A few years ago someone bought me a book by journalist John Sopel. If Only They Didn’t Speak English details his years spent in the US working as the BBC North American Editor. I think I might have mentioned it here before. It was a fun read, light, informative, and inoffensive, quite old school BBC.
You know, back when the BBC was liberal, leftist, and nannying, but not yet completely, irredeemably wacko, Jew hating, and mental.
The book concentrates on the differences between our two cultures. How, as George Bernard Shaw observed, we are ‘two nations divided by a common language’.
In the inevitable chapter on guns, Sopel rehearses, in a pretty balanced way, the many and varied reasons why Americans might want to own guns. While all the time making it clear that obviously, America should ban guns.
Of course Sopel is not alone. Whenever I get lectured by my liberal friends talk to my liberal friends about this subject, they brook no dissent. Unusual, I know. Since liberals usually enjoy hearing a wide range of opinions on a variety of issues.
It’s all so bloody obvious, they say, Americans should repeal their Second Amendment. Disarm themselves, and give up their guns.
I get it.
With 48,000 gun deaths a year, 27,000 of them suicides, it seems like a no brainer.
No one wants to live in a society where gun violence is rampant, school shootings commonplace, any more than I want to live in a society where Amazon keeps stabbing little kids with knives, or nasty vans continuously drive themselves into crowded markets.
If I could ban Amazon and vans, I surely would. Imagine the lives we would save.
If you were to ban guns in America, I ask my liberal friends, how exactly would that work? What mechanism would you use?
Well they say, in a tone which implies, quite strongly, and not altogether unfairly, that I am an idiot, there should be a law!!
Well yes. Thank you for your insight.
But there already is a law. A law against shooting people with guns. Several in fact.
The problem is that the people who are shooting people with guns, aren’t obeying them.
So why would anyone believe that these same people are now going to obey the law which says they are not allowed to own a gun in the first place?
OK sure, some people, many people in fact, will obey the new law. And hand in their guns. I expect broadly it would be the same people who generally obey all the other laws. Like the ones which forbid them from burglarising people, robbing people, selling drugs to people, and shooting people.
Let’s give these type of people a name. ‘Law abiding citizens’. That’ll do.
They will hand over their guns. While the other, type of people, let’s call them, I dunno, ‘criminals’, won’t.
Pretty soon what we are left with is a situation where all ‘law abiding citizens’ have dutifully given up their guns.
And all the ‘criminals’, have kept theirs.
How do you think that’s going to shake out?
Here’s another, different, thought.
If you are one of ten people sitting around a table negotiating an important issue, perhaps deciding how to distribute a vital but limited energy source like oil, or a medical resource like vaccines, and nine of you have a gun, and one doesn’t, then the one who doesn’t have a gun, will probably end up with nothing.
The other nine of you will just divide the resources among yourselves. Sure, you might hand the unarmed one some scraps, but that is entirely at your discretion.
I know that doesn’t sound very nice. But that’s probably what would happen.
Of course in an ideal, liberal’s world, no one round the table would have a gun at all. And that does, at least on the surface, seem best. But as you might have noticed recently, when checking the news on your phone, or walking down the street, or having your phone stolen off you, as you check the news, while walking down the street, we don’t live in an ideal world.
Let’s mix things up a bit.
How about if all ten of you have a gun? But then three of the others get together and set themselves up as a new ‘international body’. Let’s call it the Coalition of Responsible Armed People. CRAP.
CRAP announces that since they are more virtuous, more trustworthy, more powerful, and richer than you, that you should hand over your gun to them. You know, for safekeeping and security and the common good and that.
But there’s no need to worry, because they swear that whatever happens, and whatever anyone else might do, they will absolutely, unconditionally, and indefinitely, guarantee your safety.
Would you be persuaded by this CRAP?
In 1994 Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. (It had loads, about a third of the former Soviet arsenal.) It was persuaded to do so because The United States, Russia, and for some reason the United Kingdom, promised to guarantee its national integrity. Absolutely, unconditionally, and indefinitely.
How did that work out?
This last week, European leaders, including President Macron of France, the outgoing Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Sholz, the head of the EU, Ursula Von Der Leyen, plus Britain’s very own Billy Big Boots, Captain Sir Keir Starmer, met in Paris for a hastily convened conference on the situation in Ukraine.
The meeting was in a sumptuous, flag festooned room, with golden walls, and a lovely chandelier, as befits these super important, self important, world leaders
But for all the ceremony, protocol, and pomp, these European leaders had been relegated to the Kiddies Table.
The real action was going on thousands of miles away in Saudi Arabia where representatives of the US and Russia gathered around the Big Boys Table, to tentatively begin peace talks which will ultimately decide the future of Ukraine.
The Europeans were more than a little peeved to be excluded from these talks.
But they haven’t been excluded. Not really.
They effectively gave up their seat at the negotiating table when they stopped adequately funding NATO, and so ceased being responsible for their own security, ceding that power to the United States.
