The U.K. is a “gun free” paradise whose citizens are free from the “gun violence” plaguing the United States. Or not. telegraph.co.uk reports:
Peter Hedger, 61, who was known as Guy, died after being blasted with a shotgun at his £1 million home on the edge of the New Forest in Dorset in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Police said the robbers had deliberately targeted him and his partner, Simon-Pierre Hedger-Cooper, 48, in order to steal high value jewellery and designer watches that the couple stored in their detached home in Castlewood, St Ives, Dorset . . .
The charity worker, who witnessed the murder of his long time partner, was said to have been left deeply traumatised by events and was being comforted by family and specially trained officers.
I know: it should have been a defensive gun use. But in the UK? Can’t happen — unless you’re a farmer with a shotgun license (having undergone a proctological exam). And even then, if you killed the robbers, you’d be in a world of trouble.
Count yourself lucky to be living in the Home of the Brave and The Land of the Free.
This won’t change the minds of UK citizens.
One incident over there does not compare to what happens here everday.
The land of hope and glory will stand free and tall, While the US falls under the oppressive thumb of the gun lobby.
There are still various shooting incidents going on here everday that your site ignores.
And there’s still no evidence of “good guy’s with guns” ever fighting back against crime.
Guns are and will always be a useless security theater.
All “illegal guns” started off as legal. All “bad guys with a gun” started off as a “good guy.”
The UK still has a homicide and crime rate lower than the US.
Just another day were cowardly neo-nazi gun fetishist like robert to take advantage of a tragedy that is statistically rare in the world then what happens 100s of 1000s of times a day.
The vast majority of firearm “victims” are either ‘perps’ (deserving what they got) or self-inflicted.
Please become one of them.
“And there’s still no evidence of “good guy’s with guns” ever fighting back against crime.”
Please read and report:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use
Not worth it. Every time he’s asked a pointed question or to back up his claims he denies, deflects, and shifts the goal posts. Trolls gonna troll.
This has been pointed out to him before, by myself and others.
He’s a troll, doing nothing but sitting in his “den” counting replies. There is no way he believes what he says.
“… While the US falls under the oppressive thumb of the gun lobby.” Yeah, sure. As if the gun lobby dictates what’s taught in schools, or who gets taxpayers’ money, or anything else that actually affects our daily lives.
It’s easy to have a lower crime rate when police agencies are so understaffed and under pressure to improve their crime rates that they severely under-report crimes, especially violent ones.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11236805/A-million-crimes-reported-by-public-left-out-of-police-figures.html
To say noting of the fact that the official Home Office crime statistics are based on convictions, not arrests; hence, this will not be a reportable “murder” until the miscreants are caught, tried and convicted. If they are not caught or convicted, then it isn’t a murder.
Also applies to other statistics like infant mortality rates.
Die in a fire, you commie hack.
Lol, It’s not a crime in the uk unless there’s a conviction. If progressives can’t get the results they want, they simply change the measuring tool.
That only applies to murder and it goes back 50 years. Unlike other crimes, it’s not a murder unless you have a murderer. Until the murder is brought to justice it is listed as a probable or possible homicide. Police in the UK cleat about half the cases. Their actual murder rate is about the same as the non ghetto homicide rate in the US.
Thank you.
It was tempting to jump in regarding when a crime is a crime, but your input captured it fair dinkum. As some have noted here, a homicide is the death of a person caused by another. Given a number of homicides are considered “justified” (self-defense?), those would not be considered in crime statistics regarding murders. In the US, language is rather a bit sloppy and imprecise. In other parts of the world, languages are more precise in usage and vocabulary. In America, one can be identified as a criminal without benefit of being convicted in a court. Many ill-considered acts conducted in neighborhoods with high gang member representation are considered “crimes”, although no identification of the actor is presented, and the action has not been adjudicated. A gang member who is shot at, and returns the favor is considered “a bad guy with a gun”, even if that person is shooting in self-defense of an unprovoked attack. If the “bad guy” manages to kill the attacker, that is considered a criminal act, based on the affiliation of the person acting in defense. In the US, all shootings in poor neighborhoods are counted as murders in the public arena. Not so in UK and other more careful nations. In the arena of statistics, one can be killed unjustifiably, but the killer is not a criminal, the act not a murder until the court hands down a verdict of murder.
