BELLEVUE, WA – -(Ammoland.com)- In case you missed my Op-Ed column that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Salem Oregon Statesmen Journal, Birmingham Alabama News and many other newspapers across the country, it is below for your enjoyment.
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Op-Ed: The Revealing British Newspaper Poll Nobody Will Hear About
By Alan Gottlieb
When the British daily newspaper The Telegraph asked readers which of six suggested measures they would like to see introduced in the House of Commons, reader response was surprisingly tilted toward one significant proposal, but you probably won’t hear about it from the U.S. media.
Of the six suggestions that included setting a flat tax and placing a term limit on the office of Prime Minister, what drew more than 86 percent of the reader support was a proposal to repeal the handgun ban of 1997. Because this is an unscientific poll, the results will be doomed to a media black hole, but it should send a clear signal to gun prohibitionists in the United States that their habitual use of the United Kingdom as an example of domestic tranquility where guns are concerned just took a direct hit in the credibility department.
At last check, more than 20,400 people had responded to the on-line poll. Support for ending the handgun ban was at 86.4 percent, leaving all other proposals in the political dust.
The next highest vote getter is a suggested measure on the “greening of public spaces” followed by a proposal to ban spitting. The flat tax comes in fourth on the priority scale with a scant 6.4 percent of the votes, and limiting the Prime Minister’s terms could not even muster two percent support among respondents.
Parliament adopted the handgun ban following the tragic 1997 Dunblane massacre of school children; an incident that created an aftermath of emotion not unlike our own Sandy Hook tragedy. Law-abiding British citizens were forced to surrender their handguns as some sort of panacea, but violent crime in the United Kingdom has actually gone up, and self-defense with a firearm has gotten people in considerable trouble.
Americans learned from the British mistake, save for the anti-gun lobbyists who are determined to destroy the Second Amendment. Now it appears the good citizens of that island nation have also realized that banning gun ownership by lawful people does nothing to discourage criminals or crazy people from committing heinous crimes.
In this country, we have been able to derail efforts to ban entire classes of firearms, realizing that the unilateral disarmament of good people only makes bad ones bolder.
There could be a strong connection between the Telegraph reader response and the recent brutal murder of a British soldier in broad daylight by a couple of extremist knife-wielding Muslim nut jobs. That incident reminded people that one must be able to fight back, and to defend oneself against a knife attack, it’s best to have a gun. Millions of law-abiding Americans understand that principle and have obtained concealed carry licenses and permits, and soon the residents of Illinois will join fellow citizens in the other 49 states in that regard.
The right of self-defense is the oldest human right, and the British experiment at public disarmament failed as miserably as our own gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The ten year Clinton ban on so-called “assault weapons” was just as ineffective against crime.
While the poll results for the Telegraph are not scientific, they are a red flag to Parliament that many of their constituents have realized the gun ban was a terrible mistake. Getting their firearms rights restored is not likely to be easy for British citizens, and here on this side of the Atlantic, gun owners are determined to prevent Congress from doing the same thing.
Alan Gottlieb is chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the Internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to [email protected].
Firearm restrictions came into UK law in the 1920s after the Russian peasant up rising!
The establishment have disarmed the population to remove the right of political protest ever since.
We have the enaliable right to armed self defence, writen in to the Magna Carta. Yet the establishment via the Home Office, just take that right away.
People protected by men and women with guns say you can’t have a gun or intact any object for the purpose of defence.
It’s a shame the handguns ban was passed when I was an infant, otherwise I would have fully opposed it even if the rest of the country surrendered their firearms I would refuse to, they would have to take it from my cold dead hands, don’t tread on me bitch!
If any British producer would like to do a British remake of Death Wish, I think it would sell like fish and chips on Lent. Also the more politically incorrect it was the more it would be watched by working class lads in grindhouse film theatres.
The 1997 firearms reform act effected roughly 0.1 percent of the population and those guns were strictly controlled and not used for self defence. So just how do you get a poll like this wanting guns back for self defence? Simple. It’s not the Brits doing the voting, it’s Americans.
I’m a Brit and I want my gun rights back, those gangbanging scum would have one hell of a surprise if I had the right to conceal carry
No guns for sheep! The Brits gave up their rights based on emotion rather than intellect. They have created a culture similar to the school playground where the “rough guys” own the streets. In London groups of young-toughs stroll about daring you to try to walk by them. It’s like adults bullying other adults. They still argue that this is superior to a polite society. What they fail to understand is that legal guns end thuggery. Legal Guns End Thuggery!! Fools….they don’t deserve the Right to bear arms. Again, no guns for sheep!
We have never looked to Britain to copy, so we do our own thing. If they want their rights back, they have a long road to go. They, Canada, and Australia should have fought for them before they were taken away. This is going to be hard to overcome. Once you loose it, it is hard to get back. That is what our gun grabbers know and why we will never give up fighting them. Even if they win, they loose, because we are a different breed than other English. We won’t obey the laws if passed and we do… Read more »
i’ve been reading the”telegraph” for sometime now, and it does seem they’re assuming a low profile pro gun stance. as well there was a well attended mas demonstration in london for restoration of gun rights, complete with bagpipers. while their politicians still have their heads fimly stuck up their arses the british public seems to be waking up. even some judges are accepting home defense as a legimate defense against charges when a burglar is injured by a householder. hopefully “times they are a changing” for our cousind across the pond.