Britain's new political prisoner:
 

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100n...ml%3Cbr%20/%3E

Dark day for freedom and democracy.

:thumbsdown:

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Well, if someone with that many weapons is that careless with them he should get a significant punishment, perhaps even prison. Five years is a bit much though, even if he will get out in 2,5, I'd imagine community service might have been a better alternative.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

That's too bad. They were antiques. He was clearly a collector...

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I don't think he has done anything wrong, the whole issue is a farse IMO. If he wants to own that many firearms he should be totally able to, that's his democratic choice.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Not if there are laws against it. :nodding:

Being a collector is one thing. However collectors should not have a use for ammunition.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Funny thing is im going to be a police officer next year and If guns were banned here...well I'd have to break the law. I am a collecter too. :( I couldent give up a piece of history like my 98 or my Garand...

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I have several rifle shells from WW1. I've no use for them. They can be just as much collectibles as firearms. Well, anything, really, can be a collectible.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

The law itself is wrong, that is what I am saying.

You could make up all sorts of laws and use that logic for justification. For instance if patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time was made illegal, doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing to do, it's just a dumb law.


How incredibly arbitrary of you.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

There's a difference between live ammunition and spent shells. Even I had a rifle shell at one point. You don't need live ammunition for 111 guns unless you're planning for a zombie invasion or something.

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How would you like it if I went into your house and starting listing off things you do not "need"?

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Well I like getting new parts for my guns, slides, grips, stocks, sights... And I like to shoot at paper targets and test my skill and gun. I Enjoy the recoil the smell of the powder the different loud bangs from the guns. I collect but I shoot em' too...

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Irrelevant. I don't keep illegal firearms in my house. If I was keeping something against the law in my house I wouldn't be surprised if I was arrested and jailed.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

That's not good enough. You must use the courts! The courts are everything! You sound like a vigilante. If you have a problem, you need to go through the proper channels! You can't just run around breaking the law because you disagree with it! You must work within the system to find remedies for your problems! ... Sound a little familiar?

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Your argument was that he shouldn't have ammunition because he doesn't need it. My point is that such judgements are not for you to make, and that I could find plenty of items in your household that I would deem not to be needed.

This issue is not related at all. We are talking about a codified law, not an individual or organization violating the rights of another.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Sieg hiel and welcome to England. (Ironically since we started putting signs in German along the motorway the chances of seeing that are not as small as they might seem.)
If he was being that careless with the guns though then he's placing everyone at risk, it could have been a criminal who raided his house rather than the police and then he'd have armed a criminal, possibly several. I'm all for guns putting society in a position where they can handle guns responsibly but by the looks of it he wasn't being very responsible.
The gun law is arguably wrong, as I've supported on many occasions, but in this case...

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Oh, but wouldn't you say that banning guns is the government taking away your rights? So, you feel it's moral in this case to break the law (as do I in my case (and this one, maybe)). But wait! We still can't have you running around like a vigilante, breaking the law simply because you feel it's wrong. If you want the law changed, you must use the proper channels. The courts, WarHawk109, the courts!

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

So, if the man, or indeed someone else, for whatever reason decided to use his weapons against his neighbours, what is their means of self-defence?

Being as how firearms are, of course, not possessed by the overwhelming majority of people in the UK.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Their means for self-defence is to die and hope the police pick up the pieces. Being as how firearms are, of course, denied to the overwhelming majority of people in the UK.

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It's a dark day for freedom and democracy when people start disobeying laws which were passed by a democratically elected government because they disagree with them.

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So on balance, it's not such a bad thing that the man was denied his enormous collection of irresponsibly handled, illegally possessed weaponry.

As with all these "British justice system does something totalitarian" threads, I'd love to know what else, feasibly, should have been done.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

The only thing I see wrong here was that

A) He was not properly storing his guns

b) He sold them.

The UK law banning handguns is one thing. Passing and enforcing a law that destroys priceless antique guns is senseless and stupid.

