Ben Shapiro takes on CNN actor Piers Morgan on gun control and the second amendment

Ben Shapiro takes on CNN leftist Piers Morgan: (H/T Wes)

The full transcript is here.

Excerpt:

Shapiro: I think the reason that it’s about left and right here is because fundamentally, the right believes that the basis for the Second amendment–and they believe in the Second Amendment–the basis for the Second Amendment is not really about self defense, and it’s not about hunting. It’s about resistance to government tyranny. That’s what the Founders said, and that’s what the right believes in this country.

Morgan: Which tyranny are you fearing, yourself?

Shapiro: I fear the possibility of a tyranny rising in the country in the next fifty to a hundred years. Let me tell you something, Piers. The fact that my grandparents and great grandparents in Europe didn’t fear that is why they’re now ashes in Europe. So this kind of leftist revisionist history where there’s never any fear of democracy going usurpatious or tyrannical, is just that. It’s fictitious.

The fascism that arose in Germany in the 1930s sprang from a political vision called “National Socialism”. They stood against free trade, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and private ownership of arms – just like the Democrat Party of today. Socialism means big government, and big government means smaller individuals and less freedom.

Piers Morgan and the UK ban on guns

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

• The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition)
• The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press

Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.

Excerpt:

Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).

Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.

And the result of the 1997 gun ban:

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.

[...]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.

I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people. You might think that CNN actors would be vetted to make sure that they are familiar with research papers and academic books before they open their mouths, but actually they are just ignorant celebrities. They know nothing whatsoever about the things they talk about.

Filed under: News, CNN, Constitution, Firearm, Founding Fathers, Freedom, Gun, Gun Ban, Gun Control, Gun Ownership, Gun Registry, Gun Rights, Gun Violence, Guns, Handguns, Leftism, Liberty, Piers Morgan, School Shooting, Second Amendment, Self-Defense, Shooting, Socialism, Tyranny, Violent Crime

12-year-old girl shoots home intruder in the shoulder with legally owned firearm

Left-wing ABC News reports.

Full text:

Kendra St. Clair, 12, was at home alone in Oklahoma, when loud banging began on the door to her family’s home. Soon, the glass shattered and an intruder had entered.

“I was scared and I didn’t know what to do next,” Kendra told ABC News.

Petrified, she called her mom Debra.

“I said Kendra get the gun and go get in my closet now. And call 911.”

The young 6th grader followed her mom’s orders to the tee.

The 911 tapes tell the story as it unfolded.

Kendra: “I’m at my house. I’m in my closet. And I ran away from (inaudible) someone’s trying to get into my house and I do not know who they are.” Dispatcher: “Ok I have a deputy en route, I want you to stay on the phone with me. Ok?” Kendra: “Ok. Please. I think they are in the house.”

Kendra had taken shelter in a closet, clutching her mother’s .40 caliber glock gun while she listened to the intruder make his way around her home.

Kendra: “Please help me. Please.” Dispatcher: “Alright, alright. I understand. Do you still have your mom’s gun there?” Kendra: “Yes I do. I have it in my hand.”

Her fear intensified to sheer terror, when she saw the knob of the closet door beginning to turn.

At that point, that for the first time in her life, Kendra fired a gun.

Police said the bullet traveled straight through the closet door and struck 32-year-old Stacey Jones in the shoulder, scaring him out of the house.

They arrested him a few blocks away and charged Jones with first degree burglary.

“When I had the gun, I didn’t think I was actually going to have to shoot somebody,” the 6th grader recalled. “I think it’s going to change me a whole lot, knowing that I can hold my head up high and nothing can hurt me anymore.”

Her mother Debra agrees.

“I think that she did something that most grown-ups wouldn’t be able to do in a frightening situation. I think she handled herself amazingly.”

Jones was treated at the hospital and released into the custody of authorities. Police said he has not yet entered a plea but that bond has been set for $250,000.

