Sir,

I have reviewed your website and read your article on the ban of guns in the U.K. What you put forth, in general, is not something that I agree with. The below is based on a philosophic approach.

The rise of civilized society and the proliferation of guns correspond. Think back to the days before guns and you will note that BIG AGGRESSIVE (dare I say) MEN walked around raping and killing. Now this happened. It cannot be denied. Go back as far as you want in the past and it simply gets more widespread and grotesque. Power was force of arms, government were merely the force of arms in charge.

Now I will not say that governments are any different today, however there is a notion of law and of right and wrong and the ability of people to enforce that law and uphold that society WITH OR WITHOUT the support of the government.

Before you foam at the mouth, just read and think about this. A women in New York is walking down the street. She can do this because the no matter how large her adversary, Samuel Colt is larger. So the necessity of smaller folks to be a victim is out the window. We can ALL be victims. Big people and small people and old people and young people. Now that is equality and the starting point of a society.

Best Regards,

Matt

Can a woman carry a handgun in New York? Can a woman not walk around without a gun? That's funny, I've never noticed any lack of women on the streets of Britain. Do they know the terrible risks they are running? Who isn't telling them of that risk? The NRA for one.

I scrolled down looking for a philosophical approach but I couldn't find one.

Guns do not provide protection against attackers unless the attackers are so inept and slow that they give five seconds warning of their attacks. If everybody carries a gun they are safe right up to moment that they are attacked, and it will be a moment, attacks will all be sudden, with no warning. Therefore everybody goes about expecting to be attacked suddenly. A gun in your pocket is no solace when you have a gun against your temple.

In a society with widespread carrying of guns everybody is a victim all the time. Everybody is vulnerable, everybody is in constant fear. This does not happen in civilized countries.

Along with the American Dream the other great American myth is the idea that the first people to buy and carry guns will be weak defenceless single nubile white women when everybody knows the weirdo loners, scumsuckers, tattooed gorillas, militia freaks, bikers and assorted pondlife will have bought their guns years before. The arseholes who work out in the gym all day to look mean and tough are not about to lose out in any arms race with a librarian.

The NRA tell women to carry a gun to protect themselves from rapists. Hardly. He'll just use his gun to steal her gun before he gets down to business. All those years of carrying that damn thing around, scratching her phone, putting holes in the lining of her purse and giving her nightmares and it is totally useless.

Britain used to be a much more dangerous place to wander. Crime was rampant and many men carried weapons. Not women, men. Men carried stout sticks, swords and pistols, just look at portraits and street scenes of the time. Householders kept pistols to protect themselves from burglars, so burglars carried pistols too, and used them at the slightest sign of a disturbance. Over time this has changed completely. Criminals still have guns of course, not all of them, but those who feel they need them. Criminals cannot use courts and lawyers to protect their interests so they need the threat of violence to protect their interests. Most gun crime in Britain is connected to drug gangs. Armed robberies, muggings and rapes using guns are rare, and as I explained guns do not deter or prevent such crimes they just make criminals more nervous and more likely to take advantage of surprise.

Try this thought experiment. Imagine a mud hut. Approach the hut and call out cheerily to alert the owner that you are there. The owner pops his head out.

What's in his hand?

The chances are that you imagined a man coming out with a spear and a shield, or possibly a bow and arrow. The guy's got no computer, air conditioner, car, bicycle, fridge or clean water supply but he's got a weapon he caries around all the time. Is this a sign of civilization? Hardly.

Carrying weapons is not civilized. Primitive people walk around with weapons in their hands. Head hunters, cannibals, bandits, warlords, rednecks and members of the British aristocracy. In civilized countries people do not carry weapons, do not need weapons, do not think much about weapons, don't own weapons. The chances of dying a violent death in any European country today is extremely small, vast orders of magnitude lower than in any primitive society. Even if you take the whole of the twentieth century including the two world wars European societies are significantly more peaceful and less violent than any other type of human society ever studied. If you exclude teen-on-teen violence then the figures drop even lower. Children tend to be nasty little savages by nature, it takes a while for them to come to terms with the realities of civilized life, after all it isn't what their genes have prepared them for. I stopped playing with guns and knives in my early twenties.

We don't need personal weapons. Giving them up doesn't put us in severe danger and not carrying them about saves us a lot of hassle. Just look at how much hype there is about how small cellphones are these days, we don't want to carry around great big lumps of metal and plastic. We really don't have to, and in civilized countries people don't.

We've seen America, we know it doesn't work, that is why there is no popular movement for widespread gun ownership in Britain. There is an election campaign today in Britain, not a single party has mentioned allowing householders to own guns for protection or to carry them in the street for protection. We have about a dozen parties big enough to bother having law and order policies, none of them want Britain to learn anything from America, I have checked. I challenge you to do the same.

