Friday, July 21, 2006
Weapons, Rights and Duties (A fragment)
Politics in any analysis is about power and the excercise thereof. Some people will be involved in politics to excercise power and some to prevent the excercise of power, but ultimately it's about the power one way or another.
In a Western type democracy the power supposedly resides with the people and ultimately even in England, that is still apparently so. If though we look at the United Kingdom and particularly England, how far does that power really reside with the people?
The American Declaration of Independance set out three basic all-encompassing rights that I would agree with: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". What do these mean? Do we have them today in England? The right to life (which is the only one I intend to consider here) sounds straighforward enough, a right not to be killed; is it a right without any qualification? A lot of people would say "yes", I would say that if you have interfered with the right to life of others then you have put your own right to life in jeapordy and it might be taken, after a proper and correct due process, or alternatively by your intended victim defending themselves. So I qualify it with the right to execute criminals who have committed sufficiently serious crimes, and the right of an intended victim to self-defence.
Fine we have this right to life, but what happens if someone (a criminal) tries to interfere with this; they perhaps want to cause us injury or death what do we do? Some of you, noticing my Catholic links and might say well Christ said "turn the other cheek" and indeed I believe He did say that. I don't believe that this means you should be non-responsive in every situation, to start with Christ was refering to a mere blow, and the situation He speaks of makes no mention of what to do if you are in a position to help someone else who is being victimised, I might be able to turn my other cheek, but I cannot expect another to do so. With life, no one can be free to give up their life to a murderer as only God gives life and only God may take it; so if I was to allow someone to kill me it might be morally tantamount to suicide, so even as a Catholic, I argue I have a duty to resist.
How far can that resistance go? The important issue here is intent, if I believe someone is posing a danger to my life then I have a duty to stop them, so if I hit them once and they die; I've done no wrong, I attempted to stop them and I do stop them. If I hit them once and they're knocked out I must not hit them again unless they still pose a danger. If I'm armed with a firearm and they pose a danger again I can shoot them so they no longer pose a danger; the intent of the shot must be to stop them being a danger. Unfortunately the most effective shots for this will probably kill them, but that would be a side effect of the action that had been forced upon me.
So having dealt with the morality, and the duty to defend oneself, let's examine the legality; even in disarmed England, you are legally allowed to use proportinate force to defend yourself; although despite this there is a tendancy to prosecute those who have used lethal force and clearly there is room for the law to be improved in this area. Presumably no one can argue against the idea and a right to self-defence.
Moving on to practicality. In the United Kingdom, it is very difficult to obtain a firearms licence you certainly won't be successful if you say you need it for self-defence or home-defence even though this could still be a legitimate use under the law at present. Even if you obtain the licence, you'll not be permitted pistols of any kind. So if you're weak, elderly or frail what are you supposed to do? The answer the state will give you, is that you must call the police and they'll protect you. It isn't really a convincing answer, to start with there's no actual duty for the police to come and you certainly cannot sue the police for failing to turn up. Secondly the police will take time to come, you need assistance NOW, but even if the police make good speed, there's going to be enough time to kill you before they turn up. Thirdly what criminal will allow you to make the call? If you're armed with a firearm, at worst you'll be on equal terms with any criminal, without that arnament, at best you might be equal if you're lucky, but the chances are you'll be at considerable disadvantage.
So the fact that law abiding citizens are prohibited from owning firearms for self-defence ultimately endangers our right to life, separates us from our duty of self-defence and forces us to rely on an unreliable state provision. We should refuse to accept this; ultimately it's our duty and it's non-delegable, and if we quietly acquiesce in this we betray ourselves.
So to return to the question I posed at the begining of the article, does power in the United Kingdom reside with the people? Well the basic power (being the means to defend oneself), is denied the law abiding citizen, so I don't think the law abiding citizen has hardly any power at all.
Some people say that they're not responsible enough to own guns; they may be right, but I don't argue that anyone should be forced or coerced into owning a firearm. Equally these same people shouldn't own knives or cars, or be bus or train drivers, or be doctors. All these things and many more would allow them to kill, just how many did Dr Shipman kill? He never used a gun. My view is a lot of people say this to shirk and hide from their true duty and responsibility. It's an easy get out, you don't have to think about it then do you? So everything is alright after all. There there go back to sleep.
What do I want done about it? I want the laws that have removed these rights and duties from the individual repealing. We don't need new laws, we've got far too many laws as it is. No a lot of our laws need repealing and these would be near or at the top of the list.
