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  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 choir boys. 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 headline says 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 media picks 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 media publishes 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 ofall 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
  1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms
  except shotguns. Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed 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
  Hungerford mass 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 objective even 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 sidearm 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. Kinda 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

 

 

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