Hilarious BBC article about US gun rights fails to mention 2nd Amendment
The Europeans have a mythology about the United States, and one of their favorite myths is that Americans are “gun crazy”: our bizarre obsession with firearms can only be guessed at by bewildered academics.
In order to explain to its readership why incidents like the Arizona shooting don’t immediately result in a nationwide ban on guns, as happens in sensible progressive nations, the BBC today uncorked a howler entitled “Why America’s gun laws won’t change,” which cites the quizzical theories of various professors — and somehow manages to never mention the 2nd Amendment. Which is quite a feat, considering that the 2nd Amendment is the only relevant fact.
After recapping the details of the Arizona shooting, and throwing the requisite barb at Sarah Palin, the BBC muses,
America’s love affair with the gun is steeped in the nation’s foundational stories, particularly its history as a frontier society without an established military.
…and…
…Americans have a long history of sanctifying all that is associated culturally with “winning the west” and beating back Britain.
Near the end of the article they shift (as always) to NRA-bashing mode, and it is here in the 29th paragraph, amidst a litany of the NRA’s sinister antics, the only marginal reference to something more substantive than frontier psychology appears:
The NRA has a large, extremely well-funded political lobbying operation – deeply supported by weapons manufacturers – that will not brook any infringement on the constitutional right to bear arms.
Stop right there.
Dudes, you could have skipped the whole article and just printed these 14 words:
“…The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
If you want to get wonky, you could add three more: “McDonald v. Chicago.”
Forget about the NRA. Forget about the frontier. Forget about the American psyche.
But no. Europeans need their myths, and the myth of psychopathic American gun-worship is very pleasing to the European, so it shall be repeated over and over, like a bedtime story.
I gave up on Europe a long time ago. The future for
Democracy is in Asia now. We should leave these people to
rot.
“deeply supported by weapons manufacturers” is BS. They’re deeply supported by guys like me.
And there’s a lot of us.
Spade wrote: “deeply supported by weapons manufacturers” is BS–
Not BS at all- it would insane for them NOT to support the NRA if they care about making as much money as they can eat. It’s possible for them AND you to support the NRA. To say otherwise is delusional.
Yes, but the gun market is quite small and fragmented. The NRA gets most of its money from gun owners, not gun manufacturers.
Akbar, just out of curiosity, what percentage of NRA funding comes from manufacturers and what percentage comes from individual members?
85% of their funding comes from membership fees, they have millions of members and millions more who might not pay NRA dues but share their views.
The conservative republicans among this group control which republican candidates make it through primary elections and the democrats among this group control whether democratic candidates can survive tight contests with republicans.
No matter what you think of the USA’s Gun Issue, don’t believe for a moment that the gun manufacturing industry is responcible
Personally, I think its okay for them to be a little scared of us.
ha. that’s funny. I believe I agree with you there.
As much as there is a European mythology about Americans and guns, just try being a Texan. The Euros seem to think that we Texans snack on armadillos and literally carry a gun from the time we’re able to talk. The smarter Texans do absolutely nothing to dispel that thinking. The smartest suggest ways to prep the armadillos.
You mean it isn’t true?
Do you think we are going to tell the truth to non-Texans? Enough damn Yankees are already here.
Word. I’ve even expanded my gun collection lately.
Yeah, they greatly prefer rattlesnake.
Tastes like chicken!
Blackend red armadillo, mmmmmmm.
Nah, thats Cajun. In Texas theyre barbecued over
mesquite.
God made the armadillo so Texans could enjoy possum on the
half-shell.
As I have noted to numerous Brits I know, if it’s all about guns, then let’s take your nation then. Following the banning of (most) private ownership of firearms, what happened?
Why, there is a huge increase in gang assaults and deadly knife attacks. Shall we then say the British are “obsessed with knives?”
Then it would be equally as fair to label every heinous crime in the UK having the root cause that they were the greatest slaveholders in all history and, well, doesn’t that affect how an entire people views others?
’nuff said.
