Firearms Owners Association of Australia

Thoughts for the Week. 

Many Queensland dealers received an email last week from Inspector Peter Assfalg the Manager of the Firearms and Weapons Amnesty a ‘name’ I am sure that shooters will hear a lot about in the future. He shoots, he is interested,  intelligent, depending on heart and circumstance will dictate whether he makes a good mark on our fraternity, or a bad.

I suppose that if we supply him with more information we may affect the circumstance, and as I am sure he will read this missive there may be value in that. More so if we are all better informed and speak out to others make corrections in ‘letters to the editor’, Facebook and email chains we all affect circumstance. Even in a small way it changes our world as long as we all keep busy producing letters and passing them on.
Inspector Assfalg reported,
“We have reached the halfway mark for the amnesty ……..should continue until 30 April 2013.
Total number of Firearms processed under the amnesty as at 18/3/13 – 3203 
– average of 70 Firearms per day (2004 Amnesty 59 average per day)
2538 Firearms have been registered – 79%
635 Firearms have been destroyed – 20%
30 Firearms are being held for safekeeping pending license application by the owners – 1%
2186 Firearms processed at non-police premises – 68% (FIREARM DEALERS)
3 Stolen firearms located…
Regards Peter Assfalg.

While its good that (hopefully) that 3 people may ( if they still have a licence) have their firearms returned to them. It hardly justifies the cost to the taxpayer for the millions that this individual exercise has cost, never mind the billions of dollars wasted on the registration system and the human misery it has caused the good responsible shooters of Queensland.
While I am sad that their might have been some good firearms in that 635 going for destruction there is a lot of good that might come out of this amnesty, if we campaign intelligently.
Firearms for registration and firearms for the purpose of destruction (Owen Guns never destroy anything, just put them into our parts or museum area) have mainly (99%) been only of sentimental value. I love to see customers freely registering Daisy Red Riders and Diana Model 1s, or Shanghai air rifles, or some of the better 100 year old single shot .22s that could be lethal at both ends. In those cases we inform them that they are not safe to shoot. Some of them the headspace is so sloppy only one shot in ten will go off. Comforting to know that another 2538 have freely been adding to the 600,000 or so on the Queensland registration list. 25 million for the computer program last time maybe 50 million next time.
So if you have an old clunker, or an air rifle that cost $8.00 35 years ago, or somthing that you dug up in the vegetable patch, even if it has no number or model number, or you cannot define a maker, or that it will not even work. If its not registered do the right thing and register it under the amnesty, we charge one dollar to cover the photocoping and the fax transmission. Take it to your local dealer and add to the government’s well deserved problem.
Eventually the rubber will have to hit the road, someone will realize that it is too expensive in man hours and taxpayer funds for absolutely no benefit. No assistance at all in saving a life or identifying a criminal. In fact if the truth be known not even identifying a firearm, as numbers are not specific to an individual firearm. Unless they come up with a completely new science they never will have that. Any half intelligent criminal could follow the examples of the criminal terrorist and manufacture the weapons they need.

Besides all that, there is another benefit for Queensland shooters in this amnesty. Besides the fact that the amnesty organisation has shown up Weapons Licensing Branch by producing a list of firearms of registered firearms to each shooter who has applied to put a firearm on their licence within 10 days. As with a PTA registration, that you pay Weapons Licencing $32.20 for, more than likely you will never receive one, unless you phone plead, threaten and cajole.
The crucial point is that this system has employed the licensed firearm dealers in carrying out the registration process, (which they do anyway) but this system allows it, and makes it happen on the spot. The Dealer identify the owners shooters licence put the details on a form and then identifies the firearms details, includes it with his own details on the one sheet faxes it to the Amnesty number. Gives a copy to the owner. The owner takes his firearm home, on the spot. The staff at the amnesty type the details into their computer and send out the new list.

