Gun ownership – a sanctuary from tyranny, and criminality

WE HAVE ANOTHER MASS KILLING in America, this time in Roseburg, Oregon; and carried out once more by a deranged individual; another loner whose neighbours paint an unnerving portrait of his behaviour. The gunman was 26-year-old Chris Mercer-Harper who targeted the Umpqua Community College and took nine lives. This individual was allowed to amass a small arsenal of weapons because he had no criminal record - just a record of disturbed mental behaviour which this small community either ignored or knew little about. Chris Mercer-Harper needed treatment; treatment which it appears he never received; or his parents, rightly believing he could never have committed such an appalling act; never sought or may have tried to seek help, but with little response from the local medical authorities.

                

                 Much easier therefore (as with the many similar incidents in America) to simply to focus upon gun ownership and how to control it, rather than the disturbed minds of the various individuals who have spilled so much blood on college campuses to satisfy their deranged impulses.

                

                 Gun ownership is once more under the liberal spotlight; and not only in America. It is also in the spotlight of UK liberals who loath the very name of The National Rifle Association (NRA). UK liberals who always turn their noses up to those aspects of American culture that they find almost primitive in the wholly snobbish way they make such judgements that treat the NRA as a kind of red neck right-wing body who prefer country music to Sebelius.

                

                 I believe that every American citizen without a criminal record, or a record of mental illness, encompassing by-polarism or any other disturbing mental behaviour correlated by the psychiatric profession to be potentially dangerous; should not be allowed to own a gun, or even a pair of nail clippers.  Chris Mercer-Harper as well as those in the medical profession within Roseburg should be placed under the spotlight- not the NRA.

THE NRA is the liberal's bogeymen. They have power in the land – great power in fact; and American liberalism resents this. It is part of the American Constitution that every American citizen has the right to bear arms. This was written into the American Constitution because it was the citizens right to arm themselves against tyranny: the kind of tyranny that may arise if an American president refuses to accept the judgement of the American people via the ballot box and seeks to ignore the constitution and continues to govern with the aid of a sympathetic military.

                

                 Not even Obama is demanding the outright ban on all arms, but certain calibres of weapons. But the NRA rightly insists that any restrictions on the velocity of the guns, will lead in the future to further restrictions leading to an overall ban. The NRA are right in such an assumption. The right to gun ownership exists for the time when either the law breaks down, or a future government abandons the democratic principles upon which they were elected; and seeks to govern without the input of the people in perpetuity – in other words a dictatorship.

                In the UK, at one time, it was as easy to own a gun as it is today in the USA, providing (as in the USA) you did not have a criminal record – and also it is to be remembered, that the police were never armed; but for a truncheon, a whistle, and a night-stick.  There is a recorded incident in the 19^th century where a constable in pursuance of an armed robber stopped a civilian and asked for his gun, which was immediately handed over, and the chase continued.

                

                I believe in the right to bear arms as once did the government of the UK. But as far as the UK was concerned this liberal tolerance to civilian gun ownership expired after the First World War when Europe was in the thrall of revolution; the British government demanded the return of rifles.

IF THE REPRESENTATIVES of the law cannot provide any kind of protection for their citizens; then such citizens should be allowed, as they are in America, to arm themselves: to protect their families from those who enter their homes; who they do not know whether they have a violent intent or not. Under such circumstances it is the protection not of property but the family that live within the property that is the main concern of the family– and they should be allowed to be armed.

                

                 In Switzerland almost every one of its citizens owns an automatic weapon of the type used by the Swiss army: this is because every citizen dose national service and is allowed to keep his or her weapon when he or she has served their time.

                 

                 As I referred to above, in the UK it was once very easy to buy a weapon and most citizens kept a revolver handy in the 19^th and early part of the 20^th century. I am reminded of, and referred to in a previous blog, of an incident I once read about. It took place in London in the 19^th century under Victoria. An armed robber running from the scene of his crime was being pursued by a constable; the constable was of course unarmed. He stopped a citizen and asked him if he had gun readily available, the citizen nodded in the affirmative, and he handed it over – and so the chase continued. It was not known if the robber was caught or met the kind o fate he was prepared to inflict on his victim; but the story when I read it was meant to demonstrate the commonality of gun ownership in England a short time ago in our history.

               

                 Gun ownership has legitimacy when the forces of law and order cannot protect its citizens, and refuse to attend some crimes as unimportant because of their frequency such as shoplifting and burglary. It is the primary duty of government which is in effect the state, to protect its citizens from internal criminal threats and any external foreign threat. When both these duties are now being undermined by austerity; then the people, in order to feel safe in their own homes should be allowed, to legally own a gun.  If not the only people who will own guns will be the criminals, who do not seem to have too much trouble in getting and owning them.

               

                 In the end the family armed is the final redoubt (when all else fails) against all forms of tyranny and criminality that threaten their lives when the state singularly fails in its duty to protect the law abiding from the anarchy of the criminal or despot – America has got it about right.