It’s not yet sunset in the UK, so we don’t know if a fourth night of rioting will follow the first three. But the glee and impunity with which rioters torched and looted large sections of London are an indictment of two beloved projects of British and other European elites: a disarmed citizenry and an all-encompassing, cradle-to-grave welfare state.
It’s hard to imagine riots of these size going on for days on end in the American South or Midwest simply because so many armed, law-abiding citizens would stand ready to defend their lives, liberty and property. Once you’ve shot a few rioters dead, it does rather tend to put a damper on the festive mood of the others. An armed shop owner in Texas or Ohio wouldn’t have to stand idly by while his life work burned, waiting vainly for police that never come.
But London shopkeepers and home-owners never had that choice. As Instapundit noted, “Unlike L.A., there are no Korean shopkeepers with AR-15s to help contain the looting.” Since handguns were banned in the UK in 1997 (tightening already restrictive firearm laws), their per capita crime rate has skyrocketed compared to ours.
As Theodore Dalrymple and others have so depressingly documented, the welfare state has hollowed out the once redoubtable English character and replaced it with crime, inter-generational dole-dependency and general hopelessness. “These youths in hoodies and men in bandanas are not fighting for a principle, they’re trashing neighbourhoods for a plasma telly and a pair of new trainers. Masked gangs are looting department stores, not waving placards.”
Will this be a wake-up call for those pushing for an ever-larger welfare state? Of course not. My liberal British friends on Facebook are already trotting out the classic liberal phrases. “Underclass,” “powerless,” etc. Why “powerlessness” leads inevitably to someone looting a plasma TV is never adequately explained, nor how an ever-more-expansive welfare state would prevent this, unless they expect that taxpayers buying a plasma TV for every single person on the dole would remove the temptation.
Edited to Add: Greetings, Instapundit Readers! Take a look around and see if there’s anything else that might interest you, such as updates on the Texas Senate race or some tidbits on Rick Perry.
Second update and videos here.
More on the nature of the rioters.
Tags: dole, gun control, Guns, London, riot, Theodore Dalrymple, UK, Welfare State
Time to watch “Harry Brown” and get an idea of how the Bobbies treat the chavs and yobs versus the rate paying citizens.
Check out the video posted on Hot Air of “the powerless” looting an injured kid as everyone looks on.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/09/london-rioter-were-just-showing-the-rich-people-that-we-can-do-what-we-want/
A Disarmed Society is a Violent Society…
It’s not yet sunset in the UK, so we don’t know if a fourth night of rioting will follow the first three. But the glee and impunity with which rioters torched and looted large sections of London are an indictment of two beloved projects of British and …
And once you’ve shot the first one, it gets easier to shoot a few more. When this happens in the Midwest (not if), it is going to get very deadly very quickly.
[…] A DISARMED SOCIETY is a violent society. […]
Even better, listen to a couple of chavs talk about “showing the rich people we can do what we want.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424
I’ll be going to the range tomorrow to re-confirm the zeroes on the HK91 and the AR15.
Just say’n.
TO: All
RE: Heh
If the police can’t or won’t do their job, it’s going to be up to the citizens to do it for themselves.
Over at the live-blogging of tonights ‘festivities’ by the Guardian, they’re whining about people protecting themselves and their interests.
Too damn bad for the damned fools at the Guardian. You created this monster. Now you whine about people protecting themselves. I wonder what these idiots would do if THEY were physically attacked.
Maybe the rioters should burn down all the Guardian offices…..
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Qui deserate pacem. Preparate bellum.]
Back in 1968 when Charles Whitman went up in the U Texas bell tower and started shooting people on the ground, a deer-hunter-American got his rifle and returned fire. This supposedly kept Whitman from shooting over the west side of the tower.
This is not Marxism with the “Working Class” rioting against the “Upper Class” toffee-nosed twats. They’re not the “under-class” because they have proven, violently, to not be *under* anybody, and it’s not the “working-class” because THEY DON’T WORK – it’s the Parasite Class and they effectively work for the Government Bureaucrats, and they’re flexing their muscle.
This is what comes from paying and paying the Feel-Good Social Danegeld when the money finally runs out. The only ones who (supposedly) CAN do anything about it – the Government Cops – are told NOT-to, to stand-by.
And so the Productive class that pays all the TAX that the Gubbmint collects and gives to the Parasites, gets bullied about again.
The Parasites riot and demand for more FREE Gubb’mint Stuff is a political act – they effectively work for the Gubb’mint as Tax-enforcers, and this is a demonstration of their power in the New Social Order. Now the Productives should take note and return their nose to the grindstone, and get back to work paying more taxes.
TO: All
RE: Is This a ‘Racial’ Thing? Or a Religious One? Or Both?
I’ve been hearing a LOT of chatter from the Brits about ‘blacks’ being involved in the rioting.
However, NONE of the pictures of rioters I’ve seen…so far….show ‘negroes’ rioting. The ‘rioters’ appear to be ‘tan’. Not ‘black’.
I understand that the Brits refer to Pakistanis as ‘black’.
Sooooo…..
…..are the rioters ‘muslims’?
Islamofascists were waving signs in London about how Islam would rule the world. And it’s perfectly okay, from the Koran, to rob and violate ‘infidels’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out…..]
[…] […]
[…] […]
P.S. ADDENDUM…..
….okay….
….thanks to an article from another paper in England, I’m seeing actual negroes in the images that are being proffered as rioters.
