Dictators, would-be dictators and power-lusting second-handers everywhere already know this stuff instinctively.
You should too – as intellectual self-defence.
[From Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, Ellsworth Toohey explains the primary technique used by politicians, government officials and other ‘community leaders’ to wrestle power from the people. Hat tip Adriano Melo]
Dairy owner Virender Singh was stabbed as he fought back against intruders into his shop, only to have to fight back against police who charged him for having the temerity to defend himself.
Greg Carvell defended himself and the occupants of his family’s gun shop, and was arrested and charged for it when the police arrived twenty minutes after the fact.
Michael Vaimauga was arrested for assault after he stopped a burglar breaking into a shop.
As an Avondale dairy owner said when a colleague was stabbed in the neck and back by a robber, “When we protect ourselves, we get charged - and if we don’t, we get stabbed. What do we do?”
These people were the lucky ones.
Manurewa shop owner Navtej Singh was shot and killed by thieving scum as he stood unarmed and defenceless behind the counter of his family's store – following the advice of police who tell shop owners what they should do is to simply follow instructions and hope armed intruders go away. Mr Singh followed instructions, and was then shot and killed.
The manner of his death hung briefly over the election last week when ACT’s Jamie Whyte quite properly suggested dairy owners right to defend themselves should be recognised and upheld. John Key and his cheerleaders disgracefully and intentionally mis-translated the proposal to mean that every shopkeeper would have a loaded shotgun under the counter. Unable to defend his own overlooked right to life, the death of Mr Singh went unmentioned.
His ghost should have haunted the short debate, as his death should haunt everyone opposed to the very simple right to defend one’s life against one’s attackers.
“Gun control advocates wasted no time in demanding new restrictions on the means of self-defence … But the unhappy truth is that the scene of the crime, the Washington Navy Yard, is subject to many of the restrictions that gun control advocates favour. And the perpetrator …had passed a background check for a security clearance. Unfortunately, laws and databases don't create magic force-fields against criminal intent … That makes military bases much like other ‘gun-free zones.’ They're only as well protected as the willingness of would-be perpetrators to follow rules allows…
“Background checks are only as good as the information in the database and the people running them. [The killer] passed his background checks, then was issued credentials that allowed him to enter the Navy Yard, bypassing such armed security personnel as guarded the perimeter.
“After that, he faced unarmed victims, deprived of the means to defend themselves. At this point the choice of weapons … was moot.
“This is gun control.”
- Jerome Tuccille, “Washington Navy Yard Already Suffered the Restrictions That Gun Control Advocates Favour”
No money for police ammo and weapons training, but $50million for a cycle way.
No money for police ammo and weapons training, but $12.7million for a new climate 'super' computer to give wrong answers even faster than before.
Do you think this shows the correct priorities?
A government’s proper job is not to build cycle-ways or to forecast the weather – even if it could do either well. It’s to protect individual rights. If it can’t do that then it should stand down. If the top level of the police force can’t do that, they should announce that properly or stand down, instead of playing silly buggers with the government and with the public who pay their wages.
This is the same police force that insists that when confronted by an armed madman you should avoid “confrontation” and ring the police instead – and who, when people have rightly chosen to defend themselves instead of waiting for the Keystone cops to arrive, have pursued actions against them through the courts for the crime of taking their lives more seriously than the promises of a force more concerned with “protecting perimeters” than the people being shot at.
The same police force who last week were telling whoever wanted to listen that they’re going to have to sell police houses to meet their budgets.
So this latest “threat” by a cash strapped police force may simply be brinkmanship to attract more funding – just as last week’s threat was. But it’s going to give cold comfort to people whose lives are on the line with a gun in their face, and who are told that they aren’t allowed to defend themselves because a trained policeman is on the way.
UPDATE 1: No money for ammo, but enough for a whole new bureaucracy.
No money for weapons training, but plenty for surveys like this.
No money to defend New Zealanders, but $300 million plus change to “keep them warm.”
UPDATE 2: As Oswald says,
“Your average plod couldn't shoot his way out of a wet paper bag as it is. The last thing they need is reduced training”!
My congratulations this morning to stabbed shop owner Virender Singh, who fought back against intruders into his shop only to have to fight back against police who charged him for having the temerity to defend himself.
