Quite an unexpected view from across the pond?...

[SteveM]

Thanks to progunprogressive for this:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article5299010.ece

In a country known for ever-intensifying efforts to ban guns, this piece is something of a shock. A portion of the article by Richard Munday:

"Rhetoric about standing firm against terrorists aside, in Britain we have no more legal deterrent to prevent an armed assault than did the people of Mumbai, and individually we would be just as helpless as victims. The Mumbai massacre could happen in London tomorrow; but probably it could not have happened to Londoners 100 years ago.

"In January 1909 two such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. Edwardian Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down."

The discussion which follows is lively.

[iverglas]

1. unexpected to see it dredged up AGAIN?

Hardly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=149291

Now, I know I just saw this crud here much more recently than that, but don't know where it's gone.


Edited to note that you posted several times in that old thread, so you were hardly unaware of this screed.

I guess someone on one of your favourite sites must have just dredged it up again for you ...

[iverglas]

2. yes, here we are

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=192906&mesg_id=193101

and the ensuing discussion.

I'll just quote my contribution:

Just to follow your tangent: no, dear, that opinion isn't "from the London Times". It was an op-ed opinion piece published by the London Times. My local right-wing rag carries a regular op-ed opinion column containing incisive left-wing opinion. Maybe you're not used to this phenomenon: newspapers that do not restrict their readers to a steady diet of ideologically homogeneous pablum.

The op-ed piece you cite was written by the author of an obscure book much beloved and oft cited by the gun militant brigade on line. He is what is known in his place of residence as a "crank", from his oeuvre as revealed by a google search. Predictable op-ed pieces and letters to the editor about firearms and the odd other right-wing cause. Reminds me of the guy who used to write reams of letters to my local editor as representative of the Catholic Defence League. The editor finally figured out that said CDL consisted of said crank and his typewriter, and stopped publishing the weekly yammerings. Then the paper got bought out by Conrad Black, right-wing RCer extraordinaire, and said crank immediately got a two-page spread in the editorial section to yammer on about Easter or some damned thing ...

So a right-wing crank in the UK said something. So I say: big whoopety whoop.

[iverglas]

3. something else not unexpected

All the comments on the piece by posters with addresses in the US.

Do that many right-wing morons in the US really start their day by perusing the Times on line?

Hmmmm.

[iverglas]

4. and how very not unexpected

It was reprinted in the National Post right here in Canada!

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=4a451ee5-71c3-4f29-a826-3260fb1eaaa1

You know; kinda like a cross between the Washington Times and WorldNetDaily ...

[iverglas]

5. Yup

Here's Mr. Munday in the Post's former parent, The Telegraph (both at one time having been Conrad Black's local flagships):

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:bdqJWFuilXwJ:www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml%3Fxml%3D/opinion/2005/01/23/do2302.xml+%22richard+munday%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=ca

[iverglas]

6. does anybody know who the hell this guy actually is?

His big claim to fame seems to be Guns & Violence: The Debate before Lord Cullen, which, from what I can figure out, has to do with the public inquiry following the Dunblane murders.

http://www.journalisted.com/richard-munday

The two articles cited in this thread (I see the thread from last spring related to a different ... yet so much the same ... article) are the only ones listed.

Surely he does something for a living.

Anybody?

[iverglas]

7. can't find anything myself

But the name showed up here, which is mildly amusing:

http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/hdhs/Lords/possecomitatus.html

THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 1798 POSSE COMITATUS (CIVIL POWER) ENTRY FOR HANSLOPE
The following is a list of Hanslope males aged between 15 and 60 capable of acting in a military capacity and who were not Quakers, clergymen, or already serving in a military unit. List of vehicles and draught horses was also made.

Heh. The militia, across the pond.

[iverglas]

8. well, those Brit Libertarians like him

http://lpuk.blogspot.com/2008/12/guns-and-mumbai.html


http://lpuk.org/pages/manifesto.php

Of course, they also like Milton Friedman, and dislike public education ...

[iverglas]

9. phew

http://www.seangabb.co.uk/freelife/flhtm/fl26bots.htm

Richard Munday is both a farmer and one of Britain's leading experts on firearms law

Well. There You Have It.

