Where we're headed

The "American Wisdom Series"
presents
Pamphlet #310

Where We're Headed

You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door.
Half-awake,
and nearly paralyzed with fear,
you hear muffled whispers.
At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way.

With your heart pumping,
you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun.
You rack a shell into the chamber,
then inch toward the door and open it.

In the darkness, you make out two shadows.
One holds a weapon-
-it looks like a crowbar.

When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike,
you raise the shotgun and fire.

The blast knocks both thugs to the floor.

One writhes and screams
while the second man
crawls to the front door
and lurches outside.

As you pick up the telephone to call police,
you know you're in trouble.

In your country,
most guns were outlawed years before,
and the few that
are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless.

Yours was never registered.

Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died.
They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.

When you talk to your attorney,
he tells you not to worry:
authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

"What kind of sentence will I get?"
you ask.

"Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies,
as if that's nothing.
"Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper.

Somehow,
you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante
while the two men you
shot are represented as choir boys.

Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them.
Buried deep down in the article,
authorities acknowledge that both
"victims"
have been arrested numerous times.

But the next day's headline says it all:
"Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die."

The thieves have been transformed from career criminals
into Robin Hood-type pranksters.

As the days wear on,
the story takes wings.
The national media picks it up,
then the international media.

The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.
Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you,
and he'll probably win.

The media publishes reports
that your home has been burglarized several times in the past
and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort
in apprehending the suspects.

After the last break-in,
you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.

The District Attorney uses this
to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later,
you go to trial.
The charges haven't been reduced,
as your lawyer had so confidently predicted.

When you take the stand,
your anger at the injustice of it all works against you.
Prosecutors paint a
picture of you as a mean,
vengeful man.

It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.

The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999,
Tony Martin of Emneth,
Norfolk, England,
killed one burglar and wounded a second.

In April, 2000,
he was convicted and is now serving a life term.

How did it become a crime
to defend one's own life
in the once-great British Empire?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903.
This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons
and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license.

The Firearms Act of 1920
expanded licensing to include not only handguns
but all firearms except shotguns.

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967
outlawed the carrying of any weapon
by private citizens and
mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation
began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987.

Michael Ryan,
a mentally disturbed man
with a Kalashnikov rifle,
walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw.
When the smoke cleared,
17 people were dead.

The British public,
already de-sensitized by eighty years of
"gun control",
demanded even tougher restrictions.
(The seizure of all privately owned handguns
was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)

Nine years later, at Dunblane, Scotland,
Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon
to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.

For many years,
the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable,
or worse,
criminals.

Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners.
Day after day, week after week,
the media gave up all pretense of objectivity
and demanded a total ban on all handguns.

The Dunblane Inquiry,
a few months later,
sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens.

During the years in which the British government
incrementally took away most gun rights,
the notion that a citizen had the right to armed in
self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism.

Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened,
claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun.
Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists
were charged while the real criminals were released.

Indeed,
after the Martin shooting,
a police spokesman was quoted as saying,
"We cannot have people take the law into their own hands."

All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times,
and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings
by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences.

Martin himself,
a collector of antiques,
had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended,
citizens who owned handguns
were given three months to turn them over to local authorities.

Being good British subjects,
most people obeyed the law.
The few who didn't were visited by police
and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply.

Police later bragged that they'd taken
nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.

How did the authorities
know who had handguns?

The guns had been registered and licensed.

Kinda like cars.

Sound familiar?

This "American Wisdom Series" pamphlet

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