A Climategate parallel

Glenn Reynolds makes some interesting comparisons between the slow burn story of Climategate and the Bellesiles scandal, an earlier tale of academic misconduct and political mudslinging.

Ellee Seymour

Ellee Seymour has a post up about issuing firearms certificates to children.

A Freedom of Information request found that an 11-year-old has been given a shotgun licence by police already this year, while in 2006 a 10-year-old was handed one. In the past five years, 182 under-16s have received shotgun licences from Suffolk police which are valid for five years.

Ellee comes across as a nice person, but with the traditional politician's love of banning things. She'll feel right at home if she gets elected next time roung. Clearly, children using shotguns is a major problem if people aren't even aware that it's happening. As Mr Free Market says in the comments

Every time I see the hysteria whipped up in the sensationalist gun fearing press about youngsters & air weapons (or firearms), my Boy gets sent out into the farm yard to shoot rats because out here, vermin control has always been a youngsters job.

Since he has been physically large enough to lift a weapon, he has been taught & is continuing to be taught, all aspects of handling, marksmanship & safety.

And that's the point, isn't it? Children have been shooting vermin on farmyards since time immemorial. I'm sure the kids love it and it's a job that needs to be done. What better way of introducing a young person to the real world?

I wonder if Ellee thinks the boy would be better off hanging round on street corners?  

Harrassment of bloggers

Lurch, the author of a blog called Gun Culture has been visited by the police as part of the renewal for his firearms licence. During the visit they raised the subject of his blog:

It seems that my crappy little corner of the blogosphere has come to the attention of the police, and they don’t like it.  Specifically mentioned was the piece regarding the British Association of Women in Policing, where the woman wanted smaller guns for women officers, this didn’t go down well apparently despite my admission in the piece that my comments were flippant.

[...] 

The officers (who were very polite) were quick to point out that they couldn’t force me to remove posts or dictate my freedom of speech but the fact is that I am being watched. 

It's worth taking a look at the original post which must rank as one of the most innocuous imaginable.

It's hard to comprehend just how daft this makes the police look. I've no idea which force Lurch has the misfortune to be harrassed by, but it is absolutely staggering that they have time to monitor postings on obscure blogs for people making fun of them. The Chief Constable wants to have his priorities pointed out to him in no uncertain terms by someone in power. This kind of threat must be illegal, surely.

It just looks like another example of the police taking the easy option of harrassing the innocent rather than dealing with criminals. 

Via The England Project 

The missing right?

Harry Haddock has piece today about the firearms ban, which includes a wonderful quote from George Orwell

The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

Coincidentally, 18 Doughty Street had a studio discussion featuring Chris Atkins, the director of the new documentary "Taking Liberties" and Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum. Atkins was given a pretty hard time by Whittle who seemed to think that Atkins should have made another film altogether - he would have preferred something about the fear of artists that any output seen as being critical of certain eastern religions would "have consequences".

While this did seem a bit unfair to criticise Atkins for making "the wrong film", Whittle's concerns are certainly ones that I share. Unfortunately the two of them were at complete loggerheads, with Whittle believing the threat to society was from extremists, and Atkins believing it came from the state. Poor old Iain Dale was left trying to prevent an outbreak of fisticuffs - he seems to be suffering a lot from this kind of thing recently now that Yazzer is appearing regularly.

Now, you may be wondering what the connection is between a studio dust-up and the Haddock piece on guns with which I started this posting. It's this: if we were to enforce the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Bill of RIghts, both Whittle's artists and Atkins citizens would be much, much harder to oppress. People are only forced to choose betwen liberty and security because they cannot defend themselves.

One of our rights is missing. 

Another Virginia shooting

Via Outside Story, another sad tale of a lone gunman shooting innocents at a Virginia campus. This time, the slaughter took place at the Appalachian School of Law in 2002. A disgruntled student called Peter Odighizuwa opened fire, killing two members of faculty and a student, and injuring three others. So far, so much like massacre at Virginia Tech. But from then on, the stories unwind to entirely different outcomes.

The ending Virginia Tech is well documented. At Appalachian Law, however, two students called Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross heard the gunshots and rushed to their cars to arm themselves. They then returned to the scene of the shooting and challenged Odighizuwa as he left the building where he had just murdered three people. He was quickly disarmed and subdued by other students.

The BBC article about the Appalachian Law shootings is here. It slipped the minds of the Beeboids to mention the fact that the successful disarming of the gunman and the prevention of further murders was only brought about by the fact that two of the students were able to arm themselves. According to the Beeb, the gunman was "wrestled to the ground by fellow students".  I would characterise this omission by the BBC as lying.

You can't trust the BBC. Pass it on. 

Update:

The BBC has recently published a list of campus shootings in America. They've forgotten to put in Appalachian Law at all. 

US Gun Laws

A federal appeals court has come down on the side of an individual right to bear arms and ruled that Washington DC's gun control law is unconstitutional.

Most commentators seem to think this is a big deal. DC is has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the US together with very high crime levels. No doubt the crime figures for the capital will be watched extremely closely in coming months. 

Update:

The Cato Institute are saying that it is likely that a stay will be put in place, so it may still be years before there is any impact on the man in the street. 

Liberalising the gun control laws

There's an interesting post at PC Copperfield's which asks if we should liberalise the gun control laws. As the good constable puts it, the police are now just the administrative arm of the insurance industry and there is absolutely no point in calling them. The number of comments from police officers agreeing with this is startling to say the least.

What struck me about the comments thread was that there were very few people who reacted with the traditional exclamations of horror, accompanied by wailings and knashings of teeth and accusations of insanity. Could it be that the state of the criminal justice system has reached rock bottom and the idea of public ownership of guns is acceptable, or even respectable?

We will see. 

(Hat tip: Outside Story)