If they can do that with the amnesty they, ‘Weapons licensing’ can do it. That’s no cost, on the spot registration. If there is a problem the firearm, such it is stolen they have all the details and can pick it up at there convenience.

Inspector Peter Assfalg has shown and proved that it is possible. If they want to employ there hundreds of staff in more productive work they can do it, if they want to. If they just want to prove that they are ‘harassing’ the licensed shooters then they will continue with the PTA system. Licenced shooters are increasing in numbers at least 16% per year (try find a vacancy in a firearm course) they have all served out their 28 days waiting period they should not have to wait again for an obsolete PTA system.

Please all point this out to your local State representatives, your MP s the ones responsible to you as we all pay them to re – present your problems to parliament, write letters to the editor of your local paper if they do not intelligently respond. Local papers are their reflection in the re-election mirror. If you are consistent with the letters you will get much greater response from your local member. He may hate you, but he will take notice and re act which ever party he is in. If he opposed everything you say, his duty is still to represent you, and you are then telling all your neighbours that you will not vote for him due to this issue. This is the only way we can expect change for the better. Please strike a blow.

Contact your local MPs today.
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/Members/mailingLists/MEMLIST.pdf
Congratulations to the people who struck a blow in Western Australia and worked very hard to get a seat in the Upper House for Rick Mazza from the Shooters & Fishers Party. This was there first try, we are all hoping for further successes.

OWEN GUNS THE BEST PRICES FOR RIFLE SCOPES IN AUSTRALIA

In the USA the ‘Blood Dancers’ are going to make a new law, which as usual will be ignored by all but the good harmless victims. In the USA they are going to make a law, with a mechanism that is typical to what occurs in our country and most western countries.

If we lived in a just society when our leaders, after warnings, purposely left unguarded our most valuable assets, our children to be slain, we would raise up, throw them out of office. In some stricter communities they would justly put them on trial and hang them. As we can clearly see their false flag agenda. In our mollycoddled, cottonwool society controlled by the one eye god of Barbi and Ken TV commentators, where justice has long ago been sentenced to say in the history books, our leaders like John Howard and now in the USA President Obama sheds a tear and then legislates to punish the innocent who have done no wrong. We all weep, externally or within when we read of these tragedies and then weep again when we see the political mechanism grinding on the good people, leaving the original problem un addressed, leaving the repository of our women and children undefended, schools, shopping Malls, cinemas ready to be turned into morgues.

When you ban guns you make it more dangerous for the victims and safer for the criminals.

With all these tragedies, the common factor is that the teachers, or staff have been willfully disarmed by government decree, they face jail sentences if they do not obey the law, but the lawless have no regard and kill at will before an armed defender comes from somewhere.

“Guns cause violence, which is why there are so many mass killings at gun shows”????? It Never happen’s.

This makes those government representatives, those who we vote for responsible, they are in fact an accessory to mass murder by their actions of forcibly disarming teachers, parents and staff. This insures that there is never armed resistance. In every shooting as in any attack, tenths of a second count, the only ones present that have a chance of prevention are the intended victims. No amount of legislation can prevent these killings in this current one the 20 years old stole the guns, more than likely murdered to get them, the Gun Free Zone did not put him off it encouraged him.

“Washington DC’s low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis’ high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.“

We have admission from our Australian governments that they lose 14,000 firearms off the data system every year, we have our Police selling their service arms, we have the police and the military that have them stolen, so forget forever that the amount of firearms in the community can be controlled they have been doing that here in Australia and Great Britain for a century and it only makes it worse.

“The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals”, So wrong it can be Dead Wrong. In the USA, in spite of waiting periods, background checks, finger printing, government forms, etc., guns today are too readily available, which is responsible for recent school shootings. In the 1940′s, 1950′s and 1960′s, anyone could buy guns at hardware stores, army surplus stores, gas stations, variety stores, Sears mail order, no waiting periods, no back-ground check, no fingerprints, no government forms and there were no school shootings.