Just as they did when Greg Carvell defended himself and the occupants of his family’s gun shop.
Just as they did when Paul McIntyre defended his property and his family.
Just as they did when Michael Vaimauga was arrested for assault after he stopped a burglar breaking into a shop.
And just as they would have if the late Navtej Singh had managed to fight back successfully against the armed intruders into his bottle store.
As an Avondale dairy owner said when a colleague was stabbed in the neck and back by a robber, “When we protect ourselves, we get charged - and if we don’t we get stabbed. What do we do?”
So my congratulations to Mr Singh not just for being cleared in a depositions hearing at the Manukau District Court, but for having the gumption to defend himself and his young nephew when the police have already made it perfectly clear they view anyone who does as a criminal .
Make no mistake, Virender Singh’s exculpation yesterday by Manukau JPs was not a ringing declaration of your right to self defence – despite the Crimes Act allowing it, and basic human rights demanding it. No, his case was not dismissed based his right to self defence, but only because there was insufficient evidence to charge him.
And it was backed up by hand wringing Retailers Association president John Albertson who simpered “he would be concerned if retailers started arming themselves” – which is to say, he’d be happier if it were only their robbers who were armed – and from Singh’s own lawyer who said that this was “not a licence for shop owners to take unwarranted retribution in the course of their business” – indicating that even he has no conception of the fundamental distinction between one who initiates force, and one who defends against it.
So what do you think about his chances of an apology from the police?
Attorney General Chris Finlayson pointed out on Monday out that ACT’s three-strikes policy would violate the Bill of Rights Act – and so it would. It’s not about “rights for violent criminals,” as Radio NZ erroneously reported, but as Finlayson quite properly says,
the legislation could result in "disparities between offenders that are not rationally based" and "gross disproportionality at sentencing", which raised the apparent inconsistency with the Bill of Rights [protecting New Zealanders against cruel, degrading or "disproportionately severe" punishment].
It would raise the likelihood, or at least the possibility, of an offender being sprung for a five-year offence having nothing to lose by going on to commit murder before he’s caught. After all, if simple assault and mass-murder get the same sentence, what has he got to lose? And it would raise the possibility, if not now but in the future, of those found guilty of victimless crimes being locked up and watching the key be thrown away.
Why ACT ever went with the ‘three-strikes’ populism Lord Ansell alone knows, when the proven success story they might have promoted instead was the Broken Windows model, or the simple right to self-defence.
And why ACT ever went with David ‘Nutcracker’ Garrett as an MP for their supposedly classically liberal party I guess we’ll never know. (Garrett, when told of Finlayson’s findings responded: "So what? Alter the Bill of Rights Act. We've got too hung up on people's rights." Which tells you all you need to know about Mr Garrett, I guess)
Graeme Edgeler points out the further problems with the three-strikes policy here, while laying a few myths to rest [hat tip Kiwiblog].
And David Farrar posts on a controlled experiment in Boston to test the Broken Windows methodology. And guess what: it worked. Again.
Ray Carvell, pictured here in his Penrose gun shop, died this week. Ray was one of the good guys. The Carvell family and their shop hit the headlines in 2006 when a numb nut tried to attack the staff with a machete, and Ray’s son Greg shot him (the numb nut) in self-defence.
The resulting police persecution of son Greg, was very unpleasant for the family – as Free Radical readers will remember from Ray’s interview in issue 76. (You can read my posts on the shooting and subsequent prosecution here.)
I’d like to extend my best wishes and those of NOT PC’s readers to Ray’s family at this time.
I missed the first half of last night's leaders' "debate" -- I was at Auckland's Town Hall with the APO happily lapping up the treats in store for next season, thanks very much -- but I'm still surprised to see so many so serious about it being a victory for John Key. Key won the debate say most commentators, and most NZers surveyed.
Did they see the same second half I did?
I'm surprised on two counts. First, the format wasn't really a debate at all, simply a two-headed interview -- but with the 'YouTube' participation the interview questions were at least better than Sainsbury can normally manage -- but every time a real debate actually seemed about to break out between the actual participants, with some real emotion and real points being made, bloody Sainsbury help up the hands and started waving the chequered flag at them both.
Someone should tell him he's not the main event.
