Dartford murder scene (courtesy bbc.co.uk)

When gun control advocates want a “real world” example of civilian disarmament’s benefits they tout the UK. Never mind that The Land of Hope and Glory has the highest violent crime rate in Europe, far higher than the U.S. Never mind that Britain’s subjects are not citizens. That the North Sea islanders don’t have the right to silence or, for that matter, a written constitution protecting any of their natural or God-given rights. The Brits have less firearms-related fatalities than us Yanks so . . . there you go. Now that I’m on their side of the pond (again), let me say this about that. If living in the US gave me a one-in-fifty chance of dying from gunfire while living in the UK reduced those odds to zero, I’d still take America just so I wouldn’t have to eat English cuisine. Can you imagine an entire buffet of inedible food?  Meanwhile, here are some nearly indigestible gun control stories from The Land of the Free . . .

Totenglocke writes: “HR 538 is the Democrats’ fourth attempt to ban the FN FiveseveN in eight years. It also looks like they’re trying to broaden it to where they can test any handgun for bullet velocities over a certain threshold and ban them entirely (cannot own, sell, import, buy, etc).”

Last hurrah or Gunageddon?  DiFi gets to be/go on the offensive next Wednesday at 10am EST at a Judiciary Committee “Hearing on the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.” Webcasted live.

New Jersey legislators vote on 20 civilian disarmament bills the following day (Thursday). Call, email, protest but chances are it’s lights out for Garden State gun owners.

Lock-up your guns? That’s it? What about people stealing Dan’s toaster? live.wsj.com

“Banning assault weapons and requiring comprehensive gun registration can help reduce the scourge of guns; but suicides are also an issue of self-responsibility, resting in the hands of largely law-abiding yet careless citizens who make their weapons all too accessible.”

Lock-up your guns? That’s it? What about owners shooting themselves after they unlock their guns? Suicide Made Easier nytimes.com [above]

"This July 28, 2012 photo shows Lindsae MacDuff holding an automatic weapon at the Gun store in Las Vegas after her 'shotgun wedding.'" (courtesy officer.com)

The media thinks Ms. MacDuff should still be sitting shiva. “Never known for its understatement or good taste, Sin City is bucking the national trend of avoiding flippant gun promotions after the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting.” Vegas Bucks Trend, Amps Up Gun Promotions officer.com

Screen Shot 2013-02-15 at 6.32.54 PM

Too much taste for my taste. Beretta’s New Flagship Store in Moscow thefirearmblog.com

Show your hands or die. Grand jury refuses to indict NYPD cop who gunned down National Guardsman during traffic stop nypost.com

Some concealed carry permit holders are more equal—and more generous—than others. [LA] Sheriff Lee Baca and the Gun-Gift Connection laweekly.com

Click on this image for an interactive map of defensive gun uses (courtesy cato.org)

Click here for cato.org’s interactive map of defensive gun uses (screen cap above).

A gun murder story in the UK? Who’d a thunk it. “Mr McKinley, who police believe came from nearby Stone, was shot in Overy Street on Tuesday. He was found with a bullet wound and died later in hospital.” Dartford pair accused of Kevin McKinley gun murder bbc.co.uk [pic at the top of this post]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

57 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve shot the FiveseveN on more than one occasion, but I always seem to forget just how LOUD IT IS. You want to find the guy who committed a crime with one? Look for the guy that is looking dazed, smacking the side of his head while saying, “WHAT?!”

    I don’t think I could go into that Beretta store. I’d probably end up leaving depressed.

    Who here is surprised that Baca gives out concealed permits to people who are friendly/gifty with him and effectively no one else? Raise your hands. Anyone?

    • This is why I shoot big bullet/low pressure rounds. I’ve done the “itty bitty, high-pressure round” thing in my life. I’m done with it. My ears ring like I’m Quasimodo, thanks in part to thousands of rounds of things like 9×19 or 9×21 fired on indoor ranges. I’m now of the opinion where I say “no” to handguns with > 30K PSI chamber pressures. Works for me.

      In a handgun, the 5.7 is a solution in search of a problem.

  2. I thought liberals were all for “right to die” stuff.

    If that’s the case, why do they have their silk panties in a wad about suicides with guns? They work. They’re messy, but guns have more certain outcomes than OD’ing on drugs, endanger fewer people than jumping off buildings or jumping out into traffic…

    oh, what’s that? I was wrong in expecting them to be consistent? Sorry. My bad.

    • You know, this is an interesting point. The problem is, they just want incremental confiscation. Most of them could give a rats ass about random people they don’t know committing suicide.

  4. > When gun control advocates want a “real world” example
    > of civilian disarmament’s benefits they tout the UK.

    They should look to prisons as an example, and compare the crime rates in prisons vs outside prison.

    • I love it. Show that (in a CONUS prison anyway) it is very difficult to get a firearm. Not pot, heroin, coke, meth, or whatever your recreational chemical of choice is. But guns are rare.

      Weapons however are plentiful, and so is rape.

  5. Between entertaining old friends at La Trompette, receiving a careful fitting at Purdey’s for your London best gun (finally!), and a slow browse at the Tate Modern, it’s a wonder you have time to post, Dear Leader.

    Needed post: “Pheasant Guns –The New Face of the New York Militia!”

  6. Sucks to be you RF. Warm beer, lousy food and hooligans. England is the flyover part of Europe. Inbred elites and subjects to cowed to stand up for their rights.

  7. ***COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC***
    My fiance and I have been together just a couple weeks shy of five years, but she got her first carry permit in the mail today! So proud! Just wanted to share that. Carry on.

