Just like in the "good ol days"
Now that's what I call law enforcement!
Posted on 10/27/2009 1:26:39 PM PDT by Stoat
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
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British / American English translation assistance:
| bollocking | Noun. A severe reprimand |
A dictionary of slang - B - Slang and colloquialisms of the UK.
UK slow suicide continues.
How could this be?
The UK should be a gun free (and therefore violence free) paradise of diversity and hand holding folk song singing egalitarianism.
Translation: "The people of Great Britain will remain as victims to armed criminals and political correctness"
What’s with this “marksmen on motorcycles” craziness? It’s as if the Brits have so mythologized firearms that they no longer no how to use them.
I know how can this be happening??!!! Once the idiot Liberals passed this law; one would have thunk the criminals would be complying with it.
Maybe these brilliant genius’ could just pass a ban on crime. With crime banned, criminals would no longer be able to criminalize. No crime= no criminals= no guns, and just like that rainbows appear, birds sing and the unicorns poop gumdrops....Utopia so wonderful!!
Indeed, the hysteria generated over having trained Officers carrying firearms is astonishing to us Yanks, particularly in view of the rise in violent crimes with criminals in posession of firearms across the Pond. I sincerely hope that it will not be long before the average bloke there will have had enough of the Government treating criminals with kid gloves and, in so doing, failing to adequately protect the public.
A positive sign, however, is that in many reader comment areas in various online news outlets reporting on this there are a large number of people who are protesting this, and from what I’ve seen very few supporting it. Hopefully this is an indication of the overall mood in Britain.
Just like in the "good ol days"
Now that's what I call law enforcement!
Bolock(ing) really means to screw up in Brit slang. As in “Well, my lad, you’ve made a real bollocks of it, haven’t you’’!
exactly
there is a mindset back in the UK about guns and the mindset is they are bad.
I tell people that I have a SIGP229 and they find it hard ot believe that anyone could have a gun.
When I point out that it is better to grab a gun when someone breaks in than waiting for the police or grabbing the broom they agree.
The mindset come from the BBC, Guardian crap who push their left agenda every day and the people take it in sadly
Depends what you mean by 'all'. Currently just under 700,000 firearms license holders in Britain.
The lexicon is rather richer than you imply. ‘Bollocks’ and ‘bollocking’ have quite distinct connotations, not to be confused.
Does the 700,000 include "Air Weapons" ?
After all the Metropolitan Police says:
Air weapons must be held on a firearms certificate in the following circumstances:
Also how many of these "firearms" include hunting, collectible, antique or otherwise impractical/useless self-defense weapons?
The poor bastards that have to live in the crime ridden cities are unarmed and you know it.
Rising gun crime?
I thought that guns were illegal there... /sarc
The exact numbers at March 2008 were 549,207 shotguns and 128,528 other categories. Full details at
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb0509.pdf
Firearm Certificates on issue as of 31 Mar 2008
London, City of 1 - 2 - - - - 12
Shotgun certificates:
London, City of 2 - 6 - - 28
Wow...28 shotguns in the whole of the city of London!
I'm sure this number is much to high for the delicate sensibilities and cultured taste of the those that despise firearms.
I wonder if the Home Office keeps records on the number of firearms kept by criminals? Nah...it's so much easier to enforce the law on the average citizen.
Criminals and governments absolutely love unarmed peasants.
By saying, "But we have 700,000 registered firearms" in a country of about 51 million and by that implying that firearms don't help people protect themselves is just a lie. And not a very good one at that.
I have neither made nor intended such an implication.
Of course not.
I’m fortunate to live in a part of the country where shooting sports are an important contributor to the local economy, and I have several large commercial shooting estates in my near neighborhood. Indeed, I understand that traditional country shooting sports are thriving. The principal purpose for which people here keep guns is, as it always has been, for sport. Sporting guns - shotguns and various kinds of sporting rifle - were always the most widely owned firearms, and have never been banned.
Hmmm...priveliged subject of the Queen or
beleaguered serf of the Obamination and his liberal stormtroopers...
Fair amount of hunting still goes on too. My grandad was into that in a big way.
Your remarks are thoroughly illogical.
What defines someone as a criminal? A criminal record. What about those who are just starting out on a life of crime and dont have a record? How can the UK government, or any government, keep records of how many illegal guns there are? By definition criminals dont disclose information like that.
And why would most people want a SHOTGUN, a device used for hunting and sport, in the city of London (which, incidentally, is not the entire of the metropolitan area of London. The city of London is the centre of the urban area). Its like decrying the absence of shotguns in the heart of New York City.
The possession of arms by the citizenry is immaterial, if the will to use them does not exist. Given the undoubted erosion of the US constitution and the rights of the individual, I haven’t seen outraged minutemen storming DC recently.
What defines someone as a criminal? A criminal record. What about those who are just starting out on a life of crime and dont have a record? How can the UK government, or any government, keep records of how many illegal guns there are? By definition criminals don't disclose information like that.
You are making my point for me, which is that criminals don't obey the law. I doubt also that they comply with firearm laws because, by definition, they are criminals.
The possession of arms by the citizenry is immaterial, if the will to use them does not exist.
I am assuming the "will" to use a firearm usually exists before the act of purchasing said firearm, but hey what do I know.
Whether I am wrong or right is moot because in the UK the only people that have the kinds of firearms useful for self defense are...criminals.
We’re definitely headed that way.
Still, keeping arms isn’t about hunting. Or to put it another, way, its not just the four-legged varmints that need hunting.
In Britain, it mostly has been (using 'hunting' in the wider American sense). Keeping arms for self-defence never seems to have been a part of British culture to anything like the extent it is in the USA, even before the various legislative restrictions. It's certainly not the case (as some Freepers seem to believe) that before Dunblane every other Briton kept a handgun by his bed which was then summarily seized by the government.
