A Second Hand Conjecture

There’s a moment in Mark Steyn’s book America Alone, where he relates the truism that we’ve all experienced conversations with a mild-mannered, educated and seemingly rational person from the Arab world, where quite unexpectedly they say something nutty in the most casual way. “Of course the Jews planned 9-11″ for instance. As Steyn notes, when this happens it’s a peculiar form of media and culture-shock, and you’re not quite certain what to say in response. But this strange cultural dissonance can also be experienced between Europeans and Americans just as easily on certain issues.

Not long long ago I was talking to a colleague of mine in the United Kingdom. Along the way Tony Martin ( a UK man who in 2005 shot a fleeing burglar with his shotgun) and the subject of self-defense came up. One is not allowed to own a shotgun in the UK for self-defense purposes and in any case, using deadly force to protect property isn’t legal. Martin was prosecuted for murder and eventually convicted of manslaughter. My colleague was of the opinion that Martin’s illegal use of an illegal shotgun was a crime worse than burglary. I disagreed and told him that I myself owned several firearms expressly for the purposes of personal and home defense. My colleague was somewhat incredulous, so I sent him the photograph at top.

I own many more guns than those depicted here, but these are the three for which the purpose is specifically home-defense. From left to right we have a Beretta 92FS Vertec in 9mm with M6 tactical laser illuminator (my bedside/indoor defense gun), next is the HK-33, Vector V-93 in .223 with EOTech Holographic Warfare System sight (outdoor/perimeter defense), and finally a handy Remington Model 597 .22LR, which is used for backyard threats of the rattlesnake variety (the most common intruder out here on the high desert).

The culture of self-defense in the United Kingdom is rather radically different from in most of the United States (and rather radically different from Britain itself only a few decades ago). As Kip Payne put it last year:

Britons aren’t just expected to refrain from their own self-defense; they are actively prevented from engaging in such. Since there’s obviously no Constitution with a Second Amendment protecting the right of citizens to bear arms in Britain, home-invasion robberies are frighteningly common. By contrast, home invasions in America are relatively low. The logic here is that in America, where anyone could potentially have a gun in his or her house, criminals are less likely to break into a house that is occupied. But in those rare cases when a homeowner in Britain breaks the law by keeping a gun and then uses it to defend himself against robbers, he, not the assailants, is more at risk for prosecution.
(Daily Trojan)

This is a cultural attitude that isn’t altogether uncommon in America’s urban regions, but one that is radically different outside of city limits in suburban and rural areas. One might argue we heed the Jeffersonian injunction to resist the concentration of population in dense urban environments, because of the corrosive effect it can have on the notion of the independent, self-reliant individual.

UPDATE: Our friend Steve Newton over at Delaware Libertarian weighs in with some supplemental thoughts on this matter that are well worth reading. Particularly worthwhile is Steve’s point that both the idealization and demonization of Europe represents a “misguided exercise.”

Tags: .223, .22lr, 9-11, 9mm, America Alone, Americans, Arab, Beretta, burglary, crime, Culture, culture-shock, EOTech, European, Firearms, gun rights, guns, Heckler & Koch, HK33, HWS, Kip Payne, Law, Mark Steyn, Media, Model 597, ratlesnake, Remington, rural, second ammendment, self-defense, shotgun, Tony Martin, United Kingdom, urban, Vector Arms

Trackback URI | Comments RSS