Lyburd's GLOCK and magazines (courtesy bbc.com)

After a  UK teen named Liam Lyburd took the hump at being ejected from a college course, he decided to shoot his college classmates and toss around a few pipe bombs. Police foiled the aspiring mass murderer’s plot. Mr. Lyburd will now be housed at Her Majesty’s pleasure. What’s important from our point-of-view: the UK’s gun laws failed to prevent Mr. Lyburd from acquiring a GLOCK, three extended capacity ammunition magazines and 94 hollow-point 9mm rounds. In testimony before the court Lyburd said buying the gun was . . .

“just like buying a bar of chocolate. I didn’t see it as a big deal at the time.” Which all well and good, but how did Mr. Lyburd manage to buy a GLOCK, three “happy stick” mags and dozens of hollow-point bullets in a country where possessing ay of these items earns you more jail time than buggering a little boy? The UK press reports that Liam bought his gear “online” on “the dark web.” That’s all I can find on the subject.

Funny that. We recently ran a story about a UK sting operation that used the “dark net” to lure an unsuspecting Walter Mitty type into purchasing a firearms from the government. Could this GLOCK have been government-supplied? Perish the thought . . .

Assuming that’s not the case, this plot demonstrates that even the strictest gun control laws don’t prevent mass killings. (Intel on the killer does.) Lyburd’s pipe bomb collection underlines the point; the explosive devices were constructed from commonly available materials. Do we believe that Lyburd would have jettisoned his heinous plan if he “only” got his hands on pipe bombs? Do we believe he’s the only bad guy in Britain armed with a GLOCK?

This much we know: the UK’s ban on civilian firearms possession leaves the country’s subjects defenseless against killers of every stripe while doing little to nothing to disarm those who would do them harm. It seems The Land of Hope and Glory depends more on hope than glory these days. Shame.

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39 COMMENTS

  1. I think ‘The Dark Web’ is going to end up being the boogeyman of gun control over here at some point. Sooner or later the BloomGoons will pick up on it and add it to the ‘Can buy guns online without a BG check’ nonsense.

    “Oooooo…the Dark Web…ahhhhh. Ban guns.”

    • Your counter-point to the OP is well-taken. The Anti’s end-game is clearly to mop-up the entire supply of:
      – guns;
      – ammunition;
      – smokeless-powder; and,
      – powder
      whereupon, only the government will have ready access to arms.

      Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who are prepared to imagine this might actually be possible (without, at the same time, imagining the probability of a civil war).

      Accordingly, it is essential to carry-out the argument to the subsequent lines of reasoning. Guns and ammo will be readily smuggle-able (as is illustrated by the UK incidents). Furthermore, smokeless-powder and powder are not essential to making an effective non-contact weapon. High pressure air guns would produce enormous injury and even death; and, these could not be eliminated even in a fantasy-land with effective preclusion of smuggled guns and ammo.

      Gun-control is fully in the interests of both criminals and crazies. Criminals protected from defensive firearms can overcome victims with knives and blunt objects. Crazies can kill multiple undefended victims by means of contact weapons or explosives. Throughout history, arms-control has always been recognized as futile for defense against ordinary crimes and mass-murder. It has ONLY been recognized as an effective means of self-preservation by tyrants.

    • It’s only common sense really. The only way to keep ghost guns out of dangerous hands is to close the Dark Web loophole.

    • Its the black market of the internet. The easiest way to explain it is those cheesy B movie plots where you can buy anything you want off the net, actually does exist. Also commonly called the Deep Web. Its the side of the internet that truly isn’t under control. The problem is how much is hype and real isn’t easily understood.

      • Also commonly called the Deep Web.

        The Deep Web and the Dark Web are not the same things. The Deep Web refers to the content on the web that is not indexed by standard search engines. The Dark Web is the web content that exists on darknets, overlay networks which use the public Internet but which require specific software. The Dark Web is a subset of the Deep Web.

        Darknets include small, friend-to-friend peer-to-peer networks as well as large networks like Freenet, I2P, and Tor,

    • It’s simply part of the internet that isn’t searched and queried like the rest of the internet by the likes of Google. To access it, you must take simple software steps to access and search. There are better explanations, but that is the simplest I can do.
      Or you know, you can Google it yourself, because it’s the internet and you apparently can use it.

    • The ordinary internet is the front page and section A of the newspaper. The deep web is the rest, for good or bad, it’s out there. Everything from discussions that aren’t exactly savory, services and items for sale, more anonymous communications, and all sorts of stuff. It’s far more varied than the ordinary internet, if you can imagine that!

  4. How did they catch this guy? Was the gun sold to him in a controlled buy, to catch people like him? If so, then I would find it funny that the gun came from a government source. Does anyone know?

    • I seem to recall a similar sting recently reported where the police sold an aspiring felon a fake gun through the Dark Web. I think it was a fake Ruger LC9.