Odd how his oeuvre occupies so little space on the net. Apart from the two recent screeds.

Here's what the above thing has to say about his co-author of the Dunblane book (looks like The Times isn't quite on board with Mr. Munday):

The Sunday Times, which is actively campaigning for a handgun ban, does not attempt to challenge these facts, but instead attempts to smear Mr Stevenson:

Doubts have arisen about the tactics of certain members of the gun lobby....Last week the first book about the Cullen inquiry was published by Piedmont Publishing. It is co-edited by Jan Stevenson, who is described in the book as "one of the world's leading small arms authorities" and challenges the view that a high level of gun ownership leads to more crime.

An accompanying press release failed to mention that Stevenson is the owner of Piedmont Publishing and that he is chairman of the hardline Shooting Rights Association (sic - actually the Shooters' Rights Association).

He is also a former non-executive director of Delta Training, one of whose trainees was shot dead during a simulated terrorist incident in 1988. In 1991 he was fined £500 for allowing firearms to be used by an unauthorised person. (J. Shields and S. Grey, "Time to end this menace", The Sunday Times, 13th October 1996, page 12).

Huh.

Now where's the smear?



html fixed

[iverglas]

10. more on the small arms expert

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/95ap41.htm

Further supplementary note by the Gun Control Network

FIREARMS OWNERSHIP AND FIREARMS CRIME: THE EVIDENCE FOR THE REGULATORY POSITION

... The {Canadian, 1995} Firearms Control Task Group report is presented as "a brief overview" of the firearms statistics and systems of regulation investigated by the working group in a four month period—presumably, as background for discussions takng place at the time within the Canadian federal government around the continuing adequacy of firearms legislation in Canada. The data presented are all "secondary data"—taken on trust from a variety of sources—and in no sense the result of systematic comparative primary research in these eight countries, using trans-national definitions and universalistic or ideal-typical criteria for comparing the eight different examples. For this reason, and for others, the Firearms Control Task Group's report, like the Killias study, has been signalled out for a dismissive review by Mr Jan Stevenson, in the evidence he presented to the Cullen Enquiry (Stevenson 1996), Stevenson's concerns, like those of his collaborator in a subsequent privately-published volume (Munday and Stevenson 1996) appears, firstly, to be that some of the figures presented for levels of gun ownership are not "credible" either to him or to his collaborator, Richard Munday, and, secondly, that the relationships which are outlined in the Canadian report are merely "suggestive" and that the suggested relationships are less clear in some cases (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland) than in others. Buried beneath the intemperate rhetoric that Munday and Stevenson try to marshall against the Canadian study—and all other studies which suggest the good sense involved in the proper societal regulation of lethal weaponry—is a quite extraordinary, early nineteenth century positivist belief in the idea a detailed formal model that would be capable of explaining the detailed relationships between very conceivable variable and outcomes.

Ah, c'mon. It really is simple.

More guns, less terrorism.

Duh.

[jody]

11. UK citizen's rights are a gift of government while US citizen's rights are natural. inherent,

inalienable/unalienable.

That difference means US government must protect a minority group against the tyranny of a simple majority, a fact that acknowledges the original sovereignty of each individual before our Constitution was ratified starting with Delaware on December 7, 1787 and finished by #13 Rhode Island on May 29, 1790

The US has the oldest government of any major nation in the world a fact that gun-grabbers are prone to forget.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

13. meanwhile, I chuck at the moronicity

Hahaha. I was going to correct that to "chuckle", but it's pretty accurate the way it is. :rofl:


UK citizen's rights are a gift of government while US citizen's rights are natural. inherent, inalienable/unalienable.

Consensus in the world today is that HUMAN BEINGS' fundamental rights are inherent and inalienable. (Modern people don't use idiot 18th century babble like "natural" to describe such things.)

In any event. How can the nature of rights as inherent/inalienable be a function of CITIZENSHIP?

(I pause to point out that the US Constitution recognizes those rights as being held by PERSONS, not citizens of the US ...)

If it is US citizens' rights that are inherent/inalienable ... and the rights of citizens of other countries are not inherent/inalienable ... then hmm. It seems that US citizens' rights are indeed "a gift of government"!

