Ban Teh Buttar Knive!!

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Mini D
There is a very specific statement being made with both:  Turn in your guns or go to jail.

Oh yeah... they "volunteered".  No... they complied in order to avoid jail.

Oh sure. You're saying they complied in order to avoid jail, but you go along with the belief that an armed bolshevik uprising was in the works. I think they would have faced a worse punishment than jail had they gone ahead with that. If charges of treason were upheld, it could have been the gallows. By the way, still waiting for you to point out the advantages of citizen v subject. This is the third time of asking, and I don't think you have an answer. Hehe, as to your armed citizens mounting an uprising against your military, I don't think a .44 magnum is going to do you much good against cluster bombs, cruise missiles and anything else they could throw at you.

Genozaur - I'm not disputing the origins of the red flag. What I'm saying is that its use was not exclusive to Russians/Bolsheviks etc. It was then and is now used by the British Labour party, and was the party anthem sung at conferences all the way back in the 1920s. So for a newspaper to cite the flying of the red flag as the first step towards bolshevism is somewhat questionable, given that there were already 57 Red Flag singing Labour MPs sitting in the House of Commons. Not only that, the Labour Party came to power for the first time in 1924. Oh gollygosh! - Britain now had a PM who would sing the Red Flag at the end of a party conference!

Mr. Toad,

I don't feel much like arguing - I've just got back from a family funeral and I'm not feeling chirpy.

I have been looking through earlier posts, and your claim about the reality of any "bolshevist threat" seems to centre on having been able to come up with "evidence" from cabinet records.

I would have to say that this means bugger all. Tony Blair told us in the build up to the Iraq war that Iraq could strike British interests at 45 minutes notice. That was exposed as BS, and it's even questionable whether Blair believed it himself. Many believe it was just an excuse to comply with his boss in Washington to go to war. But I'm sure it's all in cabinet records.

But you seem to practise selective acceptance of quotes. For example, when the government's 1920 Bill was presented to Parliament as strictly a measure "to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them", you added

Of course 1920 would not be the last time a government lied in order to promote gun control.

The syntax of the vB code in that quote was incorrect, so it wasn't clear whether that was what you believe, or whether you were quoting someone else. But the fact that you included it would seem to suggest that you agree with it.

MiniD is right about one thing- we can't completely trust government/politicians. We cannot believe what they say with impunity. Clearly, if one side said the purpose of the 1920 Firearms Act was "to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them", and another side said the real reason was to suppress an armed "bolshevik uprising", then someone is lying. So why don't we cast aside what people said, and look instead at the actual facts and actual events that unfolded from c1918.

• 1918 - 57 Labour MPs elected to House of Commons
• 1918 soldiers returning from WW1 bringing with them an unknown quantity of army issue weapons.
• 1920 Firearms Act "sails through parliament"
• no opposition from the aristocracy or affluent members of society to the Act
• no opposition from working classes to the Act
• 1922/23/24 Conservative Party in power in 1920 re-elected, despite having passed "draconian" gun control legislation which "stripped people of their rights".
• 1924 - Britain elects first ever Labour Government, which does not repeal the Act, despite some claims that it targeted the working people whose interests were represented by that government.
• No armed "bolshevik uprising" ever took place. No attempt was made to "seize the reins of government" because a government representing the interests of the workers was elected by democratic electoral process in 1924.
• Despite claims that the government of 1920 had secret plans to arm "stockbrokers, trusted clerks and university men" to ward off a "bolshevik threat", no evidence has been presented indicating that these groups were exempt from the 1920 Act.
• 1926 - the proletarian classes showed that they were NOT powerless to rise up and protest (whatever MiniD would have you believe) and mounted a campaign which became known as  The General Strike
• No evidence of arms being used in this struggle, and no evidence of any shots being fired.

Looks pretty much to me that all segments of the population accepted gun control - I know that's hard for some people to fathom, but there it is.

When the workers protested in 1926, the issues at stake were hours, pay and conditions. Guns wasn't one of them.

[Toad]

There's no point in continuing.

You either have no clue what the points of discussion are here or you are once again deliberately avoiding them. Possibly both, I guess.

[JoOwEn]

[Mini D]

LOL! beetle, your ability to adress this subject is laughable.  You seem to believe what is posted when it agrees with your perceptions, and call it lies when it doesn't.  Hell.. that would happen if it were two quotes from the same source.

And Beetle, and armed uprising can be stopped.  But it's a hell of a lot more difficult to stop one than an unarmed uprising.  Ignoring that simple concept speaks volumes.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Mini D
You seem to believe what is posted when it agrees with your perceptions, and call it lies when it doesn't.

Funny that - I was thinking the same thing about Toad. That's why I said OK - let's forget about what people said, and focus on actual events.

the Home Secretary presented the government's 1920 gun bill to Parliament as strictly a measure to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them

Seems pretty clear to me that this statement is in keeping with events right from 1920 to the present day - and yet Toad denounced it as a lie.

