Captain Ed, on British politico George Galloway saying Tony Blair's assassination (by suicide bomber, no less) would be morally justified:
The voters of east London should be ashamed of themselves for sending such a sick man to represent them. The only true constituency for Galloway wears long, wraparound sleeves and resides within padded walls.
I suppose that may be true, but then, one could argue that true constituency stretches far beyond Galloway's east London district, considering what Britain has become in recent years with the disarmament of the citizenry, violent criminals being let off with a slap on the wrist, the creation of a new police agency that's eerily reminiscent of Big Brother and the effective criminalization of all kinds of self-defense, to the point where the authorities tell the subjects to give robbers whatever they want if they break in. Contrast that to the good old U.S. of A, where if someone comes breaking down the door at 2 in the morning, they face the possibility of eating a bullet, especially here in Texas. Oh, no, the lunacy isn't confined to London -- it's since spread far and wide in the U.K.
The Captain got me to thinking again, though, about something I've been mulling over for a long time, at least since the horrendous fate of Belgian teenager Joe Van Holsbeeck, who was murdered for his mp3 player by a gang of Muslim youths in a Brussels train station in front of hundreds of people. If you'll recall, one of the local politicians expressed dismay at the provincial governor's initiative against the possession and carrying of arms, and the governor came back with this remark: "I am the Governor of East Flanders, not of Texas. [...] I do not want to live in such a society [where citizens are allowed to possess arms]."
The revelation of that little aspect of Belgian society, and its commonality with British society (citizens not being allowed to possess arms) made me wonder: Does the disarmament of a people always lead to the emasculation of said people? Or, more accurately, does disarmament ever not lead to emasculation, and feelings of complete and total powerlessness? Here we have, in England, the subjects having to hide in their bedrooms when some thug comes breaking in, and in Belgium, the gruesome and quite public murder of a teenager and no one coming to his assistance -- can you imagine what goes on away from the eye of the media? It's quite a frightening thing to contemplate. I would argue it's nothing less than throwing open the gates of the Sanctuaries of Civilization and letting the barbarians storm through and tear down (in a figurative as well as literal sense), in effect, everything civilized people have worked to perfect over thousands of years. And that's one of the effects of disarmament that the gun-grabbers in this country probably don't stop to contemplate (or if they do, they obviously think it's worth the trade-off, as the results of British disarmament have been made obvious for all to see).
Dave Grossman speaks of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. What is the difference between the sheep, and the wolves and sheepdogs, both in nature and society? Weaponry, and the preparation (psychological and otherwise) and willingness to use it -- the wolves for bad, and the sheepdogs for good. The wolves and sheepdogs have them, and the sheep don't; the sharp teeth and claws in nature, and the blades and the guns in human society. Take away the blades and the guns from the human equivalent of the sheepdog, and you might as well be declawing and castrating the canine equivalent -- and we have't even begun to contemplate the psychological effects of that (hint: those effects manifest themselves in events like the murder of Joe Van Holsbeek, where his fellow citizens just walked on by). We know what would happen were that to take place in nature -- complete and utter disaster -- and the same is happening now across the pond. It wouldn't happen overnight, but with the effects of the disarmament of the British people so far, what their society, and arguably that of Europe at large, becomes in the coming years is going to be a frightening warning to those of us here in the United States -- all the more reason that the American gun owner should be prepared to resist if UK-style gun laws ever become a reality here, and, in the meantime, through the political system, fight tooth and nail, so to speak, to make sure they don't.
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