As for the ammo you are allowed a certain amount before the Law considers it "stockpiling". I do not know what the difference is between owning ammo, whording ammo, or stockpiling ammo is but satockpiling is bad.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I dont have anything against one having guns as collectibles, but selling without police authority is nono

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Move to a real democracy like the US. Guns are still legal here. ;)

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I believe that's what I said. :p

All of them; so when we authorised the use of evidence obtained by torture in courts, (before it was overturned,) there was nothing else to be done? Britain has always been a nasty country in international affairs, now we get to see that turned on our citizens. Yay!

In this case they should have taken his guns and slapped him with a small fine, he's 60 odd years old pursuing an interest in guns that was made illegal by the government, it's not like he was running down the street taking pot-shots at everything. Five years in prison is immesurably harsh for such a minor offence.

As history has demonstrated a democratically elected government can be in the wrong just as easily as a dictatorship.
That something is the law is not reason enough to follow it.
If we universally followed all laws simply because they were passed democratically then we'd end up living in a terrible world where people surrendered all moral will over the government. While people doing what they think is right can often make people criminals I prefer a world where people are free to rebel against injustice than a world where we all follow the law for no better reason than because we've been told to do so by the government.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

What's the big deal? He broke the law, so he's in trouble.
How is that incompatible with democracy?
It's not like the government was ignoring one of the fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech or freedom of religion. It's simply the case that you do not in Britain have the freedom to stockpile weapons and ammo and especially not to sell them unauthorized.

If someone doesn't like the laws as they are, they can vote for a different political party and hope they make a difference, but they can't just break the law cause they don't like it.

And honestly, i'm happy the guy was arrested. Stockpiling huge amounts of firearms and live ammo and selling them illegally is something that should be a crime.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

That clears that up then. :pNo, just all these relatively recent right-wing propaganda threads in which an overblown reaction to something the thread-starter does not consider a crime by the local police force is paraded as proof of the increasingly totalitarian nature of European governments, without the ability to make this conclusion match the the actual facts in the absense of the usual tired rhetoric. When it's something that clearly occurs on both sides of the Atlantic, like draconian anti-terror legislation, I'm afraid I don't hear this level of complaint from the same people.

It's one thing to say that the penalty was too severe - I would probably agree, though illegally selling firearms is not such a small matter...it's the suggestion that the man's democratic rights have been violated by his being arrested when he had committed a crime and was proved to have done so, that I find absurd. A sadly unsurprising position, as though we in the UK should be using the US constitution with its "right to bear arms" as a basis for deciding when our democratic rights are being violated.

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I think the punishment was too harsh.

IMHO he should ahve been given a fine and house arrest.

He should have been forced to turn over all weapons and ammo BUT weapons deemed of a valuable and collectible nature should have been returned to the owner PROVIDINGthat he can show that he has adequate and secure storage facilities for them.

I ahve a friend who inherited a number of guns from his father in law. Some of his guns are very rare, some of the rarest are several 17th century muzzle loading shotguns.

No way would I ever get rid of those, especially the shotguns.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Of course he should be arrested. The jail sentence is also reasonable. Defiance of the state cannot be tolerated.

No point in turning a country into a police state if you aren't willing to enforce it.

That's like saying a car collector should not have a use for gasoline.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Of course he should be arrested. Defiance of the law cannot be tolerated. No point having laws if you aren't willing to enforce them.If he's not going to drive the vehicles, then he doesn't need gasoline. Especially if there are no roads to drive them on.

This gun collector wasn't using his guns for anything, nor could he. Just selling them to whoever and leaving them lying around his house.

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I so hope that was a sarchastic remark, USA is one of the least democratic countries....

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The chances of a law being unjust in a democracy are rather small. If they are you can start a civil rights movement or something similar in order to change them.
If you just ignore laws which you don't like you end up in chaos. Just look at Iraq, life there doesn't seem so much better than in Europe.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Exactly. Of course, this is the big assumption. The British people keep making these laws under the belief that this kind of persecution will never happen to them personally.