I have a friend who is a retired colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was a bit shocked about US gun ownership. Britain had normal laws about gun ownership until the Labour Party took over. They have even banned fox hunting in the countryside which stimulated a near rebellion like the tea parties a few years ago. Once again, it is urban elites determining the law. A wealthy Chelsea resident was stabbed to death in a home invasion robbery a couple of years ago when I was in London. Property crimes are way up because the criminals do not fear the victims.
The Brits don’t have a constitution, so the idea that govt policy must be constrained by one is a bit foreign to them. You see this with free speech cases too- why doesn’t the US have hate speech laws like the rest of the civilized world? When you tell them it’s the First Amendment, it’s “oh, that old chestnut.” They understand intellectually, but not deep down.
Now what the Democrats’ excuse is, I don’t know.
Their excuse is that they desperately want to be Europeans, but even Europeans aren’t stupid enough to let them settle in their countries.
Um, no. Great Britain does have a constitution, but it is unwritten, and is based on custom & precedent. See Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples & his memoirs from the Second World War for details.
There is at least one relevant example from American history: Washington’s refusal to serve a third term. This was an unwritten (but authoritative) precedent which lasted until 1940.
Snobs in Europe have always looked down their tilted noses at us barbarians.
Since the BBC speaks for the progressive elements in Britian, much as the NY Times and Washington Post do here, they do not reflect all of the people. The online UK Telegraph has James Delingpole who regularly pokes fun at the snobs and progressives on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s like a voice of reason in the midst of howling maniacs, very entertaining stuff.
Look up Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. Another spot on club of the pretentious left. And Simon Heffer in the Telegraph.
Another “Just So” story from the BBC.
The future of democracy is the USA.
The history of modern Europe is the history of gun violence, as used by authoriatarian government.
Those poor hidebound Euro traditionalists, clinging to their swords and paganism…
Hey DC … no joke. It has recently, within last 6 months or less, been declared a legitimate and recognized religion with all the benefits allowed religion, here in UK.
The next time Europe calls on us to save them from themselves – as they did in WW1, WW2 and the Cold War – we should simply say, “No”.
Nah. Whatever enemy ground we have to take we should
organize as a statehood track territory. Even our politicians would
be an improvement.
While traveling the UK a couple of years ago I was astounded at the ignorance and virtual brain washing on the subject of guns. They literally thought that if they had a gun in their home they would start shooting and killing family members. It finally occurred to me to break the issue down into smaller parts. Obviously Europeans don’t object to guns… they make some of the best guns in the world. (I own one.) European governments have also regularly demonstrated during the 20th Century that they have no problem with issuing guns to their citizens to be used for killing millions of other Europeans.
It’s really matter of trust. European citizens are not trusted by their governments to have guns. Americans trust their fellow citizens more than their government. Europeans trust their governments more than their fellow citizens.
Spot on.
European governments do not trust the people with firearms for a very good reason- they are afraid that if the people had them they would use them against their governments.
I know the feeling. I had roughly the same conversation with a highly liberal in-law from Quebec. My response:
Do you have a steak knife in your kitchen? -Yes.
Have you ever felt an uncontrollable urge to stick it into your husbands chest?
-[Horrified] No. . .I’d never do that!
Do you own a car? -Yes.
Ever feel like driving it onto the sidewalk into a stranger?
What fuels your car, gasoline? Etc.
Some of this is just brainwashing, in that people have been conditioned to think that guns are synonymous with crime and that only criminals have guns or might want them. Its not too hard to get there if you’re prohibited from owning a gun, and have never actually seen one, let alone fired one.
Yeah, that lack of a military kicked their worthless asses twice, and saved them twice more…..
65 years of relative peace in Europe. Before that it was constant conflict, and the early 20C was mainly about them turning their own continent into rubble. They’ve got some nerve.
-Kirk
Amen!
When they say “the constitutional right to bear arms” with a small c they’re not even necessarily involving our Constitution or system build upon it. Their small c constitution includes a 1689 Bill of Rights with the provision “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;” but of course in their system nothing in the past is binding, as Brian O’Connell notes.
I note that if you tell Britons about the English Bill of Rights (of 1689), they look at you and goggle. The idea that the right to bear arms is not something that Americans made up, but instead a matter of English constitutional law (in the English sense of “constitution”) that we merely preserved, astounds them.
