several people emalied me this article from the Daily Telegraph.. one, beetles countryman... I would say this to my english friends who decide not to be terrorized by the brutal.... better judged by twelve than carried by 6 That might not translate to well but in our country we would rather take our chances with a jury than a burglar... As is noted in the article... there are way more burglaries in england than here. What isn't said is that 50% of english burglars are "hot" burglars... they don't care if you are home are not... In the U.S. they know if you are home you might shoot em... they don't come with their own guns because the penalties are increased if caught and... they ain't into shootouts anyhow... Anyhow... for my british friends... good luck to you.
"By Alan Judd
(Filed: 02/12/2002)
A retired man I know who lives in a village was recently awoken by the noise
of his front door being smashed in. He got up, was confronted by four
aggressive burglars and pressed the panic button on his alarm.
A very bright light was shone on him and he was threatened. When he tried to
go downstairs he was sprayed with something that hurt his eyes. The burglars
continued removing his furniture, safe in the knowledge that they would not
be harmed.
The police were prompt, but too late. The scenes of crime people took two
days to appear. They had had 15 other break-ins to attend, mostly commercial
properties, which, it seems, take priority over crimes in which people are
threatened or attacked in their homes.
A neighbour of mine was similarly attacked, only this time it was broken
bottles rather than spray and it took the police two hours to arrive from a
town 30 miles distant. Another couple had their dogs sprayed and were forced
back to their bedroom while the thugs completed their work.
These people live in the Home Counties, not the Wild West, and their cases
are not exceptional. Thieves know how vulnerable country properties are, and
how thinly policed are whole swathes of our countryside. The police say,
with reason, that they are over-stretched just keeping the lids on the towns
and can't spare more than a token presence outside them.
But if the police can't protect us, who can? Only ourselves. There's no one
else.
Another neighbour now sleeps with his shotgun beneath the bed. How else, he
asks, could he defend himself and his family against four men armed with he
knows not what? What would he use - poker, kitchen knife? With any hand
weapon he'd have to grapple closely and he'd probably lose. He needs to be
able to intimidate and, if necessary, harm from a distance, and that usually
means a gun. But what would our authorities say?
They wouldn't like it. First, they would argue that it's better to let the
thieves take what they will than risk injury by fighting them. After all,
possessions are only things, they're mostly insured and nothing's worth a
knife in your pancreas. Secondly, they would urge expensive security
measures - alarms, lights, security marking and bugging, perhaps even rape
gates (an iron grille across the top of the stairs) so that you remain safe
in your cage while your house is cleared beneath you.
These are valid points but they ignore the emotional connotations of "home",
the violation that household burglary represents. Granted, it is not quite
the same as violation of your person but it's so close as to make little
difference. It often involves the threat or fact of physical attack and some
victims of burglary are permanently traumatised; many move home.
Our authorities might also argue that we are, in fact, permitted to use
"reasonable force" in defending ourselves and our own. But what is
"reasonable force"? Beating off frontal attack probably would count, whereas
attacking a fleeing assailant might be construed as retaliation. In
practice, however, distinctions are less clear.
On the one hand, Tony Martin was famously convicted for killing (by shooting
in the back) a thief who had broken into his home. Another man was convicted
for repeatedly stabbing a burglar who had broken into the flat in which he
believed his children were sleeping.
A man who felled a violent schizophrenic who was strangling someone, then
kicked him when he tried to get up and resume, was arrested by the police
(unlike the schizophrenic) and prosecuted by the CPS for kicking. Yet when
another man stabbed to death one intruder and seriously wounded another, the
CPS found his use of force "reasonable" and did not prosecute.
What such cases indicate, wrote The Sunday Telegraph's Alasdair Palmer, is
that the CPS "clearly can't decide where the boundary between the reasonable
and unreasonable use of force lies, and thus what the law actually is".
How can it be right to prosecute people when the law itself is confused and
contradictory? If the lawyers, safe in their offices, can't say what is
right, how can we be expected to weigh up the pros and cons during some
desperate struggle in the dark? Unclear law is unfair law.
It is also a question of attitude. Increasingly, our legal and judicial
authorities seem more concerned with covering their own backs in this
rights-based culture, turning victims into perpetrators and perpetrators
into victims. A friend who kept a pick-handle by his door was warned by the
police that it could constitute an offensive weapon and that he shouldn't
contemplate using it. There was no concern for how he might best deter
intruders, no sense, indeed, that the victim should have a right to defend
himself and his own, and that the intruder was wholly wrong in being there.
Over centuries there evolved an implicit contract between us and the
authorities: in return for our renouncing our right to defend ourselves and
to wreak vengeance on those who harm us, the authorities arrogated those
rights to themselves and undertook to protect us.
But now it's breaking down. They cannot defend us adequately - ask any rural
police force - but are reluctant to redress the balance by permitting us to
do more to protect ourselves. If I killed or injured someone in self-defence
in my own home I would be regarded by the law as potentially at least as
criminal as my assailant, and my assailant's evidence could be given equal
weight to my own.
Yet is it reasonable to expect me, during those few fearful seconds on the
stairs when menaced by broken bottles, to guess what the law would say when
the law itself doesn't know? Or to feel that I must not defend my family, my
property and myself if that means damaging my attackers?
This is deeply unfair, yet we could easily right it. We don't need new,
over-prescriptive legislation, nor a firearms free-for-all. All we need is a
shift of emphasis, of bias, for the courts to make it clear that there is a
strong presumption against prosecuting any occupant who injures an assailant
while resisting invasion.
They won't, of course, without great public pressure. The police, the CPS
and the judiciary are monopoly-holders who dislike the individual
self-assertion involved in our defending ourselves, even when they
demonstrably can't do it for us. They argue that if householders used guns
in their defence, then so would burglars in attack.
Yet in America, where the law is more robustly on the side of the victim,
the rate of domestic burglary is reportedly only one fifth of ours. And in
London the Metropolitan Police will tell you, off the record, why we no
longer hear about armed bank robbers: because a few years ago they started
shooting them.
All we need is for the law-enforcement bias to be clarified and corrected in
favour of the victim, and then applied sensibly. We need a change of
attitude in which victims who put up a fight are praised by the police, not
criticised or prosecuted. Why not try it as a 10-year experiment? We'll
never rid ourselves of violent burglaries but we might significantly reduce
them."