If only you would try to make sense occasionally, jody. If only.

It is very apparent from reading your screeds over a period of several years that you really just do not understand the concept of "rights", and the different kinds of rights, and all that.

I have noted with interest that subsequent to my attempts to help you understand these things, you stopped referring to "RKBA" as a civil right, for the most part.

Unfortunately, of course, that is what it really is ... a right held by virtue of membership in a specific society, i.e. citizenship ... not an inherent/inalienable fundamental HUMAN right ...

[JonQ]

20. How are rights inalienable if they can be taken away?

I'm not saying britain is going fascist at the moment. But if the government decided to take away your rights what could you do about it?

I tend to find anything that can be taken away fairly easily to not be inalienable.

[iverglas]

21. fuckin duh

How are rights inalienable if they can be taken away?

I dunno. Ask jody.

I'm not the one who supports blanket taking-away of the "RKBA" from people convicted of crimes ... so I'm not the one whose head should be exploding here.


I'm not saying britain is going fascist at the moment. But if the government decided to take away your rights what could you do about it?

Uh, mu.

Loaded question, false premise.

We have just established that inalienable rights can't be taken away.

Governments can and do interfere in the exercise of rights. Like when they lock people up for committing crimes -- they interfere in the exercise of the right to liberty, for reasons that we regard as providing justification.

The argument, you see, is always over what constitutes justification for interfering in the exercise of rights. Everybody agrees that there is justification for interference. People disagree about what is and isn't justification.

Are you in the UK? I'm not. So I'm not sure what the question was intended to mean anyway.

What if the government the citizens of my country elected decided to interfere in the exercise of my rights without justification?

Well, I and a few thousand other people would be off to court, I imagine. We Canadians do lots of that. And we almost always win. That's why, for several years now, same-sex couples have been getting married here, prison inmates have been voting in elections, fathers have been getting paid parental leave under the employment insurance scheme, francophone communities have French-language schools and hospitals that they control, people charged with crimes may not be extradited if they face the death penalty, there are no statutory limitations on access to abortion, etc. etc. etc.

We're having a bit of a tough time now with a right-wing federal government that only about 40% of the voting electorate voted for. It's early days for seeing how that pans out. If the members of Parliament that the rest of us voted for bring the bastards down, and I'm pleading with them to do it myself, so be it. If they allow them to continue governing, well, we're the ones who voted for them, so we get to live with that.

If they had been elected by a majority, and held majority power in the Commons, well, I'd have to be living with the ugly fact that a majority of my fellow citizens support their ugly political agenda. If I thought having a handgun under my pillow was going to stop them from legislating away same-sex marriage rights and abortion rights and what have you, I think I'd be a bit of a fool. Donchoo?


I tend to find anything that can be taken away fairly easily to not be inalienable.

I tend to regard that as an incomprehensibly pointless statement in this context.

[JonQ]

26. I'm curious

what recourse would you allow citizens if they were trully fed up with their government trampling on their rights? Obviously not armed revolution (when has a revolution, using guns, ever been successful? ignoring of course all those times it has).

So what? A petition perhaps? Sit ins? Hunger strikes?

I really am curious what solution you have other than to be good little citizens and love big brother if it comes to that.

[iverglas]

27. if it comes to WHAT?

I really am curious what solution you have other than to be good little citizens and love big brother if it comes to that.

Whose solution might that be, and if you are implying that it is mine, why would you be behaving in such an unspeakable manner by implying such a falsehood?


I'm curious
what recourse would you allow citizens if they were trully fed up with their government trampling on their rights? Obviously not armed revolution (when has a revolution, using guns, ever been successful? ignoring of course all those times it has).

"Allow"? When did it become up to me to allow a people to do something?

A people can do what it likes in order to exercise its collective right to self-determination. If it violates the rights of others (e.g. minorities in its midst, neighbouring peoples), it will undoubtedly have consequences to face. These days, it might find itself in an international court.

What did you / your people do when you became truly fed up with the Bush administration trampling on individual rights? Not even to mention trampling on the rights -- murdering -- a whole bunch of foreigners, eh?

Not much, so far as I can tell.