And second, John Key's "interventions" when Helen Clark was talking -- necessary, since Sainsbury appeared to have no intention of offering a "follow-up" chance to respond -- seemed to me to be both weak and pathetic, setting his high pitched squeak in unfortunate contrast to Helen's authoritative lower-pitched contralto.
I say "seemed to me," because other commentators disagreed. The Herald's Claire Trevett for example thought Key's responses showed "quite a talent for ruining Helen Clark's more fanciful moments":
Asked whether the student allowance policy was a "blatant election bribe," Clark starts to reply with the "grandiose" "I've always had a dream" [a dream it's taken nine years, a close election and incipient economic collapse to "afford"] before going on to talk about the privileges her generation had.
John Key happily pops the bubble, noting "my holiday job was cleaning out the chickens."
What Trevett thought the perfect response, those in my house thought weak and pathetic, and utterly irrelevant to the fact it is so clearly a blatant election bribe. Why can't he call a bribe a bribe, for goodness sake?
Two questions in particular interested me. Shane Taurima asked Key to clarify his policy on abolishing the Maori seats, which Pita Sharples maintains Key had indicated privately was up for grabs -- something suggesting some kind of mendacity in the public policy. I found Key's response on this unconvincing, and unclear. Waffle designed to obfuscate.
The other question came from a YouTuber, asking both leaders to comment on the brutal murder of Navtej Singh. This drew a response that shows a genuine sea change: after initial hand-wringing both responded that "New Zealanders are entitled to use reasonable force to defend themselves." Yes, I'll say that again: "New Zealanders are entitled to use reasonable force to defend themselves."
That's progress. Definite progress. It's been there in the Crimes Act but recognised more in the breach than the observance" -- we can only hope the attitude quickly makes its way into policing policy.
How tragic that good New Zealanders had to die to make it happen.
You can be sure that when another blogger calls you "intelligent and engaging," there's bound to be a catch -- and in Russell Brown's latest post, there sure is: "I personally like Peter Cresswell: he is an engaging and intelligent man," he begins. And then the knives come out:
Unfortunately, he is also an Objectivist libertarian, which means he will often go off on ideologically-motivated rants that enjoy all the internal consistency of your average tantrum.
Fortunately for me, the knives in this case are just metaphorical. I say that because five Aucklanders and their families and friends are less fortunate than I -- five people including Austin Hemmings have died from real knife attacks in Auckland city since mid-July -- not to mention Darnell Leslie, stabbed to death in Invercargill on Saturday. Darnell Leslie was the fifty-first New Zealander to die at the hand of another New Zealander since the start of this year.
Russell's metaphorical knife is out for me however because in saying on Friday it is time to take a stand over the flood of violence that so far this year has cost fifty-one New Zealanders their lives I am "channeling the spirit of Leighton Smith" -- and out there in the People's Republic of Grey Lynn & Pt Chevalier, no greater crime exists.
I made the "mistake" of saying that the one thing governments are legitimately supposed to be doing is protecting New Zealanders from crime and violence -- when it's manifestly clear this government is not doing that, and has no focus on doing that.
I committed the sin of pointing out that the primary focus of law and order should not be protection for criminals, but protection from criminals, -- and aside from criminalising good parents, the focus of our local law enforcement has been more on revenue collection than it has been on barring physical force from social relationships.
I summoned up my inner frighfulness to ask, "Will the random, violent, bloodthirsty stabbing of a man in central Auckland last night be the final straw? Is that enough, finally, to make you sit up and say 'No more!'"
And I had the temerity to quote Susan the Libertarian, actually talking to Leighton Smith: "Is this enough to pierce your apathy?" she asked his listeners. If not this, then what?
What indeed.
Fifty-one people killed at the hands of other people this year is clearly not enough to pierce the apathetic hide of the Grey Lynn and Wadestown apparatchiks, who think (if they think about it at all) that wringing their hands and crying "It's not OK, eh" will be all that's needed to stop the bloodshed -- and if that doesn't work, that covering their eyes with metaphorical hoodies will at least help to keep the bloodshed out of sight.
Since it's my Objectivism that apparently animates my own ideologically-motivated animus to people being killed, and Russell thinks it's "not clear what Cresswell is proposing here," let's see what Objectivism has to say about all this. "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others." Who could object to that? "No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man," said Ayn Rand. "If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules.