Vaguely correct answer but it does not capture the UK murder rate. When the Coroner’s inquest judges a death as a probable or possible homicide the decision criteria is approximately the same as ours. That is the measure of the true homicide rate in the UK.
A criminal act that results in death is considered murder in the first even if the bad guy dies. See the charges levied upon the survivor in the Broken Arrow Oklahoma case. The young slut was charge with three counts of first degree murder. So when one gangbanger attempts to rip off another gangbanger n a criminal act the defender may have a moral right to defend his life but he still faces murder charges. Likewise, when a prohibited person uses a gun in self defense he is still guilty of murder in the legal sense. Only a gangbanger who is 21 or older, not a prohibited person and not engaged in criminal activity at the time can claim self defenae. Arguably a prohibited person not engaged in criminal activity s merely guilty of a weapons charge.
“A criminal act that results in death is considered murder ” while true in a limited sense, a homicide is not a murder. It is a death of a human caused by another human. The homicide only becomes a criminal act once adjudicated. Otherwise, your defensive gun use that results in a death of the attacker is de facto “murder”, and a criminal act.
You rightly note that the number of homicides would present the true statistic of homicides in the UK, but it would not accurately or properly represent the murder rate.
There, fixed that for your Resistance!
So useless that the police carry them.
The UK will be under Sharia Law within a decade or two.
Probably New Jersey, too.
Your shekels have been deposited in your account.
I love it when people like you say something stupid, and instantly 20 people blast your argument to pieces.
Wot wot wot? No such things happen ‘ere in jolly old England, ‘ey don’t! We is bett’uh than them yanks, ay wot?
Or at least that’s how I imagine how you sound, Resistance. You’re nothing but a jingoist shill who offers felatio to any gutter-mouther swill drinker. Fuck off, commie.
TR, you are so cute
@The_Resistance…”All “illegal guns” started off as legal. All “bad guys with a gun” started off as a “good guy.”” Straw Man? The gun’s didn’t choose to become illegal. The bad guys took the low road and not the high road. Don’t tell me it wasn’t a choice in all cases.
@A77
“@The_Resistance…”All “illegal guns” started off as legal. All “bad guys with a gun” started off as a “good guy.”” Straw Man? The gun’s didn’t choose to become illegal. The bad guys took the low road and not the high road. Don’t tell me it wasn’t a choice in all cases.”
TR is spot on about this. How many guns used in crimes were manufactured illegally? Some? Perhaps, but do they constitute any measurable slice of the illegal use of guns? Unless one subscribes to the debunked notion that some persons are simply born “bad”, with no hope for good, or redemption, then all “bad guys” were once “good guys” until they made, yes, a choice. One cannot dance around the fact that most of the mass shooters (outside rogue governments), bad guys with a gun, were first “good guys” (many “good guys with a gun”), until some pressure fractured their world. Since (you pick a date), how many mass shooters were previously convicted criminals? Unless one puts psychologically challenged people into the category of “bad guy” based simply on the condition of their minds, it is difficult to honestly argue that the mass shooters were NOT good guys before they became bad guys with a gun.
No group of persons occupying any imaginable agency can have a perfect record at protecting the entire public at every minute. Some people are going to be harmed by “bad guys”. Even if every person in America carried a gun 24/7, some would still be hurt. No protection system is infallible. The simple fact is that the number of people injured or killed outside known danger areas, by bad guys (however defined or initiated) is exceedingly small, perhaps as small as your vaunted “acceptable casualties” of negligent gunfire. The threat to the civilized is the “good guy” who becomes a “bad guy”, and brings along a gun. It is not the gangs or hardened criminals that are to be feared, it is the normal person with a gun who exceeds their threshold for tolerance, and decides bullets are better than ballots. It is the person walking about in genteel areas who suddenly goes berserk that is fearsome. The only solution for that is to remove guns from the common populace. Removing guns from the criminal element will require a full-on declaration of total war against that element. We know society has no taste for that sort of carnage. Better the long, if painfully slow, march to demilitarizing the non-criminal public (gun owners), some of whom would doubtless become one of those “good guys” who instantly becomes a “bad guy”.
Lord what a blinkered Brit.
Your a Fu¢£¡%€ Moron !!! A Euro-Trash Globalist Troll !!! Go back to your Pub, keep drinking and worrying about your gay relationships !!!
