“A man’s got to be allowed to protect the peoples he loves, right?” Coronation Street character Phelan asks rhetorically, justifying his illegal pistol purchase. [Video below.] The dialogue raises an important question: how in the world did that get by ITV’s censors? OK, sure . . .
Phelan’s use of the word “allowed” shows at least some deference to the Nanny State’s power to regulate every aspect of its subjects’ lives. But tooling-up to defend life and limb is NOT an idea approved by the socialists ruling The Land of Hope and Glory.
I have no doubt that bad, bad things will happen with the gun. Events that will prove that having a Beretta in a box is worse than Beelzebub dropping in for tea. Or, for all practical purposes, the same thing. Meanwhile . . .
“Go on. I can see you’re itching to touch it,” Phelan says to Seb, semi-pornographically. “Yeah, it’s not loaded.”
ACK! Treat all guns as if they’re loaded. DOUBLE ACK! Seb immediately points the pistol at Phelan. TRIPLE ACK! Seb puts his finger on the trigger. All that’s missing is aiming at a target without knowing what’s behind it.
“Frightens the life out of me to be honest,” Phelan confesses, trying to recover some audience sympathy.
I wonder if he gets it. I wonder how many viewers of the long-running British soap opera reckon Phelan is right to tool-up to defend kith and kin. And how many will feel that all’s right with the world when he pays the price. Forgetting the price they pay for disarming themselves, if they only knew it. wikipedia.org:
No criming is the practice of writing off reported crimes as not constituting a crime – marking as “no crime” . . .
In the aggregate, in the period November 2012 – October 2013, an average of 19% of crimes reported to the police are not recorded, with one quarter of sexual crimes and one third of violent crimes not being recorded, with rape being particularly bad at 37% no-criming.
Reporting is inconsistent across local forces:
“In a few forces, crime-recording is very good, and shows that it can be done well and the statistics can be trusted. In some other forces, it is unacceptably bad.”
The failure to properly record crime has been called “inexcusably poor” and “indefensible” by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor.
Twenty percent of reviewed decisions to cancel a report were found to be incorrect, and in about a quarter of cases there was no record of victims being informed that their report had been canceled.
an average of 19% of crimes reported to the police are not recorded
Well, the statists have been saying for years it’s about feeling safer. Telling people there’s less crime than there actually is makes them feel safer.
A real poke in the eye to all those snobbish Brits who claim that the crime rate is nothing compared to that in the US. If only they knew that their own government was lying to them….
Phlegm & Doofus
Phlegm: Hey Doofus wanna see my pistol?
Doofus: Is it loaded?
Phlegm: why don’t you touch it and see.
According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics there were 1.3 million violent crimes committed in 2016, including homicides.
According to the FBI there were 1.2 million violent crimes committed in the US in 2016, including homicides. This is 100,000 fewer.
This disparity is further emphasized when we take into account that there are FIVE TIMES as many people in the US than the UK. A person in the UK is OVER FIVE TIMES more likely to be the victim of a violent crime as a person in the US.
The UK Home Office admitted in the the 1990s it was official policy to “fudge the numbers” to give the impression the crime rate was much lower than it really was. An example given was if an apartment block was burgled, it was listed as ONE crime because it happened at ONE street address, and not the 8 or so crimes for each apartment.
Inspectors and District Commissioners get bonuses in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pounds if they report consistent year-on-year reductions in reported crimes so there is a notable financial incentive to not report crimes.
Keep in mind that the brits consider certain crimes to be violent crimes that we do not. I think burglary is the example usually given. that said, they only count a murder as a murder if there’s a conviction.
FBI only counts non justified homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery as a “violent crime”. The brits are more liberal in there definition of “violent crime” and that bumps their numbers up a lot…. that being said, the adjusted crime rates are about even-ish with a lot of fudge either way depending on whose study you read.
Keep calm and rape on.
Whenever I hear the “Four Rules of Gun Safety” thing… I have to chime in with my obligatory perpetual lobbying for *The Fifth Golden Rule* …which I find especially so important in today’s technologically advancing world of new-fangled gadgetry:
Rule #5 — If you are unfamiliar with the operation of specific controls on a given firearm, DO NOT GUESS! STOP and ASK. Ask somebody who is knowledgable about the particular weapon, or research the instructions and functions through available resources– but do NOT push that button or lever or knob or switch until you are certain about what the control does on THIS particular firearm.
With the dizzying mix of controls available on firearms, sometimes we experienced shooters casually overlook how complex the operation of modern firearms can be. In one second at a shooting table, we can go from a “simple” striker-fired pistol with a trigger, slide-release, and magazine release button… to a DA/SA with a half-cocking hammer, safety switch, decocker, cocking indicator, slide-release, take-down lever, sight adjustment etc., …to a rifle with a bolt-lock, magazine release paddle, windage/elevation knobs, stock adjuster or folding release button, fire-select and safety knobs, retention levers and pins, ejection port flaps, QD tabs, etc., and on and on….
And we lovingly get into to it all, familiarizing ourselves and in the process, making it an essential part of the joy of shooting. But for the beginning shooter, who is learning fundamentals and the (five!) burned-into-your-brain-no-exceptions safety rules… this really ought to be one of those essential rules. Try and imagine what it’s like for new shooter to see all these generic looking controls, different and unlabeled from gun to gun, and to think, “Well, there’s the trigger… but the other five or six switches and knobs, I think they probbbbbably do, umm, what do they do again?”
It’s not really necessary to illustrate any what-if scenario. Just think of some of the guns you own, and then imagine some of the mistakes that a newbie or unfamiliar user can easily make with the fire controls that might lead to potentially hairy situations. And I’ve even seen experienced shooters– whose experience has been limited to certain makes and types of firearms that they own, for instance– make inexplicable choices about fire-controls because they didn’t want to ask… so instead they just guessed, and guessed very wrong. Everyone out there who has shared shooting with somebody has an informative story, I’m pretty sure.
Anyway, that’s my take on the Four Rules– that it really ought to be the Five Rules. And I certainly teach it that way to friends, families, kids, and even shooters more experienced than I am. It’s well worth it to remind even the most gristled shooter… there are so many more firearms out there than most of us will ever see in real life, much less have an oppotunity to shoot… and that is a good thing… so when we have the opportunity to shoot a new kind of gun, it follows that it’s always good to remember: in some way, they’re all unique in how they function.
Don’t guess. Just ask.
Be safe,
Mort
Very good, Mort. If you think about it, you can see this is just as true of almost everything more complicated than a rubber band. Ignorance is never a good excuse for being stupid or careless. How many people buy a tool or appliance and never even look at the instructions? How many people operate an automobile or other vehicle with little or no understanding of the potential of the machine, let alone the controls?
I’ve been shooting for a very long time, and I’ve handled/shot a serious number of different guns. But I won’t pick up an unknown gun without serious study, and questions if possible. Just makes sense to me. 🙂
As grade school kids we used to run riot in the back alley with rubber band guns at night after parents went to bed. It was a blast and no one’s eye was put out and shooting dogs or cats were off limits.
Amazing we never got caught.
Nothing more than a politically slated bad outcome…British TV is full of Left-wing socialist fuzzy thinking that its runs shy of a Prozac prescription…I stopped watching Dr. Who on BBC America because it went over the edge…And we’re NOT talking about SCi-Fi Fantasy either ! There was this blatant anti-gun episode where the feminist character told all her defending chums to ditch their ray-guns ! That they had better weapons in the form of boards, kitchen implements, and environmental items that were just spurned about ! Talk about about complete bat shit nuts and over the edge!
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