Subject: Just A Shotgun
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 headlinesays 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
mediapicks
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 mediapublishes 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
1920expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except
shotguns..
Later laws passed
in 1953 and 1967outlawed 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 Hungerfordmass 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 objectiveeven 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 sidearms still owned by private
citizens.
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.
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?
WAKE UP AMERICA; THIS IS WHY
OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR
CONSTITUTION.
"...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
If you think this is important, please forward to
everyone you know!!!
Even If you don't have the brains to realize
that this is important, please forward to everyone you know,
anyway!!!
And there are stupid people in
congress and on the street that will go right along with
him.