The Blood Dancers of Policital Theatrics.

After the Columbine school shooting, I and many other writers on this subject brought up the facts that this problem was in epidemic proportions in Israeli schools until there leaders, in 1974 began a program of training and arming volunteer teachers, parents grandparents and even senior students to defend their schools. Since that time there has been no successful mass murders in Israel’s schools. So they have all known what the solution was, but instead they stay silent they plan to remove the rights of the innocent. These politicians and media hacks in every country that follow this agenda are the ‘Blood Dancers”, they are the ‘disarm the victims ghouls’ creatures who use these deaths for their own political advantage. They propose more laws, more controls on the victims leaving them to be murdered by people who will never take a seconds notice of the their stupid laws.
These ‘Blood Dancers’ want to copy the control situation of Britain where the good people are disarmed and incapable of defending themselves, and only the government and outlaws have guns. Where the gangs of fit and young men rule the suburbs, rape the women, beat the elderly to death and the good people are prosecuted for carrying a screwdriver or a pair of scissors to defend themselves. Hang on that’s not just Britain its here in Australia as well.      However in Britain where the ownership of firearms, right to own property the right to defend family and the freedom of speech make North Korea look like a free state their governments(Home Office) latest crime figures soured by 35 percent in general and criminals used handguns in 46 percent more offences that last year. Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up form 7,362. It was the forth consecutive year to see a rise.

On the other hand in the USA the Washington Post 18th June 2012 reported, “Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that violent crime decreased 4 percent in 2011. The number of murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults all went down, continuing a pattern. “This is not a one-year anomaly, but a steady decline in the FBI’s violent-crime rates,” said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association. “It would be disingenuous for anyone to not credit increased self-defense laws to account for this decline.” Mr. Arulanandam pointed out that only a handful of states had concealed-carry programs 25 years ago, when the violent-crime rate peaked. Today, 41 states either allow carrying without a permit or have “shall issue” laws that make it easy for just about any non criminal to get a permit. Illinois and Washington, D.C., are the only places that refuse to recognize the right to bear arms.” If the gun grabbers were right, we’d be in the middle of a crime wave, considering how many guns are on the streets. “Firearms sales have increased substantially since right after the 2008 election,” said Bill Brassard,

“Free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters, computers, and typewriters, but self-defence only justifies bare hands”

Strange, that the media which should be the champion of ‘Rights’, attacks the right of people to defend themselves, and denies the right of people to freely own property when that same right to own firearms is the one right that can defend all rights including the right to free speech. Firearm Ownership is the one right that protects all the others. Among freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, of redress of grievances, it is the first among equals. It alone offers the absolute capacity to live without fear. The right to own firearms is the one right that allows all “rights” to exist at all.

They are temporary Societies not Free Societies.

There is no such thing as a free nation where only the police and military are allowed the force of arms but individual citizens are not. That’s a “big brother knows best” a theatre of the absurd, a creation of a twin society where the armed military are elite task masters and the unarmed are the disposable plebs the slaves, that system has never in human history succeeded in harmonious protection of its civilians. They are temporary Societies not Free Societies.

Ron Owen.

The Battle For Australia’s Soul,
Freedom IS NOT A FREE RIDE.
Today, as of writing is the 11th of the 11th Remembrance Day, it used to be called Armistice Day, it was the date and time of the Armistice which was signed to end World War One, that was the War to End all Wars so two minutes silence at 11 am was in memoriam for those who died in the name of freedom in that the largest war in World History.
It is a fine tradition, now nearly a hundred year old, shortened to a minutes silence, the eternal flame, eternal no more, is turned on the night before, and in many cases the drummer/ (bugler) has been replaced by a tape recording of the Last Post & Reveille. (I will be there every year, I can) At our local parade, they have even lost the tradition of taking the flag down on last post, the two minutes silence, then raising the flag when reveille is being sounded. The just play both recordings then have the silence. A recording played of the National Anthem, a murmuring as no one knows the words. Then off and away, don’t think about it for another year.

