No Right to Self Protection

This is not mine. I am not sure who wrote it. However, it says a lot about England today and America tomorrow if we are not careful.


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 streets 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
still owned by private citizens.

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.

Sound familiar?

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 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.

WAKE UP AMERICA, THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND
AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

It was not put there to insure that we had the right to hunt. Only a complete idiot would believe that.
It was put there in order to insure that we had the right and the duty to defend ourselves and our families and property and also to defend this country and our Constitution. Yes, guns kill, that is what they are for.

"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate,
tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds...”

--Samuel Adams


PART II

On 10 January 2000, Fearon and Darren Bark, 33, both from Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, admitted to conspiring to burgle Martin’s farmhouse. Fearon was sentenced to three years in prison, and Bark, to 30 months (with an additional 12 months arising from previous offences). Fearon was released on 10 August 2001.
On 23 August 1999, Martin was charged with the murder of Barras, the attempted murder of Fearon, "wounding with intent to cause injury" to Fearon, and "possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life".
The jury at the trial was told that they had the option of returning a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder, if they thought that Martin “did not intend to kill or cause serious bodily harm". However, the jurors found Martin guilty of murder by a 10 to 2 majority. He was sentenced to life in prison, the mandatory sentence for murder under English law.
An appeal was considered in October 2001 by three senior judges headed by Lord Lane. Submissions by the defense that Martin had fired in self-defense were rejected by the appeal court. However, on this occasion the defense submitted evidence that Martin suffered paranoid personality disorder specifically directed at anyone intruding into his home.
This submission was accepted by the Court of Appeal and, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, Martin's murder conviction was replaced by manslaughter carrying a five year sentence, and his ten year sentence for wounding Fearon was reduced to three years. These sentences were to run concurrently.
Martin was imprisoned in Highpoint Prison, Suffolk. When he became eligible for parole and early release, the Parole Board rejected his application without stating a reason. The chairman of the parole
board, Sir David Hatch, in an interview with The Times described Martin as "a very dangerous man" who may still believe his action had been right. Martin challenged the decision in the High Court, where the parole board's decision was upheld. Probation officers on Martin’s cases said there was an "unacceptable risk" that Martin might again react with excessive force if other would-be burglars intruded on his Norfolk farm.
On 28 July 2003, Martin was released after serving three years of his five-year sentence, the maximum period for which he could be held following good behavior.

During 2003, Fearon applied for, and received, an estimated £5,000 of legal aid to sue Martin for loss of earnings due to the injury he sustained. However, the case was thrown into doubt when photographs were published in The Sun suggesting that Fearon's injuries were not as serious as had been claimed. Fearon later dropped the case when Martin agreed to drop a counter-claim.


Never shoot to wound, you might miss and that could be dangerous for your family.