Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 01:29:36 -0700
From: Kristopher Barrett <kbarrett-AT-cotse.com>
Subject: Re: UK uproar?


At 12:39 PM 9/30/2002, you wrote:
>On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Dave Coull wrote:
>
>> >> The state decides who can and who can not have a hunting
>> >> weapon.
>..
>> Yes it does answer the question, to all intents and purposes.
>
>The question was: "Is owning land an obligatory requirement to get a weapon
>licence in the UK?" You appear to have an unusal apprehension of grammar.
>
>The answer is no.

Incorrect. The law may say no, but since the police have 100% discretion here, what the police decide is what happens. The police won't issue the permit unless you own land, or are a club member. What the law actually says doesn't really matter.



>I asked this because on Sept. 24th you wrote:
>
>" The state does  NOT  give out shotgun licences
>" to everybody. But it does give out shotgun licences
>" to landowners, on the grounds that they are entitled
>" to shoot rabbits etc. on their own land.
>
>There are two statements there:
>
>1. State decides who may own a shotgun.
>Nothing new about that. States tend to prohibit things for various rational
>or irrational reasons. All states claim monopoly on violence.  Hunting is
>not violence of course (towards society, i.e. humans), but a shotgun can be
>used for that purpose too. (So can a crowbar or a rock etc.)

Here in the US, we shot every last bastard who was of that opinion about 200+ years ago. It's starting to look like we might have to do it again within a few decades.

If you come for our guns.... we will kill you.



>2. Only landowners are may own shotguns.
>
>The UK firearms law (cited earlier) explicitly states that it is not
>necessary to own land to get a licence. Period.

It also states that the police decide if you should have a license. And they refuse to issue one if you don't own land or belong to a land-owning club. Period.


>You also wrote (Ibid, immediatly following the previous):
>" Another way of looking at it is that the state decides who can have a
>" gun on  CLASS  grounds.
>
>Then, since "class" (owning land in this context) has no correlation
>with owning shotguns, this conclusion falls too.

Class involves a whole slew of state granted privileges. And since the police use landowning as an excuse to grant the upper-class gun owning privilege, regardless of what the law actually states, this conclusion is sustained by defacto state actions.

>I doubt that even owning land is a "class thing", if you mean it as being
>wealthy or politically influencal (same thing). The farm holdings in the UK
>are not particulary large, and the income doesn't impress either. There are
>a few big land owners (particulary in Scotland; meagre grazing takes larger
>areas), but most of it is petty farmers as everywhere else. (You can find
>information on that too on the www.)

Why should someone who can afford a plot of ground have civil rights that are greater than someone living out of a shopping cart? As long as one group has privileges granted due to influence with the state... then class still exists.


>Most farmers (throughout the industrialised world) would be making more
>money taking a job in the industry, particulary when comparing payment for
>hours. But I suppose you don't just walk away from a piece of land handed
>down by your father and granfather along with an expectation of it being
>handed on to children and grandchildren in the same condition or better.

Your confusing the issue here... land owning isn't the major indicator of being upper-class... state granted privilege is.

Being upper-class merely makes land-ownership easier to attain.


>Generation altruism is one of the kinds of altruism political psychopaths
>exploits.

And here we go.... outright Randism.

Altruism is NOT EVIL. Without altruism, your sorry carcass would be left out in the street the next time you were involved in a traffic accident... at least until the road's owner brought up the bulldozer to clear away you and the wreckage from his money producing property.



>Dave begs the question:
>> Most people have absolutely no difficulty understanding
>> these uncomplicated words. If you have such a difficulty,
>> that is your problem, not mine.
>
>Most people never bother to ask questions, or think critically. If they
>did, they wouldn't be so vulnerable to propaganda.

Propaganda being ideas you disagree with? Perhaps you might try thinking critically about the things we are talking about, rather than dismissing them as "propaganda".


>> Like I said, by definition "conservatives" can not have a "revolution".
>
>No of course not. Conservatism is the opposite idea of revolution (or coup
>d'tat).  That's why "a conservative revolution" is such a funny concept.
>Picture a tweed wearing mob shooting wildly around them, demanding "social
>stability!" It would be something in the spirit of Monty Python.

Actually... it happened in Spain in the 1930's, and in France in the century before that... only the tweed wearing conservatives as usual had draftees do the dying for them.


-- 
 
Regards,
Kristopher Barrett         http://www.cotse.net/users/kbarrett