The English learned the lesson of the value of the right to bear arms in the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution . . . and then proceeded to forget it. The American colonies, on the other hand, had the American Revolution to reinforce the lesson.
Or, skip the whole article and print only “Switzerland”.
I was wondering when someone would mention Switzerland. I
wonder what other Europeans think of them. Probably think dont
mess with them, theyre a special case and a bit nutty Kinda how
they think of Texans.
@Bryan Preston — O, the sublime joy of being Texan. A transplant to the Great State myself for the last 25 years, it is such an advantage to tell people from Massachusetts, much less Manchester, Madrid or Munich where I live. One would think that over the years people would learn to disassociate slow talking from slow thinking, yet the surest way I have found to be underestimated is to reveal a Texan accent. Gets ‘em every time.
Spend some time listening to New Yorkers talk, they use fillers like no tomorrow.
I learned this much to my chagrin in college from a man from Tenn.
Taught me to be very careful with the prejudice towards the drawl. Still waters run deep.
There is no accent more ignorant sounding than a Bronx or Brooklyn accent. When you hear “toid” for third and “boid” for bird, there is no doubt that the speaker is a moron.
If guns were illegal, only criminals and politicians would have guns.
Like Brian mentions, I get the feeling that part of the problem is the general structure of European governments. As I understand it, most European governmental constitutions do not enjoy the robustness of our system. Most constitutions can be amended by simple majority vote. The idea that an amendment enacted would be such a serious stumbling block to passing gun control laws is probably a foreign concept.
Simple answer for the BBC is to tell them we were taught the desirability of citizens owning guns by King George III.
Perhaps the government in Britain should ban the BBC for….well, whatever they want – no first amendment right to free speech there. Europe less violent? Street crime, political riots (er “protests”), world wars – YEP! That ol’ Europe sure is So-Phis-Ti-Cated and Peeeaceful like! I’ll jes git back to skinning this racoon now…
May we never reach the point where tragedy in another nation becomes an opportunity for our own self-esteem.
Of course not – we’re at the point where tragedy in our own country is used to bolster our own – or rather the media’s, urban elite’s, and leftists’s – self esteem.
I recall Europe being pretty “gun crazy” around about 1914 and 1939.
Europeans don’t like guns because sheep don’t arm themselves.
There’s a word we have here in America for Europeans who aren’t sheep -
“Immigrants.”
Precisely. There is a saying that Europeans are never truly comfortable unless there is a jackboot on their throats. I have read that in the regions of Germany that used to be East Germany, there is a growing nostalgia for the old Honecker Communist regime. In other parts of Eastern Europe communist parties are growing in strength; Marxism is making a comeback in the universities. Europeans will ALWAYS choose security over freedom.
Nothing new here. The BBC consistently gets things wrong when reporting on US issues. They are heavily biased, and misinform the British public on a regular basis. They hired several Left-wing activists to work on covering the US for the BBC website, and it shows.
And us ‘gun-toting’ American rednecks bailed thir asses out twice in the past hundred years and guarded them for decades during the cold war.
When Europe gets in trouble, it is invariably saved by a bunch of gun-toting American Rednecks.
Next time, save your own smug asses!
Europeans (and other socialist countries) love guns far more than Americans. It just so happens that the guns are only held by the government but are point at their citizens every second of every day.
They believe in the use of force far more than we do… don’t kid yourself. They have just hidden it from themselves.
Zyklon-B. ‘Nuff said?
‘Nuff said, PacRim Jim.
We would need four centuries
For Six Million dead…
Our Euro-Betters
Racked up that score in ten years.
Motes and Beams, Etc…
Don’t forget the 5-6 million who weren’t Jews: Catholic priests and nuns, prostitutes, homosexuals, criminals, labor leaders, teachers, blind or handicapped individuals. The National Socialist also killed those deemed “undesirable”.