This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government.
A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws."
Sounds clear enough, doesn't it: Initiating physical force against others is wrong. It's a crime. Government's primary task is stopping it, without initiating force in the process. Who could possibly object? Well, apparently Russell Brown does. Despite a clarification in the comments for a reader ("Nowhere at all," I say "have I suggested that the role of police is to walk around and follow each and every individual, so they can clap them in cuffs the moment they step out of line"), he wonders nonetheless what it all means.
Does this mean the suspension of habeas corpus, he asks. An expansion of police enforcement and surveillance so prodigious as to guarantee an officer's intervention? A policeman at every dinner table? Well, no -- although a policeman would probably be better company than the likes of Peter Williams QC, who's never seen a criminal without simultaneously envisioning a paycheck. And a policeman in every home -- or at least a bureaucrat with a clipboard -- is the wet dream of both Sue Bradford and Cindy Kiro.
What it does mean however is removing the scales (and the hoodies) from one's eyes, and urgently recognising that the focus of the law and the number one job of government -- its only moral justification -- is the protection of you from me, and me from you.
Which means apprehending and vilifying criminals, not attacking their victims.
Which means focusing on crimes with actual victims, not on victimless crimes that fill up NZ's prisons with people whose only crime is harming themselves.
Which means recognising that the rise of violent crime (up 12.5% since last year) is the backfire of collectivism -- that paying several generations of New Zealanders to have children they don't want has not been a recipe for happy families, but for people who see their primary means of survival as other people, and whole suburbs in which that ethic is daily acted out.
Which means recognising that every New Zealander has the right to defend themselves, and the concomitant right to possess the means thereof.
Which means taking burglary and other property-related offences seriously, so that more bad law isn't needed to fix bad sentencing; so that those criminals who start with property crime don't learn the messages early on that they may obtain financial values from others by resorting to physical force; so that they don't learn that the word "justice" is always preceded with the words "revolving door."
What it does mean in short is recognising that if the legitimate arms of government are to protect innocent people from others who think force is the means by which humans deal with one another -- in other words, if the police, the law courts and the prisons are going to do their proper job -- then they need to protect those who value their life, liberty, property and happiness from those who've shown beyond reasonable doubt that they're quite partial to taking them all away. ("The rights of the accused are not a primary," points out Ayn Rand, "they are a consequence derived from a man’s inalienable, individual rights. A consequence cannot survive the destruction of its cause.") That's the only reason to lock people up, isn't it: to protect us, not to rehabilitate (or even to punish) them.
Let me repeat it again: The primary focus of law and order and the sole moral justification for government is to bar force from social relationships. The protection of our individual rights. If criminals show they have no intention of respecting others' rights, then the law should have no compunction in taking away theirs. This is manifestly not the primary focus of the present government, but nor has it been of any real interest to most of its predecessors.
While some people prefer to avert their eyes from all the carnage, and to make fun of the likes of Garth McVicar -- one of the few New Zealanders to speak up for victims instead of for those who've done them over -- those who feel threatened are on the march. It's the measure of a community's desperation in the face of crime, for example, that ten-thousand people marched in South Auckland's bad weather recently to demand their fundamental right to protection from criminals to be upheld. But where the self-anointed once joined, supported and promoted marches against violence -- the likes of the "Reclaim the Night" marches, for example, were once a safe way for lefties to meet their future partners -- now they're content to sit at home in their own safe suburbs while chuckling cynically at the desperation that would motivate someone like Manukau's Peter Low to contemplate employing Triads to provide protection, anything to make their streets safer than they are now!
While the police fiddle and the self-anointed smirk, the possibilities of lynch mobs emerges from the shadows. Look too, for example, at the gobs of support given to a Manurewa man when he stabbed and killed a tagger not so long ago -- and for the most part the support came from those who claim to be against such violence.
Such is the measure of people's desperation. They want protection; they're not getting it.
So what's to be done right now? For some people, I suspect the difficulty of doing something means they draw the line at doing anything. As it happens, however, I gave some sort of a prescription in a post earlier this year on Curing South Auckland, one of the places in which no-one can ignore the very real rising tide of violence that threatens to destroy the place. Here they are, in summary:
No one, including me, says it's going to be easy to turn things round. But just because it's difficult to do something doesn't mean doesn't mean that one should support doing nothing.