The Real Meaning Fades Away.
When I was a child, everyone had to have a poppy before the Day, now it’s the TV news readers, the astute politicians and a few old soldiers. It seem like “Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away and so to it seems is the meaning of Remembrance Day, fading from modern understanding.
Our people in past generations were a sovereign free people, the parliament was installed by the people, the Monarch governed by the consent of the governed.  The Monarch’s motto ‘Dieu et mon droit’, meaning “God and my right” was a birthright, to rule by birth and the sovereign people had an equal birthright, born with the rights and freedoms of the realm. That is another forgotten meaning of having the Crown in our courts, on our military badges, we fight for their ‘Right’ they fight for our ‘Rights’. It is now a forgotten contract.
Once it was something worth fighting for, something even worth dying for, expressed so powerfully in the ‘Declaration of Arbroath’,
“It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

Freedom is Not Free, It has to be paid for in the most expensive currency, ‘Blood’.

Our Forefathers, more than likely, never expressed it to their mates that way, it something that  was thought but not often said, by those who went to war, some with differing national causes, but all wanted to give something back to their country. The country that had given them the best standard of living and the most individual freedoms. They knew that the country and its philosophy, its idealism could only survive as long as it had individuals who would willingly sacrifice their lives for those ideals which their country believed in. Freedom.
Many of them believed so strongly in that ideal that they fought and died so that other countries could obtain that same freedom from tyrants.
We used to think that we passed that spirit to our children in the bloodstream, that it would be now ingrained in future generations, but now it seems that ‘Freedom’, is never more than one generation away and that generation has not fought for it, not valued it, and has nothing to pass on to our children’s children, who being born in slavery have little compression of what it really meant to be free.
So often, when I ask people to make a complaint to there local member of parliament and stand up for their ‘Rights’ , I hear the words, “Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,” as if that somehow makes them smell cleaner. If they are quick they will notice my lip curl, as I think,  ‘No’, you don’t smell cleaner you’re a parasite, taking, and giving nothing, to me that makes them derelict of their duty as a citizen. They are the ones who make it easy for our government to be panderers, thieves and liars. The sanctimonious parasites could not get away with it, if so many Australians did not insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable. They cannot comprehend that someone else had to fight and sacrifice property, wealth, love, family and life itself for their ‘Right’ to hear, nothing, see, nothing, think nothing and worst of all to do nothing.  The sale of poppies has always raised money for the families of the fallen, or the wounded, but these days everyone expects everything for nothing, I heard one women say, “Can I have three”, never an effort made to pay, she just took and commenced to pin one on herself.

Freedom is a Chair with Essential Legs.
The legs of our freedom chair stand, or fall altogether. We have a right to life, to breath the air, we have a right to think and a right to speak, like the birds in the forest we have a right to move, and like the squirrels who works for the nuts, own the nuts, we have the right to own property. The bird has its beak, the lion has its teeth to defend its Rights and Freedoms.
We have a brain to defend ours. That brain makes us the head of the food chain, as it enables us to make tools, those tools are employed by the brain to defend our property, our ‘Rights’, our Freedoms and our Lives. Just take that one leg of the chair away, and all the others are meaningless. We then lose the freedom of choice, the Freedom not to be Green, religious freedom, the freedom not to have a religion, the freedom to think, the freedom to speak and the freedom to petition others to our cause.

Governed by a Minority of Green Tin Pot Tyrants
Once the spirit, the ideal of Freedom is lost, tin pot tyrants can use and abuse our  Constitutional Monarchy, our totally un responsive, ‘representative’ government, who use pure democracy, the media mob, the unmitigated rule of the current green minority to  degenerate what was once the finest and free ‘ist’ into despotism and tyranny.