My fear about Barack Obama is that if he gets a second term, then he will ban private ownership of handguns. And then stories like this will end in tragedy for the law-abiding people. Banning guns is an inherently pro-criminal policy. And when you read stories like this, it’s easy to see why.

Related posts

• Police threatened to charge man who defended his wife with attempted murder
• Couple arrested for using legally-owned gun to defend home from burglars
• Armed bystander stops stabbing outside school
• Obama campaign contributor and gun control advocate ran Fast and Furious
• If you defend your home from armed intruders in the UK, you get arrested
• UK family arrested for defending their home from burglar
• Police warn UK woman for scaring away burglars with kitchen knife
• 61-year-old British man convicted for cutting up fruit with a Swiss Army knife
• Could tougher gun control laws lower the violent crime rate?
• Pregnant woman uses her shotgun to scare burglars out of her home
• Crime rates in Chicago and DC drop after gun control laws are struck down
• Do gun control laws cause crime rates to go down?
• Do gun-free zones prevent multiple victim shootings?
• John Stossel makes the case against gun control in 6 minutes
• Do guns reduce crime? Watch this debate and hear both sides
• Liberal MSNBC says that more legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates
• John Stossel makes the case against gun control in 6 minutes
• Formal debate on gun control featuring John Lott and Gary Kleck
• Tom Sowell on gun control and judicial activism
• Grandmother jailed for five years for owning family heirloom handgun
• Do gun-free zones prevent multiple-victim public shootings in Europe?
• Understanding how concealed carry laws save lives
• Why do people favor legal private ownership and concealed carry of handguns?

Filed under: News, Barack Obama, Crime, Crime and Punishment, Criminal, Criminology, Democrat Party, Deterrence, Equality, Firearm, Firearm Ownership, Gun Ban, Gun Control, Gun Ownership, Gun Rights, Handgun Ban, Home Defense, Jurisrudence, Male, Men, Punishment, Self-Defense, Sex Roles

Police threatened to charge man who defended his wife with attempted murder

From the UK Daily Mail, the latest on the story about the couple who was arrested for wounding four burglars who invaded their home with a legally-owned shotgun. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

The couple held by police over the shooting of two intruders at their isolated cottage spoke yesterday of their ‘living nightmare’.

Andy Ferrie said he ‘plumbed the depths of despair’ when police told him he could face a charge of attempted murder.

Tracey Ferrie said being kept in a police cell away from her husband had ‘petrified’ her and she was haunted by the ‘stomach-churning’ experience.

Mr Ferrie, 35, and his 43-year-old wife were arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm after he called police to report that he had discharged a shotgun, hitting two of four men who had broken into their home.

They were held in separate cells and handcuffed for a court appearance where detectives sought more time to hold them for questioning.

Mrs Ferrie, a saleswoman, said: ‘I was completely petrified. Being locked up in a police cell just yards from my husband, but banned from talking to him, was agony.

‘When I can get some sleep now I wake up with a start and think I’m back in the cell. It’s mortifying and stomach churning.’

She said their cottage at Welby, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, looked like ‘something out of CSI’ as police swarmed around the hamlet following the incident early last Sunday.

Mr Ferrie, who runs a mobile home repair business, said being told he could ultimately face an attempted murder charge had left him too anxious to eat during almost three days and nights in custody.

[...]‘I was petrified, scared stiff,’ Mr Ferrie told The Sun. ‘I only did what any other bloke would have done given the situation. I’m no hero or hard man. I did what I did to protect my precious, lovely wife.

‘I was only a few feet away, I could have shot to kill but I didn’t. I was relieved later when I was told the injuries I had caused were not life-threatening. The events of the last few days have scarred us for life.’

Mr Ferrie, who plans to emigrate to Australia with his wife next year, said that during his time in custody he was ‘told my case had been upgraded to attempted murder’.

He added: ‘I just crumpled. I saw myself being sent to prison for a long, long time. I was offered food but didn’t eat for the whole 66 hours we were held.’