However, I’m still seeing ‘tan’ folk in those images. And some ‘white’ folk too.
P.P.S. It would be very ‘interesting’ to see demographics on the arrestees: age, race, religion, etc., etc., etc……
P.P.P.S…..
They’ve got a LOT of information at their ‘fingertips’. I understand that all the jail cells in London are FULL UP.
I’m reminded of my tour of duty with the 82d and the May Day Riots in DC of 1971.
There were so many detainees that they built a special compound across from RFK statium, where 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne, ‘marshaled’.
We—my comrades-in-arms—watched as the anarchists attempted to ‘storm the wire’ and were forced back by an 18-wheeler trailer that had been rigged to dispense tear gas in a massive cloud that was backed up to the assault point on the per meter and put in to operation.
My impression is that it started out with blacks as the primary rioters, and since then other ethnic groups have joined in opportunistically. Beyond that, however, I could not give you an ethnic breakdown.
I have not seen in reports of any particular Islamic character to the riots in the places you would expect such news to appear (Jihadwatch, Creeping Sharia, etc.) where I would expect to see it covered if it were the case. I have seen reports of Turkish shopkeepers taking the lead in repelling looters.
If they were each given a plasma tv, they would riot for bigger plasma tvs.
A liberal changes to a conservative once he is mugged by reality. A bet these shop owners have been mugged and others are looking for weapons to protect their property.
People will only stand defenceless so long without taking action. I expect a few bullets killing the looter will chill the looters fun
Since You Brits can’t protect yourselves with firearms anymore, I guess you have to resort to other means.. Perhaps the 5000% increase in good old American Baseball Bat sales on Amazon UK is indicative of the social situation at present, or maybe we have a massive uptick of interest in American Baseball as a Sport.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2864557
I hate to think of the way the British legal system is going to treat some poor shopkeeper who shoots a looter with a shotgun, that is assuming the rare case that he has one.
Right. If only the rioters and everybody else had guns. How peaceful it would be.
> A liberal changes to a conservative once he is mugged by reality…
…and a conservative changes to a liberal once he gets arrested. What’s your point?
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If they were powerless, they wouldn’t be able to break in to other people’s places of business and steal things. Powerless criminals is the desirable state.
The LA riots lasted for 6 days and left 53 dead.
I’d wait a few more days before claiming “victory”.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition; we are going to need plenty of both if we are to survive in this century. I believe in the 2nd amendment more than ever. Don’t see many riots in Switzerland or the Vatican. Why? Must be all those armed Swiss Guards.
“Darrell says:
August 9, 2011 at 10:09 PM
Right. If only the rioters and everybody else had guns. How peaceful it would be.”
If it’s your butt out there, would you start a firefight?
Government and criminals have many things in common, the primary one being:
Governments like criminals prefer unarmed victims.
I said more or less the same thing yesterday on my blog in a post entitled, Armed Defence of Property is the Answer to Theft Mobs. I’m going to be proposing a policy position at a provincial party AGM next month to make this a political priority.
What a great article, as someone who has been disenchanted with the UK for a long time and just repatriated here to the US (thankfully) in July, I fully agree that the UK is broken due to it’s ridiculous liberal stance embodied by all that is the European Union. I’ve already signed up for an NRA pistol course here, but have never felt safer. Britain, a once great nation, has indeed been subjugated to a swathe of forced multicultural and islamification due to sweeping socialiastic policies since Margaret Thatcher left office and a populous that is completely disinterested in politics due to not being able to differentiate between the policies of any of the three main parties. Those parties signing away British peoples’ rights to the EU by carefully hiding the facts in their parties manifestos. Those like me who choose to think for ourselves and vote UKIP are then of course ridiculed as being non politically correct racists and mad. Britain needs it’s own tea party movement and a complete overhaul of 800 years of bills and laws. We need a more simple and effective democracy, one which gets rid of the waste that is the House of Lords and adopts what is great about Britain and the US. Unfortunately I don’t see this happening as Enoch Powell had envisaged in his ‘blood on the streets’ speech. The reason being is that those creating most of the problems are predominantly multi ethnic and those that aren’t are welfare sponging white trash, otherwise known in the UK as NEDS (Non Educated Delinquents). Sir, your article is right on the button, take away their benefits completely, arm the decent hard working citizens and shopkeepers, of which there are many, and then we’ll see if those sycophantic sociopaths continue their thieving onslaught. Please note that the majority of these people are not those that like to fight in organised soccer thuggery, they are just social scum who are parasitic all that is British and make my homeland country look like a worse place to live than some of the third world countries. Land of Hope and Glory? Yeah, right!
To Darrell:
Darrell says “Right. If only the rioters and everybody else had guns. How peaceful it would be.”
Actually once enough looters get shot by armed shopkeepers, and they decide that living is more important than stealing plasma TV’s, it does indeed get much more peaceful. The Rodney King riot looters were not stopped by police, but by armed shopkeepers (many of them Korean immigrant shopkeepers who embraced american gun rights and entrepenurial frreedoms).
Darrell says “A liberal changes to a conservative once he is mugged by reality…
…and a conservative changes to a liberal once he gets arrested. What’s your point?
”
Actually those arrested conservatives dont usually turn into liberals, since they still hate big gov handouts and coddling of real criminals, but they do often turn into libertarian leaning conservatives, like the Tea Party, since they realize that unrestrained gov can oppress “good people” as well as bad.
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