There was a time, prior to WWI, when a British subject would think nothing of slipping a pistol into his pocket for personal defense. (Think of Watson slipping his service revolver into his pocket and following Holmes.) Many coats even had special pockets for pistols, lined with oilskin or something similar to protect the coat from the oils used to lubricate and protect the weapon.
After WWI, because of the Bolshevik Revolution and the spread of communism under various brand names, there was a fear of revolution by the the “lower” classes. This lead to restrictions on firearm ownership that started, innocuously enough, with registration.
By WWII there were not enough personal arms in the UK to equip the Home Guard after their weapons were re-allocated to re-equip the British army after Dunkirk. Donated weapons had to be shipped into the UK from the USA to provide them with arms in the dark hours of the Battle of Britain. After the war these weapons were destroyed rather being returned or allowed into public hands (truly an outrage!!!).
Since then, the ride has continued downhill with an especially steep slope after Dunblane, and has reached the point that individuals initiating effective self defense are frequently punished more severely by law enforcement than are the actual criminals.
So private firearms were not “summarily seized” after Dunblane, but were instead subject to a decades long war against them. This is why even “reasonable” gun-control measures are to be opposed.
The author might be wrong, or I might be summarizing him wrong or we both might be out of our collective heads. But that is way I understand it.
Yes, that summary of events over the last century rings fairly true. What is very difficult to pin down, however, is how widespread gun ownership was before that process started. There’s very little reference to gun ownership (other than for sporting or vermin control purposes) in the social histories of the time: and the consensus seems to be that, although there were certainly more handguns around than subsequently (at least among the middle classes), they were never anything like as widespread as has always been the case in the U.S.
I don’t see how that changes anything. People DID keep arms for self defense in the UK. Just because a right isn’t universally exercised doesn’t mean it should be curtailed, esp. when its curtailment has not brought any demonstrable social benefits.
Wouldn’t argue with that, and I’m not for a moment trying to justify gun control - far from it. Just trying to clarify the historical context, in which (to return to the original subject of this thread) an unarmed police force could, with notable success for more than a century, keep on top of such crime and violent crime (which of course existed) as there was. In that reasonably settled society, without a threatened internal frontier to defend (unlike the US), most people just didn’t seem to see the need to have guns about them.
You’re right of course.
Always admired the Bobbies’ ability to keep the peace with just a nightstick and a whistle. I guess they knew their beats so well that any suspicious strangers or behavior stood out like sore thumb.
Or maybe the UK used to have a better class of criminal?
No that is not the point you were making. That is a separate issue. You were sneering at the UK government for not keeping tabs on criminal's firearms, and I was merely pointing out that no government can do that, by definition.
I am assuming the "will" to use a firearm usually exists before the act of purchasing said firearm, but hey what do I know.
Not neccesarily, but anyway that is not the crux of the argument. Guns, in and of themselves, are nothing. They are tools, extensions of people. As the gun lobby argues (quite correctly) guns do not kill people. People kill people. Ergo, the occurence of gun-related crimes is at least as much to do with the willingness of people to pull triggers as it has with the gun control laws.
Whether I am wrong or right is moot because in the UK the only people that have the kinds of firearms useful for self defense are...criminals.
That is not so.
People MAY have kept guns for self-defence, but it was never very widespread, and most of it pre-dates the establishment of the police force anyway.
Incidentally, Watson keeping and using his old service revolver in the Sherlock Holmes stories was quite illegal. :)
This gun control thing is very cultural. Quite simply British people don’t like guns. They don’t even like policemen carrying guns. I dont quite know how and when and why that started. It just is. Its been as true as long as I can remember. Its not a question of a right being curtailed - the simple fact is that owning private firearms is socially unacceptable in the UK. People think you are odd if you do, and possibly up to no good! It was even socially unacceptable for criminals to carry guns. There are recorded incidents of the underworld turning over one of their own to the authorities who broke that social taboo. Crazy eh?
These days that is no longer true (and becoming less true all the time). But I don’t think that is down to excessive gun control. I think that is because we have foolishly imported a whole slew of very violent people into the nation, and inculcated a morally vacuous generation that has no qualms in putting their own selfish desires ahead of the sanctity of Human life.
Quite literally true! (see post #35)
You'll have to forgive me, I'm American and therefore don't speak english.
You say that I am "sneering" at the government of UK for not keeping tabs on criminal's firearms.
So, in the vernacular of the colonies, "No sh*t Dick Tracy", criminals BY DEFINITION don't obey the law and therefore don't bother to register the tools of their trade with the police.
I am sneering at the fact that this needs to be explained.
So, you are saying that the average Briton is able to own and able to use firearms for self defense? Really?
So, are you saying that in the UK people can easily purchase and keep firearms (useful for self defense) but choose not to?
I doubt that is true.
Fair enough, but who asked for an explanation?
So, you are saying that the average Briton is able to own and able to use firearms for self defense? Really?
No, I'm saying that your supposition that only criminals can own and use firearms in the UK is wrong. The police can for example. Quite a lot of them these days in fact.
So, are you saying that in the UK people can easily purchase and keep firearms (useful for self defense) but choose not to?
No, it's more the other way round. Most Britons choose not to purchase and keep firearms and therefore they are difficult to get hold of. Basically, it's supply and demand. Gun shops don't do good business here. Therefore there aren't many of them and the price is relatively high, which of course discourages purchase even more. The antipathy of the general public has meant there are also a lot of regulations and stipulations on both gun shops and gun owners, which again deters ownership. Basically it's too much hassle.
Of course, if the security situation in the big cities continues to deteriorate, that may very well change. But there's not much sign of that happening yet.
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