We Are Enslaved When We allow our Politicians to
Take Our Money and donate it to causes that buys them votes.

All this without thinking might not be at first evident to you, until the film over our eyes, created by the electronic god of television is removed. These days school begins in the living room where our children are moulded into socialistic robots who then think that the State can control and supply free education, free food, free money, free rent with no sympathy at all for those whom that money and property is stolen from. Even when you show our youth that the government debt for its handouts will impact on their future, they still vote for those who offer the most handouts

Working When Other Take Our Reward is Slavery
The State has disarmed us and now restrict knives and scissors, they have turned a Right into a State licence with which they can use to control you. The State has removed your Mineral Rights to your land, it removes your right to clear and farm your land, it controls what you grow and what you are allowed to sell. The State taxes you, effectively steals from you every time you use their currency. The State takes from the poor workers and gives it to those who do nothing except vote for those politicians, who promise to steal more, to give their voters.
Those freeloaders are now a majority. In every western country, our forefathers fought against this tyranny in World War Two, now its meaning has faded away and it is excepted everywhere.

We Sold Ourselves Into Slavery.
Due to our apathy and the handful of oppressors who first gained control of the minds of the academics in our universities who trained the journalists, the lawyers the politicians they schooled our leaders who accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.
Already they disarm us, they take our property even from the mail, they take our property, our mineral rights, our right to grow food, our right to clear the land that we own, the right to own an animal, our right to buy a health vitamin yet they forcefully medicate us with fluoride. They force their political will with there political police, a police force that serves the government, not the people. These days Police leave us defenceless, we are not allowed to defend ourselves, the police only defend the State and take from the people, they are the modern day tax collectors, raising money for the robber baron the State.

Not a Little War But A Large War for A New Century.
Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu the current Prime Minister of Israel has sworn to remove the Iranian nuclear threat before his next term of office Jan 22nd 2013. Iran is allied to Russia, Turkey and Israel is allied to the USA. Islam is allied to all that hate Israel.

Obedience or Death?

Will the next generation of soldiers follow the same format as the Russians who fought for Black Joe Stalin and the Germans fought for Hitler, dying for different styles of socialism? Like myself and thousands since, Disarmed when De mobbed.
Real freedom, as understood by the men of Arbroth or our forefathers will not be on offer to any of the nations dragged into it, but the young men will still fight as they must, or their own States will kill them anyway.

Without Lots of NEW Youthful Recruits to our Cause We have Missed the Freedom Bus.

Where does all this depressing information take us, well hopefully, (if I believed in Leprechauns at the bottom of our garden) it inspires some our younger shooters to realise, to taste what real freedom is all about. Its not about the weekly night club booze up, its not about computer game warfare. Now, our youth are all players in their own future freedom, they either decide to fight for it, or watch it go further away like missing a Bus that will never return. I have been writing articles like this one for 32 years, I will be 65 next birthday, I have devoted years of my life to this cause, because I believe it was my duty to give back to those who before me, gave much more, life itself, for the Freedoms I used to enjoy. I believed that if the candle of freedom was still alight it had a chance of turning a black room into daylight. Many of my contemporaries, Norm Segal, Tony Pitt, Arthur Tuck, Jeremy Lee, have died many others have faded away, fortunes have been spent on campaigns opposing Gun laws, families have born the cost of local victimisation. I am running out of contemporaries, I am running out of years, even if I hang in doing this until I am ninety unless our youth, our new shooters take up the cause of freedom, freedom will be like the fading away of Remembrance Day, it will be something to learn about at school, something we still have in name only. The reason why our forefathers sacrificed their lives will be changed from the meaning of real freedom, to nationalism, they will turn nationalism into a dirty word, and countless millions of lives and the cause they sacrificed for, will never be remembered. See,… you have already forgotten.
Ron Owen.

ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA

Joseph E. Olson

[1] and David B. Kopel[2]

I. Introduction

Is it possible for a nation to go from wide-open freedom for a civil liberty, to near-total destruction of that liberty, in just a few decades? “Yes,” warn many American civil libertarians, arguing that allegedly “reasonable” restrictions on civil liberty today will start the nation down “the slippery slope” to severe repression in the future.[3] In response, proponents of today’s reasonable restrictions argue that the jeremiads about slippery slopes are unrealistic or even paranoid.[4]

This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope.(p.400) When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.

For purposes of this Essay, the reader will not be asked to make a judgement about the righteousness of the (former) British right to arms or the wisdom of current British gun prohibitions and controls. Instead, the object is simply to examine how a right that is widely respected and unrestricted can, one “reasonable” step at a time, be extinguished. This Essay pays particular attention to how the public’s “rights consciousness,” which forms such a strong barrier against repressive laws, can weaken and then disappear. The investigation of the British experience offers some insights about the current gun control debate in the United States, and also about ongoing debates over other civil liberties. This Essay does not require that the reader have any affection for the British right to arms; presumably, the reader does have affection for some civil liberties, and the Essay aims to discover principles about how slippery slopes operate. These principles can be applied to any debate where slippery slopes are an issue.

Part II of this Essay briefly sets forth the legal background of the British right to bear arms, as it developed from ancient times to the late nineteenth century. Part III describes the unimpaired British right to arms of the late nineteenth century and the changes in popular culture that began to threaten that right. Part IV describes how social unrest before World War I intensified the pressure for gun control, and finally resulted in the creation of a licensing system for rifles and handguns after the war. The gun control system was gradually expanded in the 1930s, relaxed in enforcement during World War II when Nazi invasion loomed, and then re-imposed with full force. Part V focuses on the turbulent 1960s, and how the government enacted a mild licensing system for shotguns, in order to deflect public cries for re-imposition of the death penalty, following the murder of three policemen by criminals using pistols. Part VI describes how the British gun licensing system is administered today and how police discretion is used to make the system much more restrictive, even without changes in statutory language. Part VII analyzes the conditions that have created the momentum for the gradual prohibition of all firearms ownership in Great Britain, and how isolated but sensational crimes are used as launching pads for further steps to prohibition. In Part VIII the Essay looks at how armed self-defense has, without statutory change, gone from being a “good reason” for the granting of a gun license to being prohibited. The decline of other British civil liberties in the late twentieth century, such as freedom of speech, protection from warrantless searches, and criminal procedure safeguards, is discussed in Part (p.401)IX. Finally, Part X summarizes and elaborates on some of the conditions that make possible a fall down the slippery slope.

Throughout this Essay, parallels are drawn between British history and the modern gun control debate in the United States, because the issue of whether any particular set of controls will set the stage for gun prohibition is one of the hotly contested questions in the contemporary discussion.

II. Wrenching Freedom From the King–The 1689 English Bill of Rights and the Right to Arms

It began as a duty, operated as a mixed blessing for Kings, and wound up as one of the “true, ancient, and indubitable”[5] rights of Englishmen. From as early as 690,[6] the defense of the realm rested in the hands of ordinary Englishmen. Under the English militia system, every able-bodied freeman was expected to defend his society and to provide his own arms, paid for and possessed by himself.[7] It appears that the wearing of arms was widespread. The only early limitations placed on gun possession were for the misuse of arms by appearing in certain public places “with force” under a 1279 royal enactment[8] or by using them “in affray of the peace.”[9] These limitations were construed to prohibit only the possession of arms “accompanied with such circumstances as are apt to terrify the people”[10] but not the mere “wearing [of] common weapons” for personal defense.[11]