Just like the intellectuals under Lenin's regime never expected to end up in front of a firing squad themselves.

The people who support the patriot act of course believe that they will never come under suspicion themselves.

What the hell? Are there no roads in Britain?:lookaround:

You read his mind? Impressive. You need to teach me that trick some time.

Oh yeah, as if he couldn't hang a paper target on a tree on his property.

To fellow gun collectors he knew personally.

Almost all of them were in a hidden container. Did you even read the article?

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I guess we're not talking about gun regulations anymore then. People who support/draft gun regulations are rather unlikely to end up being "persecuted" under them.

It's still an analogy. ;)

His ability to use the weapons is limited to his own property, and even that's probably too dangerous if his house is too small to properly store all his weaponry (I know if I owned a real gun I couldn't fire it anywhere near my own property). There are not a lot of places he can put ammunition to use. And according to the article he did not make use of his gun club membership. Hence, no "roads".He kept them all over his house, hiding some in a false water tank nowhere near capable of storing even half of his 111 firearms. I did indeed read the article, quite carefully. :)

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

If the police were to search your house with the intention of persecuting you, they could easily find a dozen things that violate various codes.

That's the whole point of gun control and the rest of big government. It makes us all criminals in some fashion, so we no longer have any legitimacy or ability to stand up to them.

One that you have killed. ;)

Wrong - he had a road - ammunition and a gun membership. He simply didn't choose to use them.

According to your reasoning, a person who chooses not to drive his car shouldn't be allowed to have one.

That's the problem with not being familiar with guns - you don't know much about their storage and use.

Being so familiar, I can tell you about that. You don't have to have a safe - he most likely had them in various cabinets and the like. (Especially since Big Brother has banned them, I doubt he would be dumb enough to leave them all in plain sight)

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I was being sarcastic, but not about the us being democratic. The US was one of the first countries to give representative democracy a try. If we don't like whats being done we vote our representives out of office. We're very democratic.

The sarcasim was directed towards a great deal of europeans that think the US is backwards. Seems like on the issue of gun laws the US is one of a few countries that hasn't lost its balls.

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Its not unusual for a person who has led a sheltered life to see someone who has not as a "barbarian".

That's the principle behind the whole revisionist history movement. They look at the people who made our way of life possible and say "Ooh ooh, how barbaric!"

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Many murderers in the UK don't even get a five year sentence, for a man his age, this a a life sentence, he's 66, he won't last five years in prison. The sooner this gang of real criminals called the Labour government is booted out the better.

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Except the difference is that this is grey area, and should not be left to arbitrary judgement. A gov't oppressing its citizens is a much clearer issue.

If they have that fear they should address it by defending their homes in some matter, better locks, an alarm, or even firearms. Owning a firearm does not harm anyone, potentially yes, but I don't think we should lock people away because they could potentialy harm someone. That would certainly be authoritarian.


The Jews in Nazi Germany broke the law too, what's the big deal? :rolleyes:

Very poor justification.

Because it takes away this man's democratic choice on how to conduct his own life. Simply owning firearms is not hurting anyone, so he should be free to.

I think the veiw that democracy only means that you can cast a vote is a very narrow intepretation.

The gov't in this case has violated the right to life, and the right to property.

This is the slave-mentality. Nazi Germany enacted laws that descriminated against Jewish people, should those laws have been obeyed? If your answer is no, then your position is inconsistent with your earlier argument.

Do you think pot should be illegal as well?

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

I see. So guns are regulated against not because the government thought gun crime might just go down, but so that they could put more of us in prison if they wanted to.

I honestly can't think of anything that could land me in trouble with the police if my house was searched, so I'd like to know what these "dozen things" are.Having "no roads" only means that there is less point owning a car because you can't use it to travel anywhere.

Look at it like this. You have a small plot of land where you can practice your driving, but you can't actually drive around town in your cars. You never make use of this plot of land. So, you don't need gasoline.According to my reasoning, if someone has an illegal stockpile of petrol in their home, it should always be taken away...it's just a little bit worse if they never make use of it.