      • Law enforcement monitors the Dark Web and sets up sting sites hoping to get people to do business with them (guns, child porn, drugs, etc.)

        • It’s only a drop in the bucket, and it’s pretty easy to spot if you have any common sense at all. As is typical, they only catch the low-hanging fruit.

          It should be noted that the gun purchase had nothing to do with how he was caught… Nor did any of their ridiculous laws prevent it.

        • What I love about the “dark web” is that it provides an example that is such a perfect analogy to US foreign policy.

          The Navy wants to check up on possible terrorists using the internet anonymously, so it invents the TOR browser. Great success! The navy realizes that if it is the only one using TOR, everyone will be tipped off that it is the Navy, so it gives TOR away to everyone. So TOR becomes the go-to browser for terrorists, human trafficking, the illegal drug trade….Great Success?!?

    • Article I read the other day mentioned “Social Media” posts. I’ll see if I can find the article.

      — Ok, on rereading:

      tipped off by a member of the public concerned about his Facebook postings talking about launching a murderous attack.

  5. Was this a functioning pistol with working ammo, or did he just stumble into a sting operation on the Dark Net?

  6. This Dark Net reminds me of a sci-fi series of novels the first of which was titled The Stainless Steel Rat, the theme of which was that even in a highly computerized modern space faring society, there were still plenty of dark alleys in which criminal conduct flourished.

  7. When Cocaine, Heroin, Methamphetamine, etc… were banned, it was simply manufactured underground.

    Guns are way, way easier to make… They can’t be manufactured in a clandestine manner?

    Look at the language the anti-gunners always use.

    “…can’t get a gun…”

    Understand their mentality, how they live. Everything they live is provided to them by an external source. Be it Welfare, Wal Mart, or a combination of the two. They do nothing productive. They really believe everything comes from a magical fairy i the sky called government. They ever refer to their government gun buying schemes as “gun buy-backs” when the government never had the guns in the first place. They’ve never had a job, or if they have, it’s some government mandated do-nothing job. They have no exposure to industry and manufacturing. They have no idea that contraband laws cannot possibly ever have any effect.

    If a society is so industrialized that it can actually support their welfare state, that same society has the capacity to manufacture guns almost by accident in a one-room efficiency apartment.

    And I’m not talking about goofy-ass 80% stuff. I mean 0% from materials and tools abundantly available pretty much everywhere you look. It’s just not that hard. But they don’t know it. They don’t understand the reality they live in, because they’re completely detached from reality.

    In their minds, these ridiculous ideas make sense because they think guns come from the gun fairy, just like houses come from the house fairy, cars come from the car fairy, and food comes from the food fairy. That fairy being whoever they voted into office that steals the free stuff and gives it tot hem. They have no idea where it comes from or how it’s made. It’s the magical almighty guvgods in their minds. The guv is everything. They worship it. I’ve met a disturbing number of Obama supporters who PRAY to him! They are seriously messed-up people…

    At least the Flying Spaghetti Monster is presumed to have magical powers. The most corrupt people on Earth, politicians, certainly don’t. And yet these people PRAY to them!

    • “If a society is so industrialized that it can actually support their welfare state, that same society has the capacity to manufacture guns almost by accident in a one-room efficiency apartment.”

      Well said. People seem to think that making things out of metal is some kind of wizardry. How many iconic guns did John Moses Browning design using Victorian-era tools and manufacturing techniques? Something like a Sten can be built in just a handful of hours out of very basic materials. People can get all bent out of shape about 3D printing if they want, but the capability to make firearms has always been available to anyone who can find a hardware store and is willing to learn a few basic skills.

      • I’ve never made the connection until this thread. All the people I know who are anti gun are the same people who call an electrician to change a lightbulb, or take their car to the dealership to get the oil changed. They have no concept or confidence of doing something themselves, and they have denied themselves the satisfaction of accomplishment. My favorite question when people find out I restored my own house is “is that legal?” as if the government needs to be involved in what I am doing in my own home.

    • Dustin,

      You, sir, win the Intertubez for the year!

      That is one of the best and most insightful comments that I have read in a very long time.

  10. There’s a dude on YouTube making AR lowers using charcoal briquettes, a propane torch, plaster, aluminum cans and a sand box.
    Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

  12. THIS boy got life in prison-they don’t do that for ACTUAL murder. What a forked up country(and I’m still not sending you any guns)…

  14. Does making it harder to buy guns count as little? Maybe that is the real core of the argument for us commoners. Does making guns harder to get do anything substantive. Is there any real evidence either way. I think so. But I’m not sure how to convince others.

    I guess this is why we show them the benefits of guns so they can make the connection themselves. It seems blatantly obvious that tens of thousands (if not millions) of DGUs are worth some of the inherent risks. Maybe this is just something ingrained in my personality, though.

    Liberty and duty are the bedrock of society. You can’t really be safe without the liberty to keep yourself there.

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