...is again and again the slogan that we hear amongst members of the survivalist and patriot communities in the USA and the same slogan is now being taken up by the NRA as well, it would seem.
Nothing is further from the truth.
What those people, all of them, who think they know (everything) better, just do not WANT to understand, despite having been told repeatedly ad infinitum is the fact that the British people have NEVER had such a right as to the keeping and bearing of arms as that granted to US citizens and guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
Still, however, they insist on using Britain (and Australia) as an example as to what happens when a country gets disarmed, claiming that the people “gave up their right to keep and bear arms”.
You cannot give up and surrender something you have never had.
While it is correct that ever since the handguns were taken out of the hands of law abiding civilians, who legally owned those with proper issued firearms certificates and all that, gun crime has shot (pardon the pun) through the roof in the UK but gun in the hands of civilians, whether handgun or other, could have prevented that either. Why? Because no British “citizen” (and I use the term citizen loosely as theoretically the British are “subjects” rather than “citizens” under the law) who might have legally owned a handgun could have even contemplated – and this is the same with other guns, including shotguns – of using a legally owned gun in self-defence, let alone in order to prevent or stop a crime perpetrated against someone else. The user of such a weapon in such a scenario would have been charged with firearms offences and gone to jail, under a murder charge probably had the villain be killed in the process.
So, when are those with an agenda and a huge battleaxe to grind are going to stop using the UK (and Australia) as an example? Those that make such claims, e.g. that the Brits and Ozzies have given up their gun rights pedal nothing but lies, plain and simple and they know full well that they do.
Brits (and Ozzies) did not give up their rights to own (and use guns); they never had any such rights. Owning and using a gun was a privilege granted by the government, same as in Germany and other European countries, with the differences that there was a time when any Brit could go and buy a shotgun and own it without even the need for a license. This changed, however, due to the armed robberies that were being committed with shotguns, sawed off ones frequently, during the 1960's. That was the only difference between Britain, say, and Germany, where a license if required for shotguns, and that is all, generally, bound up with the official hunter's licence and such.
Please, American Survivalists and Patriots, get into into your heads. The British people never had any gun rights. It was all privilege and nothing more. Protect what you have but do not accuse the like of the Brits of being cowards and yellow for “having given up their gun rights”, as you call it, which they have NEVER had.
To reiterate once again: You cannot give up and surrender something you have never had.
© M V Smith, November 2007