Me, I am quite aware that "the government" just isn't some alien entity that is squatting in my capital. It was elected. If enough people don't like it, it will get de-elected. Looks like that's what your own people eventually decided to do.

[JonQ]

29. So you have no recourse in mind

you could have saved yourself some time by simply writing that.

[iverglas]

30. so you don't understand complex concepts

You'd save the world a lot of time if you just stopped inviting attempts to help you understand them.

Thankless and hopeless.

[JonQ]

31. Oh yes, please help me understand complex issues

complex issues such as anyone who owns a gun is a "complete and utter fucking asshole". No other reasoning necessary, no qualifiers, no rationality other than guns are evil, she has a gun, she is evil.

You have some nerve pretending that you understand anything more complex than irrational hatred (which isn't all the complicated).

[iverglas]

32. I'm sorry, I can't help you there

Oh yes, please help me understand complex issues
complex issues such as anyone who owns a gun is a "complete and utter fucking asshole".

Only an idiot would say such a thing, and I wouldn't waste my time trying to imagine an explanation for something said by an idiot.


You have some nerve pretending that you understand anything more complex than irrational hatred (which isn't all the complicated).

I understand it quite well, seeing it drip from the keyboards of such as you on a daily basis around here.

[iverglas]

23. and once again

Wouldn't it just be nice if jody made sense occasionally?

UK citizen's rights are a gift of government

That isn't just completely false, it's total nonsense.

So why does jody keep saying it?

Who knows, who knows ...

[rangersmith82]

14. Subjects don't need firearms....

Only citizens should be allowed firearms.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

22. well, I just don't know

Maybe the poster here could explain this obviously learnèd opinion and what it contributes to this discussion.

I guess I just misunderstood it ... maybe it really was just a deliberate insult and not evidence of a failure to understand the realities of this modern world.

[iverglas]

28. but I still say

Subjects need objects!


HAHAHAHAHAHA.

[iverglas]

16. "The discussion which follows is lively."

I propose a drinking game.

One shot for every ignorant foreigner in the comments section who says "I carry a gun because a policeman is too heavy".

Gosh, you'd almost think they had cue cards.

[spin]

17. Other gun quotes which you mind find interesting or humorous...

First a variant on the quote you mention...

I do carry a gun because it’s a lot easier to carry than a donut eating cop.
Author unknown

"You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone."
Al Capone

"I don't even know what street Canada is on."
Al Capone

“Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns”
Mitch Ratcliffe

“In England, if you commit a crime, the police don't have a gun and you don't have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say "Stop, or I'll say stop again."”
Robin Williams

“People are bringing shotguns to UFO sightings in Fife, Alabama. I asked a guy, "Why do you bring a gun to a UFO sighting?" Guy said, "Way-ul, we didn' wanna be ab-duc-ted." If I lived in Fife, Alabama, I would be on my hands and knees every night praying for abduction.”
Bill Hicks

“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”
P. G. Wodehouse

[iverglas]

18. okay, good one

“People are bringing shotguns to UFO sightings in Fife, Alabama. I asked a guy, "Why do you bring a gun to a UFO sighting?" Guy said, "Way-ul, we didn' wanna be ab-duc-ted." If I lived in Fife, Alabama, I would be on my hands and knees every night praying for abduction.”


Hey, frankly, if I were going to a UFO sighting and I had a shotgun, I'd probably take it too. Sort of like putting your head under the covers if you think there's a monster in the closet. It's just what you do.
;)

[iverglas]

19. Al obviously forgot

Google "al capone" canada.

Apparently he spent time in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and Quadeville {??}, Onario. And his car that went off the ferry on the way over from Michigan is in a museum in some other hamlet on this side of the border.

What's the context of that quote, I wonder. Denying having knowledge of his supply chain, I bet!

[spin]

24. My father once encountered Al Capone...

He was walking on a street in downtown Pittsburgh when he noticed a very impressive car. He stopped to admire it and then realized he was being surrounded by several serious looking gentlemen. Al Capone then walked up. My father complimented him on the car. Al struck my father as very polite and courteous. My father said Al acted like a prominent businessman.

[iverglas]

25. ah, if only

all gangsters were so civilized.

The Escalade of its day that was, I guess. ;)