I am glad this sort of thing never happens in the US.
Here if you’re unarmed it’s because you choose to be unarmed. I live in CA. Some of the toughest gun laws in America and I still have more than enough firepower to answer a home invasion.
Dang. Resistance was fast on the draw there…
Fast on the draw and missed the point.
He….has…..a….point? Damn. Who’da thunk it.
Well, you must remember. Most leftist nuts aren’t productive citizens like us, with such novel things like jobs, but instead are people who sit at home, collect disability and unemployment checks, and can afford to spend all their time on social media or waiting for new posts to troll.(And I’m fully ready for said nuts to ridicule and insult me in response to this. Bring it, snowflakes.)
Nailed it! SJW’s live to troll and troll to live.
Yes, the Land of the serfs, and the home of the Fearful.
But being England, had he shot back, he would have promptly been arrested for using unreasonable and excessive force, and be facing 7 years in prison, longer if he seriously wounded or killed one of the downtrodden little buggers who just needed a few quid to feed their drug habits. (Yes, Virginia, there are places worse to live in than California.)
Better to be in prison than dead.
Coincidentally, when saving your life is a “crime” and you will certainly go to prison for several years for saving your life, why report the death of your attackers who intended to murder you?
@Mark N:
Really really not true…!
As I’ve covered in a number of articles here on TTAG, UK law on self defence does not prohibit the use of force in defence of self or others.
It just says that force must be:
• minimal (no more than you need to stop the threat)
• reasonable (the ‘reasonable man’ would conclude you had no alternative but to use force) and
• proportionate (in the same ballpark of lethality as the threat)
On these grounds, if the victim legally owned a firearm and was able to access it in time to return fire, it is very likely he would not have been charged – or if somehow he was charged that he would have been acquitted.
—
None of that changes the lamentable situation that we are denied weapons for the purpose of self defence, which I think is what leads a lot of US readers to misunderstand our situation.
Yes, clearly it should’ve been a DGU. Yes or sucks that our laws effectively made this impossible, and that an innocent homeowner died as a result.
But had the homeowner carried out a DGU, as I say, it’s most probable he would’ve been in the clear.
Once upon a time my big brother was an insurance executive living in Kingston Upon Thames near London. Now he lives in Floriduh and is as anti-gun as is possible for an “educated” guy can be. He would have been EZ picking in Europe. Despite having $ like the dead gay guy…honestly I don’t give a damn about the Brits.
Joyce Lee Malcolm wrote “To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right”. She spent weeks in English archives studying their gun law history. Its a great book if you want to learn how we got our second amendment and how the english lost their gun rights.
Sad.
Even more sad the troll comes out to shower all the hate against free people who choose to defeat evil.
Would love to have folks who did defend themselves with a firearm throw it back in the trolls face
As much as it pains me to say this…fuck the Brits. I mean, yeah gotta love our allies across the pond but…you guys need to get your shit together and throw off your rediculous government oppression. You guys should defend yourselves without fear…this story should not happen.
I got this… let me feed the troll: Your tycoon was capped because he was an easy target. From my understanding much of England and a good deal of Europe have basically opened their doors to a Trojan horse. The U.S. does have a very high incidence/rate of homicidal violence with firearms. In areas where there is respect for the second amendment, most of that is defensive or non existent. The issue I have with foriegners bashing our right to bear arms is that instead of arming themselves for a very real and imminent threat (read history much?) they would rather stay victims and hope that we take a position of victimhood (misery loves company). How about this, next time I visit Europe I won’t shove my love affair with guns down your throats and embrace drinking tea and artisan cheeses and sh*t, just don’t expect anymore than a dismissive chuckle if you are ever brave enough to come to my neck of the woods telling me that I don’t need to arm my household against home invaders. Assholes are an international phenomenon. Good day to you sir. I SAY GOOD DAY
Amen brother, and God bless America!
“The issue I have with foriegners bashing our right to bear arms is that instead of arming themselves for a very real and imminent threat (read history much?) they would rather stay victims and hope that we take a position of victimhood (misery loves company).”
