Yesterday and Today

Anything that does not fit elsewhere can be discussed here.

Moderators: DJKeefy, 4u Network

Post Reply
User avatar
LovelyLadyLux
Egypt4u God
Egypt4u God
Posts: 11596
Joined: Sun Nov 29, 2009 9:12 pm
Location: Canada
Has thanked: 417 times
Been thanked: 2714 times
Canada

Yesterday and Today

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Just a forward of an email that came to me. We're getting more and more home invasions here with seniors specifically being targeted and robbed.


THE SHOT GUN

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 something that 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 choirboys. 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 street 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 sidearm's 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 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 Tony 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.

Kind of like cars. (But there is no constitutional right to own a car.)


WAKE UP AMERICA.

THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

--
A nation that forgets its past, has no future! Winston Churchill


User avatar
Horus
Egypt4u God
Egypt4u God
Posts: 12363
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:15 am
Location: UK
Has thanked: 1658 times
Been thanked: 2213 times
Gender:
United Kingdom

Re: Yesterday and Today

Post by Horus »

A lot of untruths in that article LLL, Tony Martin was convicted of Murder, later reduced to Manslaughter and he was sentenced to 3 years jail. The British public was pretty upset about it and recently a similar incident of a person (another young man) resulted in the man who did the killing being released without charge. I don’t think the American gun lobby is doing itself any good in using this sort of fake story to justify its existence.
Image
User avatar
LovelyLadyLux
Egypt4u God
Egypt4u God
Posts: 11596
Joined: Sun Nov 29, 2009 9:12 pm
Location: Canada
Has thanked: 417 times
Been thanked: 2714 times
Canada

Re: Yesterday and Today

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

I never heard of Tony Martin but I do know that if a person breaks into your house and you whack them with a baseball bat and then later find out they don't have a weapon you, the homeowner are in deep do do aka trouble. On the other hand if the intruder stabs you to death you're just dead but you have to be careful that you don't HURT a possible robber/thief.
User avatar
Horus
Egypt4u God
Egypt4u God
Posts: 12363
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:15 am
Location: UK
Has thanked: 1658 times
Been thanked: 2213 times
Gender:
United Kingdom

Re: Yesterday and Today

Post by Horus »

Here in the UK the law simply states that you may use ‘reasonable force’ to protect yourself or your property. This reasonable force is not defined and usually means if you are physically attacked or fear for your life then the action you take will be deemed legal. If for example an old person were to see someone creeping up their stairs and in a panic hit them over the head with a heavy object and killed them, then they are unlikely to be prosecuted. If on the other hand they kept a machete by their bed for the express intention of killing someone then that would be considered to be murder. We have two charges that can be levelled against you, one of murder and the other of manslaughter, the second one indicating that it was not an intentional and malicious act, but done in the heat of the moment or in fear and panic.

In the most recent case in the UK a young man from the ‘traveller’ community with a fairly long criminal record for burglary and theft broke into a pensioners house. He was carrying a screwdriver that may or may not have been intended as a weapon, the pensioner tackled the burglar and in the ensuing scuffle he stabbed the youth to death with the screwdriver. There was the usual outcry from the traveller community saying how he was just a bit of a jack the lad and would never hurt anyone etc. etc. The pensioner was taken into custody as you would expect, but he was later released as it was deemed to be self defence. The one good thing about our legal system is trial by a jury and I doubt if anyone being charged for a similar offence would actually be convicted of a crime by most juries.

The problem is with the legal system itself which tends to have tariffs for each type of crime, so for a charge of murder there will be a minimum of say 15 years while for manslaughter it may be 3 years, so even a sympathetic judge and jury may have to hand out the minimum sentence if any guilt is perceived.
Image
Mad Dilys
Royal V.I.P
Royal V.I.P
Posts: 2271
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:15 am
Location: Luxor
Has thanked: 3044 times
Been thanked: 676 times
United Kingdom

Re: Yesterday and Today

Post by Mad Dilys »

I would offer them a cup of tea and sympathy I think though I actually always wear an alarm for health reasons so I think that might be my best defence. A loud voice asks if I'm ok and if I don't answer then an emergency vehicle is sent out.
Smile! It confuses people
User avatar
Horus
Egypt4u God
Egypt4u God
Posts: 12363
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:15 am
Location: UK
Has thanked: 1658 times
Been thanked: 2213 times
Gender:
United Kingdom

Re: Yesterday and Today

Post by Horus »

I know the ones you mean MD, my mum was always setting hers off and I would get a call from the monitoring company as she would either ignore the voice or not even hear it. :urm:
Image
User avatar
LovelyLadyLux
Egypt4u God
Egypt4u God
Posts: 11596
Joined: Sun Nov 29, 2009 9:12 pm
Location: Canada
Has thanked: 417 times
Been thanked: 2714 times
Canada

Re: Yesterday and Today

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

I've actually got a 'rape whistle' whereby I push a button and a 100 decibel horn blasts out. I have on in my car in case I ever find myself slid down the side of the mountain and I also have one in my bedroom for the same express purpose of scaring the devil out of anybody breaking in.

Lately here what has been targeted and it HAS to be organized but there are multiple thefts of high end garden art. WHO is buying all this art is a bit puzzling but in the last week a 300 pound concrete Chinese warrior, a cement face sculpture (about 40" high), a 2 meter high carved face in a cedar tree trunk and on and on. None of these are the easily just pick it up and walk it down the street type thefts. Seems they've been scouted and then trucks etc have to be available to pick them up. Some of the items are even swiped from the out islands (more than another ferry ride from here). Just seems thefts are ridiculously high and vigilantism is also starting to appear.
Post Reply
  • Similar Topics
    Replies
    Views
    Last post