The Shotgun - A True Story of Gun Control

Stretch

House Member
Feb 16, 2003
3,924
19
38
Australia
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 choirboys.
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 of all 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
sidearms 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? Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?
WAKE UP AMERICA; THIS IS WHY YOUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN YOUR 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
If you think this is important, please forward to everyone you know.
Gun Laws that are being proposed in America will eventually cause the same effect here!
Please pass this on if you want your 2nd Amendment rights to be preserved!

The Shotgun - A True Story of Gun Control - 12160 Social Network
 

Stretch

House Member
Feb 16, 2003
3,924
19
38
Australia
how did Americans become so afraid of everything???
when you are faced with negative s h i t day in day out, you do start to get a little apprehensive and when your government(I use that term loosely) attacks other countries on nothing but lies............you should be affraid.
And, when you see all the crap that the cops pull........ I'm surprised tptb havent cottoned onto the bad press they get as a result of dashboard cams and had them removed.....but then, it does instill a certain fear, doesnt it
 

Johnnny

Frontiersman
Jun 8, 2007
9,388
124
63
Third rock from the Sun
B&E happening in your house while your asleep? No problem mr home owner, because you remembered to keep the chain saw in your room... No mr burglar thats not a car trying to turn over thats a litre of 50:1 hell coming your way....
 

DaSleeper

Trolling Hypocrites
May 27, 2007
33,676
1,665
113
Northern Ontario,
Not true
snopes.com: UK Gun Control

Check snopes.com.
That's a message board, Tried Snoping the regular way.....no hits
Found this for all it's worth....
Tony Martin (farmer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From that Wiki....
Compensation claim
During 2003, Fearon applied for, and received, an estimated £5,000 of legal aid to sue Martin for loss of earnings due to the injuries he had sustained.[21] However, the case was thrown into doubt when photographs were published in The Sun, showing him "cycling and climbing with little apparent difficulty" suggesting that Fearon's injuries were not as serious as had been claimed.[22] While the case was pending, Fearon was recalled to jail after being charged with the theft of a vehicle while on probation on a conviction for dealing heroin.[23] Fearon later dropped the case when Martin agreed to drop a counter-claim. Tens of thousands of pounds of public money had been spent on the case.[24]
Nick Makin, Martin's solicitor, said: "It is appalling that the family of someone who has a criminal record for burglary and assault should attempt to claim any damages of criminal injury when he was shot while burgling the dwelling of an innocent person... It is also appalling that they may get legal aid while his victim is in prison and patently unable to work and equally cannot get legal aid... There is something wrong and perverse with our legal system that it permits this."[11]
[edit] Threats to Tony Martin's life

The BBC reported in 2003 that Fearon's supporters put a bounty on Martin's head of several tens of thousands of pounds.[2] In 2003 The Guardian reported that a cousin of Barras had said that a £60,000 bounty had been put on Martin's head.[25]
[edit] £125,000 payment to Martin

In October 2003, The Daily Mirror paid Martin £125,000 for an exclusive interview on his release from prison. After investigation, the Press Complaints Commission ruled that the payment was justified and in the public interest because Martin "had a unique insight into an issue of great public concern".[26]
[edit] In popular culture

In May 2001, a storyline in the Channel 4 TV soap opera Brookside was based on the Tony Martin case; when Clint Moffat (played by Greg Pateras) was shot dead by neighbour Ron Dixon (Vince Earl) while burgling his house.[27]
[edit] Political activities

Since his release Martin has appeared on the platform of the United Kingdom Independence Party[28] and was the guest-of-honour at the Traditional Britain Group's Annual Dinner at Simpson's-in-the-Strand on November 7, 2003.[29] Martin said himself that he had attended meetings of the National Front in Norfolk, and later went on to endorse the British National Party.[30]


Edit:
This story may have been editorialized by the gun lobby in the US but it is still factual........
 
Last edited:

taxslave

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 25, 2008
36,362
4,337
113
Vancouver Island
It is a fact that automatic weapons were once required to be registered In Canada. It is also a fact that several years later with the stroke of a pen those same weapons were made restricted and illegal to possess, the government of Canada stole those same weapons because they already knew who owned most of them. Except for the criminals who never registered theirs. Anyone still think criminals are stupid?