UPDATE: Russell points to crime figures that he says shows there's nothing to worry about, "something that has always been apparent to anyone prepared to look up the numbers: Crime rocketed in the 1970s and has been trending down since." However, something really is apparent to those prepared to look beyond the headlines, even the one to which he links. "Reported crime was steady at around two crimes a year for every 100 people from 1900 until about 1970," says the psychiatrist quoted, "and then climbed steeply to peak at 13 crimes per 100 in 1992." If you believe the headline, that was then and this is now. But how about now? For the last four years crime figures, according to the psychiatrist, have "levelled out" at 10 crimes for every 100 people.
For Russell et al, that's nothing to worry about. It means all is fine and dandy. Essentially violent crimes and homicide shot up in the mid-eighties, and have failed ever since to come down, but as long as he and his friends can point to graphs showing the Red Team did less badly than the Blue Team there's nothing for anyone to worry about -- expect perhaps for those 1 in 10 people who've been victims of the crimes people say we shouldn't be worried about.
And in fact, to be precise, if we actually did look up the numbers, we'd see that violent crime in New Zealand is not so easy to dismiss. New Zealand scored highly earlier this year in an international crime survey.
New Zealand scored highest for thefts from cars, second highest for burglary, fifth highest for assaults, 10th highest for robbery and 11th highest for theft of personal property and for sexual assaults against women in The International Crime Victims Survey. The survey compared 30 countries in 2004 and 2005.
And we'd see too that levels of violent crime are not "levelling off" at all. There were 127.1 per 10,000 violent crimes recorded last year in the official figures, and the trend since 1999 has been up, not down!
Which means the figures provide no grounds at all for back slapping complacency.
UPDATE: Callum McPetrie points out "The underlying factor, behind the government's size and the sanction of criminals, is political correctness, fuelled by the moral equivalency of modern philosophical and political thought.
It's the idea that the murderer is the true victim of an 'oppressive society,' and that the man who was murdered deserved it ... If he gets stabbed or shot, moral equivalency says: 'So what?' "
And the Prime Minister says, "It's the victim's fault"!.
What does it take for New Zealanders to rise up and demand their government forego all the nonsense they shouldn't be bothering with, all the bossy-boot bullshit about baubles and bureaucracy and scampi and scandals, and focus instead on the one thing they're legitimately supposed to be doing, which is protecting New Zealanders from violence?
What does it take?
Will the random, violent, bloodthirsty stabbing of a man in central Auckland last night be the final straw? Is that enough, finally, to make you sit up and say "No more!"
Will it make you speak out to demand that government start doing its real job? That it starts protecting you and me from every nutter who'd like to raise a hand against us in violence, instead of doing us over themselves? That it begins to realise the primary focus of law and order is protection from criminals, not protection for criminals.
It's time -- right now -- to put victims first, not criminals, and to make damn sure the number of victims takes a rapid and benevolent dive.
What are you going to do about demanding a change?
UPDATE 1: I just heard Labour's Mark Gosche and National's Chester Borrows discussing the the murder on Radio Live, and their "solutions" to the rising tide of violent crime. "We both agree on the solutions," said Tweedlum's Chester Borrow's. Yes we do, agreed Tweedledumber's Mark Gosche.
Did their so-called solutions entail a greater police focus on protection from criminals, and less on giving violent criminals an easy ride and an early exit from prison (if they ever get there)? An end to the failed system of paying no-hopers to breed? Legalising the right to self-defence and to the means thereof? Any of that? No, what they both insisted is the urgent and necessary solution to the rising ride of violence, especially around Auckland, is "stronger communities." "Targeted welfare." More "stay-at-home parents."
No wonder we're inundated with savagery.
Even if they were right, the policies they're following are only destructive of stronger communities. Whether delivered by muck sprayer or fire hose, the result in South Auckland of several generations of taxpayer funded largesse is several generations of people who think they're entitled to live at someone else's expense. The Socialist Samaritan has not been a success. Welfarism is a certified killer.