Last week, a court heard how the couple were woken by the sound of banging and breaking glass as the intruders forced their way inside just after midnight. Mr Ferrie confronted one of the alleged raiders in their bedroom.

If there were any justice in the world, the police and Crown lawyers responsible for this tragedy would all be sacked, right up to the top of the police force. A civil suit by the victims of the crime would make a nice end to it. Too bad the liberal pro-criminal politicians who criminalized self-defense in the UK won’t be forced to spend a few years in jail. That wouldn’t even be enough to punish them for what they did to those law-abiding citizens right after they were traumatized by a home break-in.

We have to be very careful in this country about politicians on the left who oppose property rights, gun ownership and self-defense. Politicians on the left are always moaning about the rights of criminals and the need to ban guns and prohibit self-defense. This story from the UK shows what their plan does to ordinary people. Why would any man get married and start a family in a country run by feminist leftists who put a man in jail for taking up the role of protector of his family and his home?

Filed under: Polemics, Crime, Crime and Punishment, Criminal, Criminology, Deterrence, Equality, Feminism, Feminization, Gun Control, Gun Ownership, Gun Rights, Harriet Harman, Home Defense, Jurisrudence, Male, Men, Punishment, Seld-Defense, Sex Roles, Socialism, UK

Couple arrested for using legally-owned gun to defend home from burglars

Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail, which I found very disturbing.

Excerpt:

• Police received 999 call from a man who said he had opened fire on four intruders
• Man, 35, fired shotgun at gang who broke into his isolated cottage in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire
• He and his wife, 43, called police immediately after shooting
• Couple arrested on suspicion of GBH and four men detained on suspicion of aggravated burglary

The couple arrested after two suspected burglars were shot during a midnight break-in at their remote rural home had been robbed three or four times already, it has been reported.

Police descended on the farm cottage in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire after receiving a 999 call from a man who said he had opened fire on four intruders.

The homeowners, who have been named as 35-year-old Andy Ferrie and his wife Tracey, 43, were understood to have called police immediately after the shooting, at 12.26am yesterday morning.

Mr Ferrie’s mother Susan Spilner told the Sun newspaper: ‘This is not the first time they have been broken into. They have been robbed three or four times. One of them was quite nasty.”

[...]The man who dialed 999 told officers he had fired his shotgun, which is licensed and legally held, and the intruders fled.

Minutes later, ambulance paramedics were called to treat a man with shotgun injuries. The 999 call was understood to have been made by one of the suspected burglars.

A second man was treated for shotgun injuries after he walked into Leicester Royal Infirmary, around ten miles from the cottage.

Neither of the men’s injuries were said to be serious.

The householder and his wife were arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.

He is thought to be a farm worker who kept the shotgun legally as part of his job. Four men in their 20s and 30s were also arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary.

I checked the population of their city and it’s 25,000 people. That is just scary to me.

The UK took a hard turn to the left over the last couple of decades under the Labor Party. They believed that disarming law-abiding citizens in order to protect criminals would reduce crime. In addition to arresting law-abiding citizens, the UK also has strict gun control that prevents law-abiding citizens from defending themselves from criminals. For example, in 1997, the UK banned handguns. The result of that policy was that violent crime more than doubled in the four years following the ban. So not only is there this initiative on the secular left to coddle criminals with lighter sentences, but there is also the effort by the secular left to disarm law-abiding citizens.

Men in particular are meant to use force against criminals. But that distinctive male role is not OK with the UK Labor Party, who do not like distinctions of good and evil in any case. This inability to protect their families is stressful for men. Many men are not interested in getting married because of this stress. The whole point of marriage for a man is that there will be respect for his male roles from his family as well as from the state. The refusal of the government to punish criminals is not reassuring to men. And the government’s tendency to not let men do what needs to be done and use their judgment in cases like this just makes marriage seem less attractive to us.