Never did get that citizen/subject comparison from you.


Toad said "This is absolutely my last word on this."

"There are final hits, and then there are final hits - which kind would this one be?" - Trainspotting.

[Mini D]

1) Actually, you believe a statement that uses the word "strictly".  Blindly at that.  My money says there was more to it than what you insist it "strictly" was intended to do.  You're the one saying a specific thing despite being shown quotes from your own legislators saying otherwise.  That's ignorance plain and simple beetle.

2) the rest of your post consists of throwing a smoke grenade and dodging alot.

You're really having a serious amount of trouble grasping simple concepts beet.  That's a shame.  Expected, but still a shame.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Mini D
1) Actually, you believe a statement that uses the word "strictly".  Blindly at that.  My money says there was more to it than what you insist it "strictly" was intended to do.  You're the one saying a specific thing despite being shown quotes from your own legislators saying otherwise.  That's ignorance plain and simple beetle.

Like I said, selective acceptance by both you and Toad. You're quite happy to accept unconditionally quotes made by the Minister of Transport, Eric Geddes, if the content suits your point of view, but reject out of hand the home secretary's reasoning for the 1920 Firearms Act.

And WHY was doubt cast on the home secretary's statement? Because

In fact, the problem of criminal, non-political misuse of firearms remained minuscule.

In other words, because gun crime was low, you had to believe that there was some other ulterior motive behind the Act. You simply cannot believe that the introduction of gun control was designed as a pre-emptive measure to contain crime. What should have happened? Should we have waited until crime was out of control before beginning to address the problem? Toad seems to think that we should. In another thread, Toad said

If it makes NO DIFFERENCE in the crime rate... and it didn't... why pass the law that makes legitimate recreational shooting illegal? Why should any part of your population be subjected to that when it makes NO DIFFERENCE in the crime rate?

Thing is, I believe that our gun control laws DO make a difference. Less than 10% of our homicides are committed with guns, and potential murderers have to resort to much less efficient means, or not bother at all. That's why our homicide tally is around 750/year, and yours is around 16000.

According to one of Toad's sources, quoted earlier, the Report of the Committee on the Control of Firearms 2 (1918) stated that

There can surely be no question that the public interest demands that direct control shall in future be exercised in the United Kingdom . . . over the possession, manufacture, sale and import and export of firearms and ammunition; and the only practical question for consideration appears to be how this control can be most efficiently established.

For me and the vast majority of other Brits, and anyone else who has a clue, that makes perfect sense. AFAIC, the homicide stats in the years since bear ample witness to that.

[lazs2]

subjects allways believe everything their government tells em to believe....  What choice do they have?    

lazs

[Airhead]

Actually it's a good thing Brits aren't allowed to posess handguns- look at how they riot at soccer matches. Would you really want those hooligans (sorry Hooligan, no offense intended) armed?

[lazs2]

yep... the slaughter at the soccer matches is barbaric to most people yet....  it is tolerated because  it is a small price to pay for such stirring entertainment as watching an idiotic game.... people are losing their lives over a game and yet I am being told I don't have the right to defend myself because gun deaths are somehow worse than being hit on the head or stabbed to death!

Everyone wants to be the boss and knows what is best for everyone else so they love to ban crap... till it is their ox being gored.

lazs

[beet1e]

Lazs & Airhead! I luv ya both!

[Airhead]

LOL I love you too, Beet.

[beet1e]

I've done some more Googling of my own, and gone in search of data supporting Mr. Toad's case that the passing of our 1920 Firearms Act was driven by fears about a Bolshevik uprising in Britain.

Indeed, David Lloyd George disliked Bolsheviks! And I have been able to find references citing Bolshevism as the reason for the Act. But when I check out the sources, it usually turns out that the author of the source is American, viewing the issue here from an American perspective. No offence to you guys, but the laws as they are now WRT guns are pretty much the way most people want them. Sure, I saw Joyce Lee Malcolm quoted, and then an article by a guy called Clayton Cramer, who passionately agrees with Mr. Toad on this issue. But - a single Google search on this guy was all that was needed to identify him as an American gun nut.