The parents encouraged to stay at home by the gobs of welfare doled out to nearly three-hundred thousand New Zealanders are hardly hold the solution to anything, even to their own damned lives. And the good parents? Hell, they're both going out to work, and they need to -- and when they tot up their take-home pay at the end of each year, they probably notice that at the present level of fiscal rapacity one of them is going out to work just to pay their tax bill -- just to pay for stay-at-home no-hopers and political beneficiaries like Gosche and Borrows, and for their political masters for whom the welfare bill is little more than a sophisticated election bribe.
What does it take for the time-servers to realise it's time for more than just hand-wringing? What will it take for you to demand that they do?
UPDATE 2: Susan the Libertarian tells Leighton Smith, "There is a proverbial last straw, eh." Listen to Susie here explaining why this should be the last straw for every thinking person. She starts fourteen minutes in. "Is this enough to pierce your apathy?"
UPDATE 3: Russell Brown thinks I've lost my marbles: this post you're now reading is apparently an ideologically-motivated rant that enjoys all the internal consistency of your average tantrum. Oh dear.
UPDATE 4: I respond to Russell's post here: Murder? It's not OK!
It became obvious over the last few years to anyone with a brain that a vast number of people in positions of political power were absolutely unable to discriminate between smacking and beating
For the likes of Sue Bradford and Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, a firm open-handed smack on a child's bottom is no different than a beating delivered with a vacuum cleaner pipe or a piece of 4"x2".
So much for Ms Bradford's and Ms Kiro's ability to discriminate.
They provided further evidence of this mote in both eyes over the weekend, showing themselves utterly unable to determine any difference between a child initiating force against another child, and a teacher using force in defence of of that child -- ie., between violence, which is never justified, and retaliatory force, which is our right. [For more on the difference, see my 'Cue Card' on Force.]
When "top youth aid cop" Inspector Chris Graveson quite properly -- and in the current cultural climate, courageously -- pointed out that "Teachers should not be afraid to 'man-handle' violent children if they pose immediate risks [to others], even if it means leaving bruising," Bradford and her confreres were ready to pounce.
"You hear people saying, `You can't touch children. You can't do this, you can't do that'. (But) if a child's being attacked, you're duty-bound to intervene," Graveson said at a New Zealand Educational Institute seminar in Wellington on Friday...
To which Bradford responded: "Teachers can use force to stop a child from causing harm to themselves and others [and I'm sure they're grateful for the Bradford/Key/Clark Act limiting that force] ... But what concerns me with the comments from the police officer is you can use force up to the level of bruising the child. That might lead to some teachers using what I would consider unreasonable force."
And education minister Chris Carter responded: "There are policies to deal with disruptive and violent children... The problem with what the officer has said is he's taken a broad-brush approach to what is actually very specific and rare cases."
And the Office of the Children's Commissioner responded that "it was never appropriate to bruise a child."
Never? As the Timaru Herald asks, are they in the real world, these people? How will a "policy" help Hemi when Hone's beating him over the head with a chair? How can it be "never appropriate" to drag Johnny off Jemima with peremptory force when he's beating her to a pulp (and as Graveson points out, "Serious sexual offenders as young as 12, who would be labelled paedophiles if they were adults, [for] preying on young victims")?
How could one ever think it "unreasonable" to protect young victims from the classroom bullies and thugs who would take them over if the "sense" that Kiro and Carter and Bradford exhibit ever became too common.
The point is this: it's not just desirable to discriminate between force and defensive force -- between coercion and self-defence -- it's essential. Indeed, as Ayn Rand points out, it's the very basis of a rational politics:
Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.
Don't ban force, ban the initiation of force -- because by making retaliatory force illegal, all you do is increase the violence.
See the history of pacifism for countless examples -- like this one.
Allow me to pause for just a moment to say a very loud "Bravo!" to the Christchurch dairy owner who protected himself and his wife from machete-wielding thugs by shooting them in the face with an air pistol.
"Bravo!"
Let's be clear about this: He had the right to defend himself and his wife against the thugs, who were at the time slashing at the air near his throat and chest and had backed him up against the cigarette racks, and he had the courage not to let the bastards win.
"Sir, I applaud you."
I can not say the same for the New Brighton police, who said the actions of the dairy owner, who calls himself 'Nike,' were "certainly not good practice".
Police advice was to comply with robbers and "get them in and out as quick [sic] as possible." Police said they were "discussing" whether Nike's actions would have further repercussions.
