This writer recently watched the following video of this peaceful protest, which not only reminds us of the tragic plight of British citizens under their gun-control laws but also serves as a warning of what’s to come in our own country if we don’t defend our constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
The people gathered for this event were nearly unanimous in the opinion that these things had been lost to a politically correct and ever increasing government-led intrusion into the daily lives of the English people.
Many expressed that they were dismayed and shocked that while they "were being apathetic," as one woman who was interviewed expressed it, their rights were stolen from under them, using pretense after pretense.
The once proud and fiercely independent Brits lost the ability of self-defense layer by layer as regulations abounded. The vast majority of them were lulled to sleep by the drone of politicians insisting that they "weren’t going to take away their guns entirely," or that it was "for your own good," or "for the children."
Concerns about this gradual encroachment on individual rights were met with assurances: "Don’t worry, you won’t lose your hunting rights, we’re just regulating ‘bad’ guns, controlling ‘bad’ criminals, protecting your children, preventing crime, promoting safety, etc." Until at the last, all those guns, all those rights and nearly all those hunting privileges are gone.
First it was simple registration, then mandatory registration, mandatory storage at "sporting clubs," and government-controlled hours of access and locks, then even more restrictive laws on movement, possession, purchasing, ammunition, storage, use, ranges, types of firearms, club membership requirements, government control of processes, fees, buy-back purchases, limitations or bans on manufacture, importation, and slowly, slice by thin slice, the piecemeal removal of each layer. Eventually each type of gun fell to the near total confiscatory outlawing and roundup of pistols, semi automatic rifles, and eventually shotguns and sporting firearms. Now even knives are being confiscated and banned.
Many varieties of hunting have also come onto the chopping block of relentless legislative curtailment of individual rights. Many of these were cherished rights that most Englishmen once took for granted, and enjoyed, or embraced as part of the fabric that was England.
It is also a stark object lesson in the slow process by which we as Americans are also losing the same basic rights and, ultimately, our freedom itself.
Americans have already seen the early and intermediate stages of this process. As the new Obama administration consolidates its power and wields the sword of control and regulation, we can expect a much more rapid pace in this step-by-step decline into total government control and a helpless, disarmed populace here in America as well.
Watch the video, and you may be moved to weep for the English, but let it firm your resolve to fight for our own rights to self-defense on every front.
