Shami's New Friends

Reminder: Shameless Shami, the human rights hustler, claims government moves to restore (partially) the right to self-defence are a bad idea because it will make it too easy to victimise guys

like this.

Reminder: The Civil Liberty Lobby Is A Fraud

The Government finally takes action to restore the right to self-defence, and looks who's there to celebrate:

The plan was attacked by the civil liberties group Liberty, whose director Shami Chakrabarti said: ‘Terrified householders defending themselves are already protected, so the irresponsible announcement can only be designed to make people afraid or actually encourage vigilante execution.’

Yep: vigilantes lying in wait in their beds.

 Or possibly sleeping. Who can tell?

The left's attitude to self-defence has always relied on the assumption that a gang of career criminals kicking down someone's door at 4 AM are just loveable Jack-the-Lads while householders are all homicidal lunatics. Mind you, even that's better than soi-dissant civil libertarians suddenly deciding that you just can't trust the plebs with 'rights' and the state knows best.

As Britain's most consistently brilliant blogger once pointed out, if liberals truly believe that the current laws on self-defence don't have a chilling effect on the public, they surely won't mind if we extend the principle to other areas, hmmm?

It's A Trap

Yes, it's great that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy's plan to dope m'luds porridge with anti-psychotics is finally bearing fruit, but on the other hand:

Sentencing the pair to four years in prison, the judge told them: 'If you burgle a house in the country where the householder owns a legally held shotgun, that is the chance you take'.

I guess we're lucky it wasn't mitigation then, they'd be probably be out by Christmas. Meanwhile, don't be shocked but....

Mansell and O’Gorman, who both have no fixed address.....

I did not see that coming.

Save Our Smackheads!

Hey, say what you like, but at least we've found a case of Islamic violence that liberals don't support. He should have claimed it was a protest against Israel that got out of hand.

Still, this does throw some light onto the true nature of the Nu Tories. In so far as the main excuse for conservatives supporting the Ayatollah Khameron is that he's actually a hard-line conservative who just plays a liberal squish on TV, it's hard to reconcile that theory with the reality that the Cameron Party has not only embraced the left's agenda, which can sometimes be excused as political realism, it's also embraced the underlying world view, which never can be.

Consider Chris Grayling's recent attempt to reach out to the right: he wants to allow householders to kill burglars. Say what?

As Julie says, who's asking for that? Homicidal householders are a liberal caricature. There's no better barometer of the demented state of modern liberalism than that these people really think folks who smash their way through front doors at 3 AM are all loveable old lags called Lefty, but the nation's home-owners are sadistic killers just waiting for the chance to torture innocent smackheads to death.

What the right wants, and has wanted for years, is a meaningful, right to self-defence. One that isn't subject to being retroactively revoked years after the fact should liberal activists manage to contrive a plausible atrocity story around us actually defending ourselves or our families. Or, to put it another way, if 'reasonable force' is such a reasonable concept, why don't we apply it more widely?

Liberals 4 Self-Defence

Hey, who knew? Turns out liberals are all for using force to defend your home and family after all. Well, they are under certain, special circumstances.

Other folk aren't as lucky.

So, for those of you keeping score at home, we have a guy leaving the safety of his house to attack someone who might threaten him, should he succeed in breaking in, who uses a knife on an unarmed man, stabbing him multiple times, including in the back. By my count that's a least four points the CPS would use to try and hang Joe Public, but the legal establishment does all but offer to clean the knife for him. Meanwhile, using a weapon on a steroid-enhanced thug with a record of violent insanity and a penchant for going round tooled up results in the government bending over backwards to try and get a conviction, plus when the inevitable happens, they get all snippy:

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Atkinson, the senior investigating officer, said.. “We would urge anyone who feels under threat in a situation like this one to contact police at the earliest opportunity and not take the law into their own hands.

So shooting someone who's actually broken in is taking the law into your own hands, but charging out the house to go all Norman Bates on some drunk guy who's murdered a window? That gets this:

They said Mr Bunglawala called the police when he became aware that the man had got into a porch area and was kicking the front door, breaking a window in the process.

The lawyers say their client then got a knife in an attempt to scare off the man.

Last week, the Crown Prosecution Service said Mr Bunglawala had no case to answer.

Mr Bunglawala had good reason to fear, not only for his own safety but for that of his wife and children.

At least he only used a knife instead of something really dangerous, like an airgun. For that matter, at least Tony Martin shot a member of a whole gang of felons who had actually broken into his house. On the other hand, the prospect of some law-abiding guy getting a little lost after too much Vitamin XXX and being sliced and diced by a vigilante householder is exactly the type of case liberals always wheel out to prove the public can't be trusted to defend themselves.