This is appalling. Getting these thugs "in and out as quick as possible" would likely have resulted only in another corpse. Is that what Detective Constable Matt Grant of the New Brighton police really wants? Would he stand still while thugs used himself and his wife for target practice, if a weapon was close at hand? (If he would, then his wife should start packing and be out the door within the hour.)
Bear in mind that, by the testimony of the man attacked, "they tried to kill us from the very start. It happened really fast. They ran in holding the knife out and started trying to chop me." Would Detective Constable Matt Grant have our hero simply hold up his hands while the thugs actually slashed him across his throat and chest? Would that somehow help end the violence?
The police policy of unarmed capitulation to get the thugs in and out as quickly as possible is a killer.
It killed Navtej Singh, who was complying with the thugs in Manurewa who shot him without compunction for the price of a few six-packs. It killed John Vaughan, shot in the head at the Mangere Bridge branch of the ASB while complying with all the demands of thug who killed him. And it put at threat the dairy owner last week who was shot in the arm by rampaging thugs who were themselves intent on getting in and out as quickly as possible, without any concern about who they harmed along the way.
Observe three things.
UPDATE: Bravo, too, to Crusader Rabbit for this comment:
I'd like to point out to the idiot detective constable that even sea urchins have spines--for the purpose of self-defence.
Well said, sir.
Good news this morning as the Supreme Court of the United States confirms there are some times that the protection of the US Constitution can't be taken away from American citizens: the SCOTUS has just ruled that the desire of Washington DC politicians and bureaucrats to legally disarm honest citizens has been squelched by the justices, and the right to bear arms in self-defence -- a right unambiguously protected by the constitution -- has been upheld. {Full decision here [pdf].] Reports CNN:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled ... that Washington D.C.’s sweeping ban on handguns is unconstitutional. The justices voted 5-4 against the ban with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority ...
The case's lead plaintiff, Dick Heller, applauded the decision, saying, "I'm very happy that I am now able to defend myself and my household in my own home" ...
At issue in District of Columbia v. Heller was whether the city’s ban violated the Second Amendment right to ‘keep and bear arms’ by preventing individuals — as opposed to state militias — from having guns in their homes. …
The Second Amendment says, ‘A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ The wording repeatedly has raised the question of whether gun ownership is an individual right, or a collective one pertaining to state militias and therefore subject to regulation. The Supreme Court has avoided the question since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. The high court last examined the issue in 1939 but stayed away from the broad constitutional question. (06/26/08)
"Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command," Justice Scalia wrote in the decision affirming the right. "We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans."
Good news, and a good demonstration to those of you befuddled by the question I put to you yesterday as to what the US is if it's not a democracy, which it isn't.
America is not a democracy -- let me say it again: America is not a democracy. The erudite Dr McGrath got it right:
As anyone who has studied the American system knows, the United States is a constitutional republic. Democracy offers no protection for individual rights; it doesn't prevent Big Government.
Let me say that again: the United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy -- a republic in which the Government was chained up constitutionally to act as the guardian of its citizens' rights and liberties, rather than left unleashed to savage them. That, at least, was what the Founding Fathers intended.
It's a form of government that puts the things of importance beyond the vote; those things are each individual's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property and happiness, which the government is constituted to uphold. These are the things that mustn't be taken away from you -- the intention of the constitution is to ensure that they can't be. The role of the Supreme Court is specifically to ensure that those rights can't be taken away by government. This decision of the Supreme Court shows that despite the many indignities inflicted upon the constitution, the checks and balances it created do still sometimes work to do that.
The checks and balances of the United States Constitution was described by Ayn Rand as "the great American achievement." Since so few people today understand those checks and balances, it's worth reading the the convenient summary provided by a course offered by the Ayn Rand Institute:
A Constitution is "[t]he system or body of fundamental principles according to
which a nation, state, or body politic is constituted and governed."
Paraphrasing Ayn Rand, a proper government protects men from criminals and
foreign invaders and provides for the settlement of disputes according to objective laws. A government, therefore, does three things: it makes laws (the legislative function), enforces them (the executive function) and runs law courts (the judicial function).