Essentially they gave up their guns. So they have no leverage. They are powerless, irrelevant, peripheral, and surplus to requirements.
At this stage at least, they simply don’t count.
Of course these European countries do have their own armed forces, Poland is busy rearming right now, but they are piddling affairs, insignificant compared to the might of the US military machine, and Russia.
The UK for instance has more people in its prisons (98,000) than in its army (73,000). While Russia’s army, even after three years of war, is still 1.5 million strong.
The EU has long been desperate to build a fighting force of its own, to create an integrated European Army.
Fat chance. It can’t agree on anything. Its most powerful member states, plus Britain, spent the Paris conference bickering among themselves. Vaingloriously trying to out ‘statesman’ each other. Which is really all Sergeant Starmer’s ridiculous ‘boots on the ground’ announcement – soon slapped down by the Germans– was all about.
And it’s worth noting that Ursula Von Der Leyen herself came to prominence, and not in a good way, as Germany’s least distinguished Defence Minister since Herman Göring.
She was so incompetent in the role that in 2014 she sent the German armed forces out on NATO exercises with broomsticks instead of weapons.
These people shouldn’t be allowed an army. They can’t even be trusted with milk.
Look, I very much believe in the integrity of Ukraine. It is an independent sovereign nation and unlike the fashionable crowd, I think that independent sovereign nations, like Ukraine, Israel, and the UK (Soz Remainers) are a pretty good idea.
And I think President Trump is wrong to call President Zelensky a ‘dictator’ for not holding elections at the moment. And his suggestion that Ukraine started this conflict is plainly ridiculous.
But I also think it’s wrong to claim that Trump is ‘cuddling’ up to Putin. With critics deciding that one minute the US President is a warmongering Hitler. The next he’s an appeasing Chamberlain.
And I wholeheartedly agree with President Trump that after three grim years, it’s time this bloodthirsty conflict came to end. Even as some seem desperate for it to continue indefinitely.
Some don’t want peace simply because they are so blinded by their hatred for Trump that whatever he does, even attempt to end a war, they must oppose it.
Many don’t want peace because they are making heaps of money from the misery and slaughter. Others, even more cynical, because the endless bloodshed provides the West with the collateral benefit of draining Russian military resources.
While a surprising number of people don’t want peace because they live in a foolish and dangerous, ‘One more push!,’ fantasy world where somehow plucky Ukraine can succeed where Napoleon Bonaparte, and The Third Reich failed. And win a land war against Russia.
Whatever the outcome of these talks, it’s clearly time for the European nations, including Britain, to stop relying on the United States for the security of their own continent.
Yet even now, Starmer resists increasing Britain’s defence spending from a tiddly 2.3% of GDP to a measly 2.5%.
For context, we’ve been spending 4.4% of GDP (£112bn in 2022-23) merely paying the interest on all the money the government is currently borrowing from our grandchildren.
Starmer claims, as have all Prime Ministers in my lifetime, that we don’t have the money to rebuild our armed forces. To protect ourselves in an ever changing, ever more dangerous, increasingly interesting world.
But we do have the money. (Or we did until Rachel Reeves came along.) Our bosses simply had different priorities, and chose to spend it on other things.
Our elites decided to spend it on trans flags, rainbow lanyards and asylum hotels. On keeping five million of our own citizens, (and many other country’s citizens) on unemployment benefit. They spent it on Net Zero, on ‘carbon capture,’ and pointless lockdowns.
They fritter it away on endless inquiries into third runways which will never get built, railways which no one needs, and waste it on cycle lanes which no one uses.
They chuck millions away on DEI training to teach the citizens of demonstrably the most tolerant, decent, society in the history of the world ever, that they are all irredeemable racists.
We could have chosen to spend these countless billions on making us strong.
Instead, over the last fifty years, successive governments have spent that money, actively, deliberately, and unforgivably, making us weak.
Though I guess the biggest question, given our nation’s current trajectory, is how long until there’s nothing left of Britain, that’s actually worth defending?
Our bosses hammered our weapons into windmills.
And now stamp their feet in frustration as they are denied a seat at the negotiating table.
They’ve got no one to blame but themselves.
The lesson from history is pretty simple. Never give up your guns to someone who ‘guarantees’ that if you do, they definitely, genuinely, honestly, and most assuredly, won’t immediately turn round, and shoot you in the back.
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Gun ownership and Second Amendment rights are a big and complex subject, which I don’t have time to explore here, even at a cursory level.
If you’re interested in the gun issue in America. And would like your own prejudices confirmed, and/or challenged, I’d recommend this by always fascinating Handwaving Freakoutery who has crunched some numbers.
Thanks again for coming. See you in a week or two.
LSO
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Author: Low Status Opinions
Karen O’Blivious – Senior political correspondent who insists she’s neutral but only interviews people who agree with her.