  8. I’ve got a few lovely friends in England but you couldn’t pay me to live there. They are a police state as far as I’m concerned. Government cameras and microphones on every street corner, yelling at someone is tantamount to physical assault, almost complete civilian disarmament and yes the food is terrible. Why do you think they like curries so much? It’s the only thing with flavor they’ve got over there!

    • Don’t forget the knife task force that trolls facebook for kids with kitchen knives! What an awesome use of government resources.

    • I like the portion where it talks about being robbed by machette carrying thugs — in UK of all places, imagine that!

    • Yeah, but it’ll be filled with rich Russians.

      This is a country where Liberace’s interior designer would be seen as conservative. Where you can order your faux-armored SUV with whale-foreskin interior coverings. Where Albert Popwell’s Eldo from Magnum Force would be admired.

      I have some ex-Ukranian friends. Great people, love their food, great sense of humor, great love of guns, great ability to consume vodka. But their taste in car modifications makes the visual vomit of ‘Unique Whips’ look like a study in Bauhaus.

  14. That Beretta store reminds me of a gun museum that is (or was once) under the capital building in Hartford, CT. I remember being in elementry school and seeing it during a feild trip. Present day, Im wondering what my teachers were thinking by endangering all our lives like that. The guns could have like, jumped through the glass in to our hands and made us go Hollywood on eachother. Oh the humanity.

    • I am a bit of an Anglophile, but I’ve always been fond of “chav”.

      (Despite some misinfo out there, Council Housed And Violent is a backronym.)

  17. Really?

    With all due respect to your intelligence, eloquence and knowledge; you equate our current rights struggle to a bargain of food choices?

    “If living in the US gave me a one-in-fifty chance of dying from gunfire while living in the UK reduced those odds to zero, I’d still take America just so I wouldn’t have to eat English food. Can you imagine an entire buffet of inedible food?”

    I get the joke but seriously, you really feel as if this is a time to joke about this subject? Especially coming from you? Someone that we look to for information, guidance and who, whether you like it or not, is considered a counselor?

    I’m sure I’ll be nuked from orbit by most TTAG regulars but i’d expect more from you and yes, I do take it that seriously.

      • On the topic of the entire U.S. losing their right to bear arms?

        Yeah, you’re damn right I do.

        Compare the the food in the U.K. to the availability of ammo if you wish, but not the availability of our rights to bear arms to someone’s options at the fuckin’ local bistro.

      • I sort of agree with him. These are extremely dark times, where the country is run by evil, our countrymen are our greatest enemies, and our rights and freedoms – for many of us, requisites for living at all – are under siege by an army we cannot fight. And since if freedom dies here, it pretty much vanishes from the world forever, I’d call that serious. So yes, I too didn’t think much of the joke.

        It’s no joking matter when we’re literally fighting for a country worth raising our children in.

      • Well, Lowne, then you came to the wrong place. We mix some levity, pretty girls, and gun reviews in with our legislative doom & gloom around here. Keeps us all balanced, so we don’t get angry. You might try it.

    • I used to get very decent fish-n-chips from an ex-pat Brit in Salt Lake City of all places.

      That said, there’s hundreds and hundreds of spectacular restaurants in the UK. They just don’t serve traditional English food. English food is a truly horrid combination of bad, tasteless, ingredients cooked in the way that makes them have the least flavour possible. Blood pudding and clotted cream alone are reasons enough to leave the island. A “traditional English breakfast” is a dog’s breakfast. The thought of eating English food makes the Norwegians seem sane for eating rotten shark that smells even worse than lutefisk.

      It’s OK, we Yanks eat some horrid stuff too. Can you imagine that there are actually Americans who think McDonald’s makes a tasty burger, that Olive Garden is ‘Italian food’, and that Red Slobster is a ‘seafood restaurant’?

      • Hmm…I had always heard that a `good English breakfast’ is fairly decent both because it is filling and it helps one to avoid an English lunch, & an English dinner.

        Anyway, perceptions count, & Britain is perceived as being full of two things: surveillance cameras & Muslims, with no available defence from either.

  18. RF: Since you’re over there, what can you tell us about the “average” Brit’s opinion about their crime situation? Do they support disarmament and being a helpless victim for every thug who comes along or is this something forced on them? Are their political and social elites better protected than the common man?

    • I know all the “average” Brits I’ve encountered recently think their laws are pretty stupid and are “a bleeding shame,” and like the way we do it.

      Of course, my results may be skewed, as my sample size is only about 20 individuals, and I encountered all of them over the last year or so while they were renting guns and having a blast (pun intended) at my local gun range.

    • Lots of folks eat horsemeat by choice on the planet. Chinese, Italians, Japanese, Argentines, Brazilians, and I know I’m forgetting some.

      Until semi-recently we had a plant in the US, in MO. Exported mainly to France if memory serves.

      Yes, I like horses. Yes, in our US mainstream social constructs, it’s like eating a dog. Yes, when sliced and cooked properly, Mr Ed is very tasty.

  21. I wonder if, like the Brits over yonder, we Americans will ever reach a point where we look back on when we used to be free and shrug it off, thinking “Eh well, ’tis a shame” and get on with our reality shows, too gutless and brainwashed to even think of fighting back?

    Oh, what am I talking about? That’s already the exact situation here.

  22. On this website, you keep endlessly repeating the absurd stat about violent crime in England, even though you know it is wrong. Violent crime is measured differently in England, and you know it. At this point, I have to assume that you aren’t just “misinformed” any more, you are “lying”.

    • Help me out with a couple of links please. I get tired of wading through misinformation on either side of an issue. I will say I encounter more lying on the gun control side than the pro 2a side.

      If you have a source for accurate comparison of stats I would like to see it. If you’re really good you’ll show me how to compare unreported defense or thwarted crimes, unreported crimes, and doctored crime reports.

Comments are closed.