Related posts

• If you defend your home from armed intruders in the UK, you get arrested
• UK family arrested for defending their home from burglar
• Police warn UK woman for scaring away burglars with kitchen knife
• 61-year-old British man convicted for cutting up fruit with a Swiss Army knife
• Could tougher gun control laws lower the violent crime rate?
• Pregnant woman uses her shotgun to scare burglars out of her home
• Crime rates in Chicago and DC drop after gun control laws are struck down
• Do gun control laws cause crime rates to go down?
• Do gun-free zones prevent multiple victim shootings?
• John Stossel makes the case against gun control in 6 minutes
• Do guns reduce crime? Watch this debate and hear both sides
• Liberal MSNBC says that more legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates
• John Stossel makes the case against gun control in 6 minutes
• Formal debate on gun control featuring John Lott and Gary Kleck
• Tom Sowell on gun control and judicial activism
• Grandmother jailed for five years for owning family heirloom handgun
• Do gun-free zones prevent multiple-victim public shootings in Europe?
• Understanding how concealed carry laws save lives
• Why do people favor legal private ownership and concealed carry of handguns?

Filed under: News, Crime, Crime and Punishment, Criminal, Criminology, Deterrence, Equality, Feminism, Feminization, Gun Control, Gun Ownership, Gun Rights, Harriet Harman, Home Defense, Jurisrudence, Male, Men, Punishment, Seld-Defense, Sex Roles, Socialism, UK

UN finalizes plan to allow future confiscation of legally-owned guns

From CNS News:

 Amid energetic lobbying from both sides, the Obama administration is taking part in month-long negotiations at United Nations headquarters aimed at finalizing a conventional arms trade treaty, which supporters say will save millions of lives but opponents fear threatens to restrict Second Amendment rights at home and U.S. arms sales policies abroad.

[...]In a letter to Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the eve of the conference, 130 Republican lawmakers outlined their concerns that the treaty being negotiated could negatively affect U.S. security, foreign policy and economic interests – as well as Americans’ constitutional rights.

“The ATT must not accept that free democracies and totalitarian regimes have the same right to conduct arms transfers: this is a dangerous piece of moral equivalence,” the letter stated.

“Moreover, the ATT must not impose criteria for determining the permissibility of arms transfers that are vague, easily politicized, and readily manipulated,” it continued, referring in particular to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Israel.

The lawmakers warned that they would oppose the appropriation or authorization of any taxpayer money to implement a “flawed” treaty.

The Bush administration in 2006 cast the lone negative vote when 153 nations passed a U.N. General Assembly resolution that began the treaty-drafting process, which is now in its final phase in New York. President Obama reversed that position in 2009, backing the initiative but making its support conditional on consensus decision-making.

[...]ATT proponents and the U.N. say the initiative will not affect domestic gun ownership, but Second Amendment advocacy groups are adamantly opposed to the treaty, which Gun Owners of America calls “a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to impose radical gun control on America citizens.”

Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference last February, National Rifle Association vice-president Wayne LaPierre accused Obama of working behind the scenes with the U.N. on a “treaty that could effectively ban or severely restrict civilian ownership of firearms worldwide.”

“I’ve been around long enough to know that the U.N. has little regard for our Constitution and none at all for the Second Amendment,” LaPierre said. “But I never thought I’d see the day when an American White House would tolerate a proposal that would literally gut one of our most fundamental freedoms in this country.”

Last March Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced legislation prohibiting any funds for negotiating an ATT that would restrict U.S. citizens’ Second Amendment rights. The bill has 19 co-sponsors, all Republicans.

I think when deciding whether to believe the nice-sounding words of the Obama administration, we should look at their record on gun control and their record of keeping their word. They are gun control radicals, and what they claim will happen to us before a bill is passed often isn’t any great predictor about what follows next. Remember “you can keep your current health insurance”? Not so much.

Filed under: News, 2nd Amendment, Crime, Criminal, Firearm Ownership, Gun Control, Gun Ownership, Liberty, Private Property, Second Amendment, Self-Defense