Actually, I don't think the gun collector/car collector analogy is very good...but then I didn't create it. ;)I'm sure they would have been hidden, but what difference does that make? Just because something is not in plain sight does not mean it is secure, and apparently, the man's collection wasn't.

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So? That doesn't mean anyone, anywhere can break the law as they please.
Very poor counter.

Simply owning drugs is not harming anyone either, and it's illegal. That's the way the law works, you know. Some things have to be illegal even if they aren't necessarily doing any harm, as a precaution.

But that is what it means. It means the "rule of the majority", and you have a chance to influence that by voting, or by becoming a politician yourself.

The right to life? Uh...no? They didn't kill him, so they have not violated his right to life....
And the right to property is not without limits. As i said before, you don't have the right to own heroin either. Is that a violation of his right to property?

So do you think people should just break laws they don't like, in the world today?
Just because something was this way or that in Nazi Germany, doesn't mean it should be done today....

I don't see how it is....

Before i answer that, tell me what relevance that has with the subject in question.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

like banning guns? the nazis did that too.

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Completely aside from the fact that the Nazi dictatorship was an oppressive regime that can in no way be compared to modern Britain....

I never said that guns should be completely banned. But this guy had over 100 weapons stored in his house, and had sold them illegally as well.
A far cry from having a single rifle or something in a safety case.

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Mala Prohibita and Mala in se are completely different things.

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No, laws against murder for instance should not be broken, but injust laws such as gun bans must be broken, in order to preserve liberty.



Which is very authoritarian if you ask me. Note: I do not support drug bans.



Only if you look under the dictionary will you find such a definition, which IMO is quite inadequate.

It's actually "rule by the people," which if you think about it, suits my description of democracy.



The right to life means to be able to defend yourself, the means of which the gov't has taken away.

Yes.



No, people should break laws that are injust, not laws they do not like.


That wasn't my point, I was just comparing your argument to past examples, there are countless others throughout history...



Well If you are against drug bans then I suspect many of your arguments would mirror mine.

Re: Britain's new political prisoner:
 

Precisely! I entirely agree, and thus can say no more.

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Dogma. Yours are not the definitions of liberty, democracy and justice that the rest of us live by.

Also, there is no gun "ban", merely heavy regulations which were not followed.Well according to your reasoning, if we want to defend ourselves all we need are "better locks, an alarm, or even firearms", so which is it? Either firearms are necessary for self-defence, or they aren't.

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Your idea of injust.
Your idea of preserving liberty.
It's only your opinion, which has no legal or moral justification.

Yes, that is indeed what you think. However, not everyone agrees with that.

But no matter how a political system works, there is no way everyone's opinions can be represented adequatly. Which is why rule of the majority more accurately corresponds with reality.

No, it does not. Right to life means you have the right not to be killed. It does not include the right to defend yourself, and certainly not the inalienable right to own guns.

Matter of opinion, once again.

Which laws are injust is a matter of opinion, thus being the same as laws you don't like.

I don't think all drugs should be legal without any kind of regulations.
A lot of drugs are dangerous, and people who don't know any better (young people in particular) need to be protected.
However, i do think that punishing people for posession of some drugs is quite stupid.

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To keep a gun working correctly and to keep some value to it, you have to shoot it from times to times. ;)

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Unless it's really old.

But why would someone buy a gun and not shoot it? Unless it was a really nice antique. I prefer all of my collector pieces to be operable.

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Now you're beginning to understand.

Same reason they banned mace. Even though there's no plausible explanation for it, they still did it.

God only knows. There's literally millions of laws on what you can and cannot do/have.

Hell, the crime doesn't even need to be real. A few years ago American Federal police stormed an old couple's home, "found" some drugs, and "accidentally" shot the husband - and the guy was like 70 years old. (It was a newspaper article. I'm trying to find an internet source for you now...)