That’s only part of it. The other big part is their belief that the government will be their guardian, protector,and provider. Anything they need will be provided by their betters, who have rightfully been installed in the seat of power because they know how to take care of their lessers. In the case at hand, the government, unfortunately, wasn’t able to protect the poor bugger who was killed, but it wasn’t their fault, because no one bothered to tell them it was happening. That the possible perp might have had a shotgun only means more regulations are needed, because, obviously, the ones already in effect were unable to stop the possible murder.
So it wasn’t the government’s fault at all. They can still rest assured the government will take care of them.
The insurance exec and his lover were surprised and were probably both sleeping in the same bed when the home invaders attacked. Even if they had a gun handy, no one can wake up with enough situational awareness to fire accurately right away when a stranger if pointing a gun at you.
Guns in the home might be a deterrent in some cases, but probably not in this crime.
They are not a deterrence. Unless you have flashing signs in front of your house proclaiming you’re armed.
What being armed does is give you a chance, a chance to fight back. No promise you’ll win. But you have a chance.
Plenty of times armed homeowners have fought and won against home invaders. But you have to start with being armed.
If we don’t count the socialist territories in the US, crime rate is not an issue.
“…it should have been a defensive gun use”.
Actually, we have insufficient information to determine of any defense were available, much less defense with a firearm. Speculating that had one of the victims a gun about, somehow that means a “gun use” could have altered the circumstance. A bit of pure smoke, that one.
How many stories have appeared here about homeowners who had firearms in the house, but were unable to avail themselves? The mere presence, or absence, does not justify a determination that use of the firearm would have been possible, or effective. One can reach no conclusion about the current case regarding the opportunity to defend with a firearm. We only know what is reported, not what we inject into the conversation.
“……targeted HIM and HIS ‘partner’, Simon-Pierre Hedger-Cooper”
Yup the stereotype holds true, Liberals, especially those that are “charity workers”, don’t own firearms. I wonder if one of the robbers was “underprivileged” and noticed the high-end jewelry on the charity worker.
I’m a Louisiana resident currently staying in southern England. The majority of Englanders are brainwashed by their one sided media but there are a few people I have spoken to that don’t feed into the bs that is the BBC. In the UK the idea of a “defensive” weapon doesn’t exist. All weapons are considered offensive and can land you in trouble if you are caught carrying one. Even a big stick will get taken by the police if you are pulled over. It’s pretty ridiculous here. Never give an inch.
Well Brexit passed, so there must be some over there with a brain… Wow, confiscating a big stick…
“WHAT?!? THE LAND OF THE FREE??!! WHOEVER TOLD YOU THAT IS YOUR ENEMY!!!!”
-Zack de la Rocha
So, who would you rather be, Peter Hedger or Tony Martin?
“You certainly need to be safe in your own house with impunity. If somebody breaks into your house has to be considered the extreme and if it is not then god help us.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11044022/Tony-Martin-15-years-on-I-dont-want-to-go-back-there-because-it-could-happen-again.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-22477176
Or, would you rather be Joe Emigrated From This Hellhole?
I have absolutely no sympathy whatever for whatever misfortune befalls any member of the financial plutocracy, those entitled scum who have ruined the world. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. Saying that, if it was my house, (a) there wouldn’t be anything worth stealing because all my glittery watches are Chinese fakes, and (b) I hereby invoke the English Bill of Rights of 1689, Article 7, viz: “That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law”. Say hello to my little friend…
Where’s our resistance against people like you?
“This won’t change the minds of UK citizens.” Certainly not those of the chattering classes in the media and govt. eh? And they’re the ones who matter.
One incident over there does not compare to what happens here everday.
“… the US falls under the oppressive thumb of the gun lobby.” As opposed to your oppressive thumb which is how it should be.
“There are still various shooting incidents going on here everday that your site ignores. The UK still has a homicide and crime rate lower than the US.” There’s a lot of crime that goes on over here that you’re ignoring, doesn’t get reported and doesn’t fit your preconceived view no doubt.
“Just another day were cowardly neo-nazi gun fetishist like robert to take advantage of a tragedy that is statistically rare in the world then what happens 100s of 1000s of times a day.” And that’s all you’ve got, your arguments are so weak that even you don’t have faith in them so you resort to ad hominems. Because anyone who disagrees with you is a nazi, right?
It’s hard for the son of a Holocaust victim, who grandparents and other relatives died in the Nazi’s death camps, to be a neo-Nazi. Just saying.
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