There are only three gun-totting civilizations in the world today: Israel, South Africa and the USA. All three have a history of fear of crime with a strong racial dimension. No other countries have citizens who carry guns for personal protection. Don't mention Switzerland, that's nothing to do with personal protection paranoia, it is their national defence policy, and a totally paranoid one it is. (How many land-locked European countries can you foresee being invaded in the next twenty years?) It isn't Europe that is out of line on this one, it is the USA.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org

Mr. Willett,

That was quite a dissertation.

Civilized societies do not need weapons because they have weapons. In the Old West everyone carried a gun. Now that isn't necessary because law and order has "come to the west". Well how did it get there? Frankly it got there by pointing guns at folks until they behaved. Then the people passed laws and formed institutions to protect their society. ALL SOCIETIES START THIS WAY.

That is my point.

That being said, I think taking extremist views on guns is a touch ignorant. Democracy is based on THE PEOPLE consenting to be governed. If your consent is empty because you have no means to alter, threaten, overthrow the government then what is the point? What if Tony Blair said, "hmm, I am not stepping down. I am deploying the army and naming myself KING BLAIR." Then your fate is dependant on the loyalty of the army.

If President Bush issued an executive order today that the populace was to be enslaved then his 2 million strong army would be met by 280 million resistant people. It would be mutually assured destruction. At least that is how it works in theory.

Now I think that you can agree that the REAL problem of people is fear of death. They are afraid to die, so they allow that fear to govern everything thing that they do.

Now to your point about Euro superiority... There isn't one way to look at the world. Man is not perfect, nor are his ideas. I respect your government and your viewpoints. I do not, however think that the world would be so much better off if every place was like the U.K. I see that you broadly paint the U.S. as a violent regressive society and undoubtedly when I talk about Belfast, Ireland, state instituted religion, etc, etc, etc you will quickly divorce yourself from those events thereby upholding your moral superiority.

Humans will forever be human. We cannot evolve past ourselves. Ourselves are the biggest threat to ourselves. It is only by adversity that man can reach his true potential.

Personally, I am kind of sad to have seen the Soviet Union fall. They provided justification for everything. Had they not fallen, I am sure that we would be railing against them now. ;o)

Have a good evening and I look forward to your reply.

Matt

In the final analysis, when the chips are down, it all comes down to violence, laws and constitutions are just paper and can change nothing. The whole point of civilization is to keep the chips up, the paper banknotes circulating at face value and the rule of law working.

Your what-if invasion and revolution scenarios are just the masturbation fantasies of people who love to stroke their rod and polish their piece. It is all idle speculation. The USA is not going to have a revolution (at least as long as the oil supply holds out) and there isn't going to be any invasion, and that has nothing to do with privately owned rifles, Afghanistan was full of millions of privately owned assault rifles and it didn't stop the Soviets or the Americans invading.

I pointed out that America was the odd one out. Nothing to do with Europe being superior. New Zealand, Australia and Japan don't have a great private gun-toting culture either. Gun regulations vary, Australia, Canada and New Zealand don't have any problems in allowing people to use rifles for sport but they don't have cities crawling with people packing heat. America is the odd one out and that is not because of gun availability it is because of gun hysteria, fear, the gun-toting culture and the "from my cold dead hands" rabble-rousing.

I am not suggesting that America copies Britain. It wouldn't work. You'd all freak, there would be millions of people currently living shitty lives who would leap at the chance of martyrdom as readily as the inhabitants of the Gaza strip. You don't need Charlton Heston to lead them, they're all fully brainwashed now, guns are their totem. They don't care if they have no jobs, no education and no prospects, they've got the Bible, country music on the radio and a full rack of guns. Yee haw!

What I am suggesting is that Americans stop trying to export their dysfunctional and uncivilized attitudes to the rest of the world. We have seen American gun culture, we are not impressed. We don't want it. McDonalds and Coca Cola, OK. Microsoft and Apple, OK. His 'n' Hers co-ordinating semi automatics in a gift set with matching buckskin shin holsters? No way. Only in America, thank goodness.

There is no country on the face of the planet that looks to America as the promised land as far as gun laws are concerned.

American values on guns are screwed up, don't try to export your attitudes where they're thoroughly detested. My original article was designed to stem the flow of ignorance which has Americans wringing their hands in anguish thinking about how the British have thrown away their basic human rights and been swallowed in a sea of gun crime. It hasn't happened. The British people, the British media and even the tiny fringe fascist and libertarian parties have not the slightest desire to change our gun laws or to import American gun culture. A couple of thousand people who are involved in shooting as a sport care about the issue but they just don't make any impact beyond a couple of lines buried deep within the sports pages.

We've banned guns. Subject closed. What's on the telly? Another one of those American cop shows about ballistics experts catching criminals, or a Schwarzenegger film , the one where he carries that bloody great big machine gun and sweats a lot...no the other one... no the other other one... no the sequel, I think. The weather looks OK, the houses look roomy, but I'm glad we don't live there.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org