Reasonable force is whats replaced the presumption of self-defence. If I wake up at 3am and find a strange man lurking in my house where my child is asleep it should, in the first instance, be up to me how to deal with the situation. I might ask him to leave, if he doesnt I might choose to shoot him 5 times with a 9mm. It should be my call, and he willing assented to the arrangement by breaking in. Self-defence leaves that call to me.

Reasonable force allows someone after the event to decide that no, I shouldnt have shot him, or that I could have shot him 4 times, fair enough, but 5, no sir, thats just going tooooo far.

Sometimes the principle of self-defence may lead to an innocent being killed, but reasonable force will lead, does lead, to just as many casualties. A law abiding citizen will be that one least likely to confront any intruder and therefore and up injured themselves.

As for your crime statistics, the missing factor you are groping for is race, not the number of guns. I believe the case in the US is that if you take the black-on-black and the black-on-white violence out of the equation the level of violent crime drops to the same as Scandanavia or somewhere.

I dont suppose you want to hear anything about that. Much cosier to believe that with the right conservative principles in place then all those blacks, hispanics and asian muslims who currently bulk up crime stats will settle down and become valuable citizens. Its that, ultimately liberal, delusion so many conservatives are willing to buy into that will bring the west to the very brink of disaster.

We just elected a middle age man who has never held an executive position or been responsible for the operation of any organization, or so far as we know, even held a private sector job that exceeded the period of his election campaign. Irrespective of this person’s political leanings the electorate has made an extraordinary leap of faith in a completely unproven package of ability.

The most important and influential organs of public opinion have deliberately either failed to investigate Obama’s past or have deliberately withheld the information. Most people seem to accept this massive lack of journalistic integrity as a given without concern for the consequences.

I read recently that Google will make editorial decisions about its search results. This is a staggering blow to those who saw the internet as an alternative to the MSM. Google displays the majority of internet search results in the USA and Europe. Given the leftward political allegiance admitted to by Google’s decision makers and we can reduce again by half the number of Obama unfriendly stories that we will ever see, regardless of merit.

If talk radio is successfully shut down, as Pelosi and other Democrats have promised, then the American public will have the same access to real news that Soviet citizens had under the Communists.

In a restricted news environment anybody who publicly comments on a story that is unfavorable to the Obama (or any other) administration will be labeled a crackpot dealing in conspiracy theories.

By fiat we have already passed from a market economy to a political economy. No need to wait for that transition. Henry Paulson and his successors will pass out billions upon billions of public money to supplicants with the best connections. President Bush intends to hand $14 billion to Detroit by fiat even after Congress said No. If a Republican president will pass out billions to corporations like so many gumdrops what should we expect from the statist Democrats? Dalrymple was right on target with this observation.

Too bad Brave New World is copyrighted because that there is where we are.

This information is interesting. Though it is so vague, people will come to their own conclusions regarding them.

Do these numbers lump together ’suicides’, ‘defending one’s self from house intruders’ or ‘accidental shootings, misfires, etc’?

I ask these questions because often, these numbers are usually narrow minded and only address what their agenda is alluding to.

His comments on the rise of corporatism are also very accurate. Business interests have been made synonymous with the public interest.

“The rise in armed residential robberies from 345 in 2003-04 to 645 last year is an alarming trend but it may partly be accounted for by a similar decline of 200 incidents recorded by the police as firearm burglaries. The long-term decline in the number of armed robberies on banks, post offices and building societies revealed in the figures spells the death of the elite “blag”.

Also

“[Figures] show that the risk of becoming a victim of crime in England and Wales has gone up from 23% to 24% but remains at a historically low level after peaking at 40% in 1995.

The homicide figures show that 766 people were murdered in 2005-06, including the 52 victims of the July 7 London suicide bombings, a fall of 9% on the previous year. This is the third year in succession that the murder rate in England and Wales has fallen after a sustained 40-year rise from the 1960s, which peaked in 2002-03 at more than 1,000, including the 172 victims of Harold Shipman.

The fall in gun crime, down from 11,371 incidents to 9,728 in the year to last September, was welcomed by the Home Office minister Tony McNulty. But he acknowledged the small increase in residential robberies involving firearms: “We have some of the toughest firearms legislation in Europe. Anyone convicted of having a prohibited firearm faces a minimum five-year sentence.”

The number of armed bank robberies has fallen from 240 in 1995 to only 59 and those involving post offices are also down, from nearly 400 to 108 over the same period. The decline is not explained by branch closures but rather by much improved security measures which have made such premises a “hard target”.”

“There was also a rapid and unexplained increase in the number of times householders were confronted in their own homes by armed criminals. Residential firearms robberies show a 46% leap, a record 645 cases in England and Wales–up 204 on the previous year and four times the level recorded in 2000-01″

645 cases in the whole of England and Wales (population 53.8m) in a year, how does this compare to levels in the USA. What does that say about the deterrent effect of widespread firearms ownership?

“AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States.”

So that is 6 European countries with higher rates than the US, does your friend mention how many have much lower rates? Why compare yourselves with only the worst Europe has to offer, are your ambitions really that low?

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus06.pdf&fileName=cvus06.pdf

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb1107.pdf

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/index.html