The Tudor monarchs tried to prevent hunting with crossbows, and later with firearms, by commoners by setting a minimum annual income from land as a condition of hunting, or of possession of crossbows and handguns.[12] They were unsuccessful and, after first liberalizing the prohibitions, Henry VIII’s government repealed them in 1546.[13] As the Tudor era ended, individual armament (typically with long bows) and an individual obligation to serve in the militia was the norm for Englishmen. Historians view the widespread individual ownership of arms as an important factor in the “moderation of monarchial rule and the development of the concept of individual liberties”[14] in England during a period when absolute, divine-right royal rule was expanding as the norm in continental Europe.[15](p.402)

In the period leading up to the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart monarchs adopted a radical policy of personal disarmament toward those who politically threatened their royal prerogatives. This included the militia of armed freemen as well as direct political rivals. Through a series of parliamentary enactments, they tried registration of possession, registration of sales, hunting restrictions,[16] possession bans ostensibly aimed at controlling illegal hunting, restrictions on personal arms possessed by the militia,[17] warrantless searches, and confiscations.[18] By 1689, the Stuart monarchs had succeeded, not at full disarmament, but at alienating their “allies” as well as their opponents and losing their throne in a bloodless revolution.

When William of Orange and Mary arrived to begin their reign on England’s throne, the country’s political leaders recognized the need to rein in any tendency of the new monarchs toward the excessive royal power the nation had just suffered under James II. Thus, William and Mary were required to accept a “declaration of rights” as a definitive statement of the rights of their subjects. That declaration was later enacted as the Bill of Rights.[19] The Declaration of Rights was prepared in great haste, limited to noncontroversial matters, and viewed as a statement of the existing rights of Englishmen. It contained only two individual rights applicable to the general public: to petition and to arms. Furthermore, it only effectively limited the monarch, not the Parliament. Even though the Bill of Rights was by its terms to be upheld “in all times to come,” nothing one Parliament does can constrain the actions of subsequent Parliaments.[20] That was the problem with the Bill of Rights being enacted as statute, however important a statute. The Anglo-American legal world would not implement a genuine constitution until 1776, when newly-independent Virginia created her first.

The experience under the Stuarts, demonstrating the political uses of disarmament, convinced many in the Convention Parliament that there was great danger to the security of English liberties from a disarmed citizenry.[21] In Commons, member after member complained about the loss of liberty (p.403)they had personally suffered when disarmed of their private arms by actions “authorized” under the 1662 Militia Act, the 1671 Game Act, and various other laws. Since the new monarchy was to be a limited one, the members saw both a personal and national interest in the ability of ordinary Englishmen to possess their own defensive arms to restrain the Crown. After much discussion and numerous revisions, the right to arms evolved into a statement that “the Subjects which are protestants may have Arms for their Defense suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by law.”[22] Historian Joyce Lee Malcolm concluded that:

[t]he last-minute amendments that changed that article from a guarantee of a popular power into an individual right to have arms was a compromise forced on the Whigs. The vague clauses about arms “suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law” left the way open for legislative clarification and for perpetuation of restrictions …. But though the right could be circumscribed, it had been affirmed. The proof of how comprehensive the article was meant to be would emerge from future actions of Parliament and the courts.[23]

By the time of the American Revolution, legislation and court decisions had made it clear that Englishmen had a real right to possess arms,[24] even during times of turmoil such as the anti-Catholic Gordon riots in London in 1780. The Recorder of London, the equivalent of a modern-day city’s general counsel, gave this opinion in 1780:

The right of his majesty’s Protestant subjects, to have arms for their own defense, and to use them for lawful purposes, is most clear and undeniable. It seems, indeed, to be considered, by the ancient laws of this kingdom, not only as a right, but as a duty; for all subjects of the realm, who are able to bear arms are bound to be ready, at all times, to assist the sheriff, and other civil magistrates, in the execution of the laws and the preservation of the public peace. And that right, which every Protestant most unquestionably possesses, individually, may, and in many cases must, be exercised collectively, is likewise a point which I conceive to be most clearly (p.404)established by the authority of judicial decisions and ancient acts of parliament, as well as by reason and common sense.[25]