Hey, I'm all for libs finally acknowledging that there is something completely bonkers about laws that require householders to actually wait until scumbags have forced their way into their home, before allowing them to apply a carefully calibrated use of force, ceasing immediately the assailant is neutralised, but instinct tells me there's a little something else going on here.

What If Someone Breaks In To Flytip In The Kitchen?

As I understand the left's latest big idea, we'll have informers on every block reporting to council wardens with the power to dispense instant fines. What could go wrong?

More to the point though, doesn't this kind of chip away at the left's arguments against self-defence? After all, these people have spent years waxing pious about the dangers of people 'taking the law into their own hands'. That position was at least internally consistent just as long as leftists could contrast professional police officers with our own lumpy, dumpy selves, but now the law is in the hands of semi-literate council thugs and bitter curtain-twitchers, it doesn't even make sense on its own terms.

The liberal position is that the nation's households are full of folks going to bed every night desperately hoping someone will break in so they can torture him to death but giving the same people special informers hotlines or council uniforms will turn them into disinterested servants of justice. Huh?

One Civil Right Liberty Will Never Support

Gotcha Liberals! These people keep giving us long, patronising lectures about how of course they think citizens should have the right to self-defence. Really? Can anyone imagine the Guardian running a similar nudging & winking article celebrating the government's sleazy denial of any other civil rights? How about an article titled 'Don't Vacuum That Baby's Brains Out' ?

Indeed, the article is the perfect exemplar of the liberal's deranged attitude to self-defence:

Many people hoping for an unrestricted green light to beat up or shoot their burglars or robbers, even unto death, will be disappointed.

Yep that's it. Liberals genuinely believe that people who smash their way into an occupied house at 4 AM are all loveable rogues called 'Lefty' but householders are psychopaths just waiting for the chance to torture people to death. From this bonkers worldview all else follows.

If you truly believe that the real danger with legalising self-defence is that it will allow respectable, middle-aged businessmen to persecute 21 year old smackheads then, yes, the current laws make perfect sense. Hence why Berlins clearly regards the following as a Good Thing:

Nor would the new law help anyone who, warned of a possible break-in, lies in wait and takes forceful action against the burglar. Such conduct has been premeditated. To avoid being prosecuted, it would have to be an instinctive reaction.

Leaving aside the question of just how someone would know in advance they were due to be burgled - a ludicrous red herring if ever there was one - the bottom line is that, by the left's own description, citizens can defend themselves, but only if they're completely unprepared. This is just the legal equivalent of the old line that anyone can eat at the Ritz. Never mind the problems of a family man confronted with a burglar, what are the prospects for a petite twenty-something blonde confronted with an 18 stone rapist with a knife?

The central question hidden in all this is what is the nature of crime? Liberals think crime is just one of those things, and criminality is just another lifestyle choice. There's no outrage there, no sense that criminality eats away at the very basis of human society.

This is the real problem with the whole concept of 'reasonable force'. As DT points out, a smackhead breaking down your door at 4 AM is not a 'reasonable' situation. Suggesting that the courts should consider how householders defend themselves and their families against home intruders in the same way, and using the same criteria, as they consider the fairness of contracts is absurd. Criminals are not part of society, they have voluntarily chosen to place themselves outside the normal restraints of civilisation. The normal assumptions of good faith don't apply. All proponents of self-defence really want is the right to treat them as what they are.

Image Vs Reality

Image

Reality

Liberals 4 Self-Defence

Talking of the law, at least one judge has come round to the idea that when a young woman is confronted by a felon breaking in, she's justified in using force. Or at least she is if by 'felon' you mean 'ex-boyfriend' and by 'breaking in' you mean 'drinking down the pub'.

Actually, this case does raise an interesting question: is it still domestic violence even if it happens down the Dog & Duck ? On the other hand, in so far as the DV ranters only ever talk about 'zero tolerance for violence against women', you can't say they're being inconsistent when they come out with absurd justifications like claiming the victim broke up with his psycho girlfriend 'quite suddenly'. Why ? How much notice are you supposed to give ? Besides, who knows what she'd have bitten off if she'd had more warning ?

Image and Reality With The Five-Oh

Image:

One of the country's most senior police officers announced he would abandon the Government's overall target for detecting crime to prevent his officers being hamstrung by an "over zealous obsession with chasing numbers".

[Martin Richards, Chief Constable of Sussex Police] said he wanted to encourage his officers not to focus on "easy detections" of low-level crimes but to concentrate on more serious offences that "people really care about" including violence, burglary and domestic abuse.

Reality:

When Frank McCourt's home was targeted by young hooligans hurling rocks and eggs, he challenged them and told them to leave and never return.

But the next day they came back so Mr McCourt, a former soldier, tried to phone [Sussex Police} but was put on hold for 45 minutes.