I tried to stick to more plausible sources, and found a link to the Blackwell Committee Report on the Control of Firearms. The report is too long to post here, but I will post a couple of short excerpts. (By the way, this report makes no mention of Bolshevism. Also note that the events mentioned in the report and cited as a justification for a change in the law happened c1911-1913 - long before the Russian/Bolshevik revolution of 1917)

Blackwell Report

(2) Grounds for strengthening the Law.-That the control of firearms should be made far more stringent than it is now is a proposition which hardly anyone could be found to question. Attention had been called to the matter in Parliament before the war, and on the 13th of March 1913, a Return was made to the House of Commons of the cases in which firearms had been used against Police Officers in England and Wales in the five years 1908-1912. The Return (Paper 188 of 1913) showed that in these five years 47 cases had occurred, in which 92 Police Officers had been shot at, 6 had been killed and 24 had been injured. In 34 of the 47 cases the weapon used was known to be a revolver or some other kind of pistol. Of the 47 cases 15 occurred in the Metropolitan Police District.
******** In October, 1912, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis informed the Home Secretary that in the dock strike of that year seven cases had occurred in which men concerned in the strike came into the hands of the Police for using firearms and five others for carrying them though not actually using them; and that ten other cases of the carrying of firearms were known to the Police, although in these no offender had been actually apprehended or summoned. The Commissioner of Police has also furnished us with other figures to show the extent to which firearms were used for criminal purposes, or if not actually used, were at any rate in the possession of persons who came into the hands of police, in the three years 1911-1913 and 1915-1917 respectively. It appears that in the three years 1911-1913, firearms were used in the Metropolitan Police District by 100 persons of British nationality and by 23 aliens; while firearms were found in the possession of British subjects in 76 cases and of aliens in 27 cases. The corresponding figures in the three years 1915-1917 were 42 and 5 as regards the use of firearms by British subjects and aliens, respectively, and 44 and 10 as regards the possession of them. The decline in the latter period as compared with the three years before the war is no doubt due to the restrictions on the purchase of firearms imposed by the Regulations under the Defence of the Realm Act, and the measures taken for the internment of alien enemies during the war; but if firearms can be brought into the country or obtained here with the same ease when peace is concluded as the law at present allows, the numbers may be expected to rise to or above their former level.
******** The returns also show that in nearly half of the cases in which firearms were used, sometimes with fatal effect, in the Metropolitan Police District in the years 1910-17, they appear to have been used without any particular premeditation in the course of ordinary quarrels - in some cases in street-fights - when, but for the offender's possession of a lethal weapon, probably no serious harm would have been done or attempted. In many of these cases the Courts appear to have taken an extremely lenient view of the offence of using firearms; and the question whether it would not be to the interest of public order that more deterrent penalties should be imposed for this offence, even when no serious injury may have been inflicted, and particularly when firearms are used or carried by persons engaged in crime, is one which it seems to us might well be submitted for the consideration of judicial authorities. In any case the Returns show that there is good reason for so altering the law as to make it much more difficult to obtain firearms than it is at present.

This next excerpt bears out what I said about the significant numbers of weapons returning from WW1. I've highlighted passages of particular interest.

2. It will be seen, therefore, that prior to the war there was strong reason for amending the law, and this was recognised by the Government in 1911 when the Bill to which we shall presently refer in detail was drafted under the instructions of the Home Secretary. Strong, however, as the case was in 1911, it is immensely stronger now. We have to face the situation that the war will have added enormously to the world's stock of rifles and pistols, that large numbers of pistols, and possibly other weapons, will have come into the possession of private persons, notably discharged soldiers and their relatives, and that the number of men skilled in the use of firearms will have greatly increased. It must also be borne in mind that we can hardly hope to escape on demobilisation an increase in crime. Large numbers of the criminal classes have entered the Army, both voluntarily and under the Military Service Acts; and however effective may be the measures taken to facilitate the return of discharged soldiers to civil life and peaceful occupations, it would be unreasonable to expect that all these men will be ready to settle down at once to agricultural or industrial employment. There would be additional ground for apprehension if men of this class, and indeed discharged soldiers in general, were permitted to retain any revolvers which have come into their possession during their army service, or to procure them under the easy conditions allowed by the existing law.

Yep - pretty much as I said. It's funny, the web page from where I got this report was disdainful of the 1920 Act, adopting the Toadite stance of "If gun crime is low, why pass a law restricting guns?" The reason was, of course, as I said - a pre-emptive measure. A bit like a vaccination against a nasty disease.

[lazs2]

yep... wouldn't want anyone to get that nasty ol disease of personal freedom now... just wouldn't do eh what?    Next the peasants will be wanting to hunt on the queens land and all that rot.  

lazs

[Airhead]

Originally posted by beet1e
It's funny, the web page from where I got this report was disdainful of the 1920 Act, adopting the Toadite stance of "If gun crime is low, why pass a law restricting guns?" The reason was, of course, as I said - a pre-emptive measure. A bit like a vaccination against a nasty disease.

I agree Beet- your gun ban was a vaccination against those deadly "-ism" diseases- Nazism, Commiunism, Socialism, Tolitarinism...

Of course the side effects are a spiraling home invasion crime rate that's three times what we have in America, and a whole bunch of reevaluation as Britan has begun experiencing the same kinds of immigration related crimes America has had for over 200 years.

Welcome to the New Millenium Beet.