the Director of Communications for Gun
Owners of America, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members located
at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151 and at http://www.gunowners.org
on the web.
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- http://keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3262
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