Rather makes me think that we need more armed citizens. Why are we paying to keep a standing army in Europe? Surely the Soviet Union is gone, and what is left isn’t going to invade Western Europe. Bring the troops home. Oh wait. We need bases in Germany to be a super power, providing the world with peace. Would Germany give us the landing rights we would need without a base? Our military hospitals in Germany are indispensable in supporting our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also remember
Stalin’s twenty million dead.
Communists killed more.
This reminds me of a conversation that I had with a lovely french girl at a late night diner (in Tucson, no less) many years ago. She mentioned something of Europe’s restrictions on firearms, implying that they were more “evolved” or some such. From this and other experiences, I reckon that sometimes “Europeans” forget that Europe is a continent that includes more than France, the UK, and Germany. In the case of my diner companion, I politely reminded her that the Norwegians, Finns, Swiss, and Czechs are all relatively well armed, quite civilized, and also very European.
The NRA quote probably made little impression on them because “unconstitutional” to a Brit is a lot fuzzier than it is to an American. This is because the British “constitution” is a pretty fuzzy concept itself. (Of course, these learned people should know that!)
The other myth is that strict gun control laws reduce crime.
In fact, everywhere guns have been banned, including Britain and Australia, violent crime has increased dramatically.
The lesson is that criminals obtain guns or other weapons regardless of the law and are less afraid to commit crimes against people they know are unarmed.
Everywhere in the United States where gun control laws have been eased saw a decrease in violent crime.
The rampage of the deranged murderer, Loughner, is an indictment of the deranged murderer Loughner.
The tool he used, in this case a gun, does not matter, as it could have been a car, a bomb, a knife, a bat, or whatever else was on hand.
In fact, everywhere guns have been banned, including Britain and Australia, violent crime has increased dramatically.
Bull$&?!
Just speaking as somebody who is actually IN Australia.
NOBODY here wants the sort of grief that would result from from US-style gun laws. And yes, if I wanted one, I could buy a shotgun or a rifle or even a pistol. I’d have to follow a few rules, and if I were caught carrying my life would not be worth living. The flip side is that almost nobody here is caught in the crossfire. We have very few innocent bystanders. As far as I can tell, your right to bear arms results in too many dead civilians. The proof is in the pudding.
Actually, there are two Euro countries where gun ownership is pretty widespread: Finland and Switzerland, Neither society is known as particularly violent.
I was listening to the radio with my wife last night. The station carries NPR news blurbs. In a smug effort to be ‘progressive’ it aired a bit on the perspectives of journalists from foreign countries (Germany, etc) that traveled to Arizona to cover the story. (Germany, France, etc).
Without exception, these foreign correspondents touched on the ‘lunatic right’ angle, how the shooter was influenced by a violent conservative agenda, and how they planned to share that story with their ‘intelligent. readers back home. It was utterly biased and incorrect – it jibed only with the journalists pre-conceived notions. Utter rubbish.
You think that’s something? Try living here and being an American.
Take a look at this drivel. And multiply many times.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1346224/Arizona-shooting-Paranoia-heart-US-politics.html
The European
Thinks government power
Is unlimited.
You can understand,
Because this is true… for them.
Thank God, not for us!
From the movie Barcelona, set in the 1980′s, regarding American gunshot victims:
“Americans aren’t more violent than other people, we’re just better shots.”
Some decades ago, in an ill-chosen attempt to talk rationally to lefties, I heard, sombrely, “The US is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in war.” They obviously thought it was a bad thing. My thought was that people ought to keep it in mind.
Yeah, Americans love guns and have a lot of them. Keep that in mind.
“only criminals and politicians”
Now you’re being redundant.
Please remember that the BBC is a state funded media organ in much the same way that pravda was. There are plenty of Europeans (a brit myself), who still manage to live their life relatively free of government intrusion including using our limited legal firearms ownership.
Tarring all brits with the same brush is similar to the fallacies some of the left wing media over this side of the pond would have us believe that all in the US are homicidal gun nuts.
Unfortunately we used to have a government that relied on a well trained population able to bear arms. Then they realised that meant we could defend ourselves from the government. Now we are left fighting the results of centuries of suppression and the creeping tentacles of the centralist euro-state.
I wish you the best of luck in that you dont find yourselves in a similar situation.