Posted on 09/08/2012 4:07:56 PM PDT by george76
Tory MPs make fresh demands today for the law to be changed to give clear rights to householders who protect themselves against burglars.
They call on Chris Grayling, the new Justice Secretary, to “raise the bar” against criminals and alter the law on self defence to make it harder for householders to end up in the dock for defending their homes.
The debate was reopened after Andy and Tracey Ferrie spent almost three days last week being questioned on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm after shooting at, and wounding, two men who broke into their remote farmhouse in Leicestershire.
The couple were confronted in their bedroom by masked intruders and used a legally-held shotgun to defend themselves. They were eventually released without charge, having initially been told by police they could be prosecuted and sent to prison.
...
Priti Patel, a Tory MP who campaigns on law-and-order issues, said: “Homeowners must be allowed to use force to defend themselves, their family and property from burglars. It is the burglar who is in the wrong for violating the home of their victim and families need greater legal protection so they can be confident defending themselves.
“It’s time the criminal justice system stopped treating criminals like victims and victims like criminals.”
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Two words - “Castle Doctrine”
Origin of “home is castle” from English idiom site....so kind of “weaselly”.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/an-englishmans-home-is-his-castle.html
An Englishman’s home is his castle
Meaning
The English dictum that a man’s home is his refuge.
Origin
The maxim that ‘An Englishman’s home (or occasionally, house) is his castle’ is most often cited these days in articles in the British right-wing press that bemoan the apparent undermining of the perceived principle that a man can do as he pleases in his own house, which they hold up as an ancient right. The grumbles centre about the feminist response ‘what about Englishwomen?’ and the public disquiet about the smacking of children, attacking of intruders etc. The proverb was used in almost all of the articles about the court case of Tony Martin in 2000. Martin was convicted by jury trial of murder, after shooting and killing a 16-year old who had broken into his house in Norfolk, UK.
An Englishman’s home is his castleDid Englishmen actually ever have a unique right to act as they pleased within the walls of their own home? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it has been a legal precept in England, since at least the 17th century, that no one may enter a home, which would typically then have been in male ownership, unless by invitation. This was established as common law by the lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook), in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628:
“For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].”
This enshrined into law the popular belief at the time, expressed in print by several authors in the late 16th century:
Henri Estienne’s The Stage of Popish Toyes: conteining both tragicall and comicall partes, 1581, includes:
[The English papists owe it to the Queen that] “youre house is youre Castell.”
Richard Mulcaster, the headmaster of Merchant Taylors’ School in London, echoed this in his treatise on education - Positions, which are necessarie for the training up of children, 1581:
“He [the householder] is the appointer of his owne circumstance, and his house is his castle.”
Judged against the standards of his time, Mulcaster was an enlightened educationalist. His charges were nevertheless terrified of him and he condoned methods in the ‘castle’ of his school that would result these days in a visit from Social Services. His own experience in castles wasn’t that happy either - he was imprisoned for theft in 1555 in the Tower of London and probably tortured into a confession.
What was meant by ‘castle’ was defined in 1763 by the British Prime Minister with an admirable selection of names to choose from - William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, also known as Pitt the Elder:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter - the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter.”
It is clear from the above that the law was established to give householders the right to prevent entry to their homes. Like the ‘rule of thumb’, which was popularly and mistakenly believed to be the right of a man to beat his wife, the ‘Englishman’s home is his castle’ rule didn’t establish a man’s right to take actions inside the home that would be illegal outside it.
The principle was exported to the United States where, not unnaturally, the ‘Englishman’ was removed from the phrase. In 1800, Joel Chandler Harris’s biography of Henry W. Grady, the journalist and writer on the US Constitution, included this line:
“Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat.”
These days, with all the news of banking collapses and mortgage foreclosures, men and women, English or American, might be glad to have somewhere to call home, even if they have to obey the law when inside it.
Why do people of Indian descent have a better understanding of the rule of natural law than idiot Brits?
The English and American right to self defense and a “castle home” eroded with the watering down of the concept of natural rights and the growth in the legal fiction of collective or societal interest.
Fuzzy thinking goes....It is better for the victim to accept the assault or property loss since it is a “crime against civility and society” than to compound one crime with another...violence by the victim against the perp.
It is an adult ruling children attitude....we being the children and the ruling class capon nanny staters being the “adult”.
See what happens in most schools today if your child is attacked and then in turn thrashes the bully.....both are likely to be expelled.
Many today have been conditioned like this from childhood. Only in the strongholds of rugged independent peoples like Appalachia, the rural South and West, backwoods Northeast and Northwest, etc. is the social conditioning of subservience offset by family instruction in personal responsibility.
The bright spot....in the past 25 years, thru the hard work of American gun owners in CCW and “Castle Doctrine/No retreat” laws, we are rolling back this outrage against all that is just, good, and true.
Be a sheepdog; not a sheep. Woof!
This has the makings of a Monty Python skit.
Amazing that they think this is some kind of astounding revelation.
The English don’t have shovels anymore either?
Good to hear. I figured they all became ankle grabbers.
Uh, oh! They’re going the gunhugger route.
(Good for them!)
Slugs probably would have taken care of that wounding problem.
“Gee, Mister Member of Parliament, sir, may I please be allowed to defend my life against attacks by ignorant, benighted and violent thugs who attack me in my home, sir?”
Somehow it doesn’t quite have the right ring to it.
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