The United States Constitution divides these functions into separate departments; this is the doctrine of separation of powers. It also divides governmental powers between the state and federal governments by enumerating the powers of the latter and by specific limitations on both. Thus, both the federal and the state governments have sufficient powers to secure rights, and are limited in their ability to violate them [and the Supreme Court has veto powers over both federal and state governments to strike down legislation when it does].
Simple but effective. Not democracy then but constitutional government - a constitution protecting essential liberties through a government constrained only to those protections. It's a model that failed states and would-be freedom fighters around the world would do well to understand and emulate.
Anyway, enough of that. To celebrate the SCOTUS decision here's Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong : "You Can't Take That Away From Me."
UPDATE: Eric Crampton suggests we not get too hasty in our celebrations. He points out that Eugene Volokh, who was quoted three times in the decision itself, suggests "it was a very limited decision. Blanket bans like DC's are forbidden; regulations elsewhere are specifically not struck down." Keep up with the commentary at Volokh's blog, the Volokh Conspiracy.
When Libertarianz firearms spokesman Peter Linton appeared on TVNZ's Eye to Eye last weekend with Willie Jackson, John Tamihere, Marie Dyhrberg, & Hone Harawira, no one knew that the unarmed Navtej Singh was about to be brutally murdered for the price of a case of beer.
In the wake of that senseless killing, their debate on the police, guns, self defence and tasers takes on new relevance, and can now be seen online via Libz TV.
I'm sure the thoughts of every thinking New Zealander are with the widow and three daughters of Navtej Singh today, who was shot and killed by thieving scum as he stood unarmed and defenceless behind the counter of his family's Manurewa bottle store.
And I'm sure every thinking New Zealander will already be wondering how it would have been different if retailers were able to defend themselves with mace or pepper spray, or a taser or gun -- all of which are illegal for ordinary New Zealanders, and any of which might have made the criminal scum think twice before their murderous raid.
If you want some lively discussion & good TV tomorrow morning (Sunday), tune in to Libertarianz firearms spokesman Peter Linton discussing Police, Guns & Tasers on Eye to Eye, TV1 at 11-30 AM, with Willie Jackson, John Tamihere, Marie Dyhrberg, & Hone Harawira.
It starts like a really bad joke, and ends really badly: This bloke walks into a shopping mall with a 'gun-free zone.' He has a gun. He pulls gun and shoots. Eight people are killed.
Bad joke. Bad law.
This bloke walks into a small missionary training centre in Denver. He has a gun. He pulls gun and shoots. Two people killed. He gets away.
Bad joke.
Here's the punchline: This same bloke walks into a church in Colorado Springs packed with 2000 people. He has a gun. He pulls gun and ... is shot several times in the chest by a congregant with a concealed weapons permit and a law enforcement background, saving up to 100 lives. Story here.
I invite you to draw the necessary lessons yourself.
I invite you too to contemplate whether if that congregant with a concealed weapons permit and a law enforcement background did the same thing in New Zealand, she'd be called a hero ... or something else.
that recommends officers shoot people armed with knives.My comment was along the lines that while police have as much right to defend themselves as anybody (a right that should be recognised for all of us, including those who carry knives for that purpose), and that since police put themselves in harm's way on our behalf they should be expected to have to defend themselves more often, but given all that this email would only make things harder for good policemen.
Under the heading "Why Cops Shoot Guys With Knives", the email contains stomach-churning photographs of a police officer with massive slashes to his back, chest and stomach.
The text of the email exhorts officers to shoot anyone with a weapon. "If you've got a knife, then you should die ... period."
The email has been forwarded to more than 30 officers and then to addresses that appear to be members of the public.
The policeman who fatally shot a man wielding a hammer last night feared for his life, police say...I really do feel for this policeman, because whoever wrote and sent out that email and whoever made it public have now made it almost impossible for him to ever get a fair hearing. Perhaps both author and publicist could contemplate that as he sits on suspension awaiting the outcome of that investigation.
Head of the Canterbury police, Superintendent Sandra Manderson said at a press conference this morning that the threats made to the policeman were "serious enough" for a shooting to take place.
"Obviously very serious indeed. Obviously (the man) was relatively close (to the police officer) because he feared for his life" ...
The officer would not be working for a while, but had not been stood down "at this stage".
Asked if she backed the actions of the officer, Ms Manderson said: "We are doing an investigation."