At the end of his tether, he grabbed one of the louts by the arm and hauled him inside, telling him he was performing a citizen's arrest.

But it was Mr McCourt who was arrested later that day - for kidnap.

The 57-year-old spent six weeks on bail before being charged with the lesser offence of assault.

The case hung over him for two and a half months before it was dropped just days before the trial when prosecutors accepted there was no realistic prospect of convicting him.

On the other hand, let's be fair: maybe safety at work for vandals is one of the issues "people really care about". Or perhaps not.

Note that all the usual indicators of police sleaze are present and correct. There's the attempt to bounce the citizen into accepting a caution, combined with the attempt to intimidate by over-charging, then the looooong period where the victim is kept on the hook, before the police admit they don't - in the strict sense of the word - have an actual case.

See, this is what's so sleazy about all those libs insisting citizens have the right to self-defence. That may be true in the strict legal sense, but the process is the punishment. What relevant information were they hoping would change things after, say, the first month ? Nada - they were just trawling for dirt while ramping up the stress levels - and the legal bills.

This also sinks the other great excuse Mr Plod hides behind. Let's pretend, for the sake of their sleazy argument, that the mere fact a complaint was made means they just had to arrest him. Two and a half months. That's a lot of paperwork. Ditto, how come this maximalist arrest policy doesn't apply to the chav scum ? Not only do we have the vandalism, we have the chavette piling in ? How come the police didn't have to arrest her ?

This is why modern policing is worse than mere anarchy. Anarchy is when Vikings attack a village. What we have now is where the Vikings get beaten back, then call in the King's troops to rampage through the village looking for inflammatory parchments and unlicensed swords.

Abortion: The Final Answer

There's been a lot of talk recently about changing the law on abortion, for example reducing the limit down to 22 weeks or even 20 weeks. Few topics are more controversial, but fortunately I've come up with a brilliant plan to end the debate once and for all.

Forget all this talk of time limits, medical necessity and the like, I have the answer right here: we simply pass a law asserting that all women have the right to 'reasonable termination'.

Is that brilliant or what ? Obviously, we'll need a legal framework to decide what's reasonable. I'm figuring it should work something like this: as soon as the woman in question is in the recovery room, two cops should start interrogating her while she's still under the influence.

Next up, the cops should arrest her and hold her for 72 hours, while their colleagues start searching her house and questioning friends, acquaintances and bitter co-workers. Chief constables will always find the money for this, especially the ones who've given speeches warning of the dangers of a 'Chinese style' culture of infanticide.

Once they've dug up enough dirt, the police will carry out a series of interviews in which the suspect is asked questions like 'I notice you have "Silence of the Lambs" on DVD, do you like films with killing in them ?'. Or maybe 'I've heard you used to hang out with a couple of feminists, I bet you girls had a few laughs talking about how you'd like to abort a kid, right ?'.

After the 72 hours are up, the police can let the suspect go on bail, and pass the file on to an independent prosecutor. Obviously, the prosecutor's ultimate boss will have also given speeches warning of the dangers of a 'culture of death', but that doesn't mean the decision won't be made based purely on the facts of the case. In fact, there's a good chance that after a few months, they might even let the suspect know she's been cleared.

Then again, some of these cases will go all the way. In fact, some of these women will have to be held on remand, just to make sure they don't have any more abortions. Still, they'll all get their day in court... eventually. Like, maybe, fourteen or so months later. The jury might clear them, in which case no harm done. They might even get costs awarded. Legal costs, of course. Nothing for stress, time off work or anything like that though, that'd be stupid. As long as some of them get cleared eventually, no one can say we're anti-abortion, right ?

See, it's a brilliant idea! I came up with it while I was reading this comment thread over here.

Outrage D'Jour: Safety At Work (Felons) Act 2008 Edition

Talking of state-sponsored lawlessness, PC Plod's continuing his jihad against that whole 'right to self-defence' thing. How come none of the civil liberties freaks are ever steamed about a law that all but requires innocent citizens to lay down their life or face years of legal harassment by the state ?

Oh wait...I've worked it out: they're all liberal kooks - much like the Nu Police. And again, note that no matter how much public money is wasted on pursuit of a law-abiding citizen, none of these low-lifes will so much as score a verbal reprimand.

Mr Justice Anthony Martin

Apparently you can use a shotgun to defend your property after all. Not everyone though, just people who wear wigs to work (and this, by the way, with someone on the roof in broad daylight, not breaking down the door at 4 AM).

So much for all this talk that citizens finding their families under attack by scum should immediately wall themselves up in the cupboard and wait for the police to arrive. Here we have an insider showing exactly how much credibility he gives to the idea of police officers turning up in time to do anything except make a chalk outline round the bodies.