Just to be clear, some people call for the existing legislation to be amended to allow pistols to be used for sporting purposes. I have no objection to this goal, but it's not my goal. I want appropriate weapons (including firearms, including pistols, but not rocket launchers or grenades) availiable to the law abiding citizen for self and home defence.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
In a Western type democracy the power supposedly resides with the people and ultimately even in England, that is still apparently so. If though we look at the United Kingdom and particularly England, how far does that power really reside with the people?
The American Declaration of Independance set out three basic all-encompassing rights that I would agree with: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". What do these mean? Do we have them today in England? The right to life (which is the only one I intend to consider here) sounds straighforward enough, a right not to be killed; is it a right without any qualification? A lot of people would say "yes", I would say that if you have interfered with the right to life of others then you have put your own right to life in jeapordy and it might be taken, after a proper and correct due process, or alternatively by your intended victim defending themselves. So I qualify it with the right to execute criminals who have committed sufficiently serious crimes, and the right of an intended victim to self-defence.
Fine we have this right to life, but what happens if someone (a criminal) tries to interfere with this; they perhaps want to cause us injury or death what do we do? Some of you, noticing my Catholic links and might say well Christ said "turn the other cheek" and indeed I believe He did say that. I don't believe that this means you should be non-responsive in every situation, to start with Christ was refering to a mere blow, and the situation He speaks of makes no mention of what to do if you are in a position to help someone else who is being victimised, I might be able to turn my other cheek, but I cannot expect another to do so. With life, no one can be free to give up their life to a murderer as only God gives life and only God may take it; so if I was to allow someone to kill me it might be morally tantamount to suicide, so even as a Catholic, I argue I have a duty to resist.
How far can that resistance go? The important issue here is intent, if I believe someone is posing a danger to my life then I have a duty to stop them, so if I hit them once and they die; I've done no wrong, I attempted to stop them and I do stop them. If I hit them once and they're knocked out I must not hit them again unless they still pose a danger. If I'm armed with a firearm and they pose a danger again I can shoot them so they no longer pose a danger; the intent of the shot must be to stop them being a danger. Unfortunately the most effective shots for this will probably kill them, but that would be a side effect of the action that had been forced upon me.
So having dealt with the morality, and the duty to defend oneself, let's examine the legality; even in disarmed England, you are legally allowed to use proportinate force to defend yourself; although despite this there is a tendancy to prosecute those who have used lethal force and clearly there is room for the law to be improved in this area. Presumably no one can argue against the idea and a right to self-defence.
Moving on to practicality. In the United Kingdom, it is very difficult to obtain a firearms licence you certainly won't be successful if you say you need it for self-defence or home-defence even though this could still be a legitimate use under the law at present. Even if you obtain the licence, you'll not be permitted pistols of any kind. So if you're weak, elderly or frail what are you supposed to do? The answer the state will give you, is that you must call the police and they'll protect you. It isn't really a convincing answer, to start with there's no actual duty for the police to come and you certainly cannot sue the police for failing to turn up. Secondly the police will take time to come, you need assistance NOW, but even if the police make good speed, there's going to be enough time to kill you before they turn up. Thirdly what criminal will allow you to make the call? If you're armed with a firearm, at worst you'll be on equal terms with any criminal, without that arnament, at best you might be equal if you're lucky, but the chances are you'll be at considerable disadvantage.
So the fact that law abiding citizens are prohibited from owning firearms for self-defence ultimately endangers our right to life, separates us from our duty of self-defence and forces us to rely on an unreliable state provision. We should refuse to accept this; ultimately it's our duty and it's non-delegable, and if we quietly acquiesce in this we betray ourselves.
So to return to the question I posed at the begining of the article, does power in the United Kingdom reside with the people? Well the basic power (being the means to defend oneself), is denied the law abiding citizen, so I don't think the law abiding citizen has hardly any power at all.
Some people say that they're not responsible enough to own guns; they may be right, but I don't argue that anyone should be forced or coerced into owning a firearm. Equally these same people shouldn't own knives or cars, or be bus or train drivers, or be doctors. All these things and many more would allow them to kill, just how many did Dr Shipman kill? He never used a gun. My view is a lot of people say this to shirk and hide from their true duty and responsibility. It's an easy get out, you don't have to think about it then do you? So everything is alright after all. There there go back to sleep.
What do I want done about it? I want the laws that have removed these rights and duties from the individual repealing. We don't need new laws, we've got far too many laws as it is. No a lot of our laws need repealing and these would be near or at the top of the list.
Just to be clear, some people call for the existing legislation to be amended to allow pistols to be used for sporting purposes. I have no objection to this goal, but it's not my goal. I want appropriate weapons (including firearms, including pistols, but not rocket launchers or grenades) availiable to the law abiding citizen for self and home defence.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