Blackstone’s celebrated treatise lauded the individual right to arms as one of the “five auxiliary rights of the subject,” and explained that the right was for personal defense against criminals, and for collective defense against government tyranny.[26] He further explained that “in cases of national oppression, the nation has very justifiably risen as one man, to vindicate the original contract subsisting between the king and his people.”[27] The Englishman’s boast that he and his countrymen were “the freest subjects under Heaven” because he had the right “to be guarded and defended … by [his] own arms, kept in [his] own hands, and used at [his] own charge under [his] Prince’s Conduct”[28] was true. This did not mean, of course, that Englishmen enjoyed perfect civil liberty, as those in the United States frequently pointed out. Englishmen did, however, enjoy much greater freedom and participation in government than did the people of Continental Europe, and it was England’s conventional wisdom that the freedom of the English people was closely tied to their right to possess arms, and thereby deter any thought of usurpation by the government.

From the day when the Stuarts fled to France, there were virtually no restrictions on an Englishman’s right to own and carry firearms, providing that he did not hunt with them, for the next two centuries. The only notable exceptions were the Seizure of Arms Act and the Training Prevention Act, which banned drilling with firearms and allowed confiscation of guns from revolutionaries in selected regions.[29] The Acts were the product of social unrest related to the Industrial Revolution, climaxing in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in which government forces killed unarmed demonstrators. The Acts expired by their own terms in 1822. Even while the 1819 Acts were in force, the case of Rex v. Dewhurst explained that the “suitable to their condition” clause in the Bill of Rights’s “Arms for their Defense” guarantee did not allow the government to disarm “people in the ordinary class of life.”[30](p.405)

III. The Late Nineteenth Century

In the final decades of the last century, Great Britain was much like the United States in the 1950s. There were almost no gun laws, and almost no gun crime. The homicide rate per 100,000 population per year was between 1.0 and 1.5, declining as the century wore on.[31] Two technological developments, however, began to work together to create in some minds the need for gun control. The first of these was the revolver. Revolvers had begun to achieve mass popularity when Colonel Samuel Colt showed off his models at London’s 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry in All Nations.[32] Revolver technology advanced rapidly, and by the 1890s, revolver design had progressed about as far as it could, with subsequent developments involving fairly minor tinkering.

As revolvers got cheaper and better, concern arose regarding the increase in firepower available to the public. And in fact, the change from one or two shot weapons to the repeat-firing, five or six shot revolver represented perhaps the greatest advance in small arms civilian firepower that has ever occurred. Compared to the seemingly more benign single-shot muzzle-loaders of the past, the revolver seemed a frightening innovation.[33]

Revolvers were also getting less expensive, and concerns began to grow about the availability to criminals of cheap German revolvers.[34] Cheap guns were, in some eyes, associated with hated minority groups. For example, in the late 1860s, the London Lloyd’s Newspaper blamed a crime wave on “foreign refuse” with their guns and knives. The newspaper stated that “[t]he revolver’s appearance … we owe to the importation of reckless characters from America …. The Fenian [Irish-American] desperadoes have sown weapons of violence in our poorer districts.”[35]

All of these developments have their parallels in modern United States. The current popularity of semi-automatic pistols, with a magazine capacity of thirteen, fifteen, or seventeen rounds, frightens some people who view the old six-shooter as a harmless traditional weapon. Furthermore, the fact that semi-automatics were invented over 100 years ago does not stop the press from portraying them as dangerous new guns, just as the revolvers of the 1850s were portrayed as dangerous new guns in the 1880s.

Prejudice and discrimination against ethnic groups persist. While United States gun control advocates do not complain much about Irish immigrants with guns, they do warn about the dangers of Blacks armed with “ghetto guns.” The derisive term for inexpensive handguns, “Saturday Night (p.406)Specials,” has a racist lineage to the term “niggertown Saturday night.”[36] The phrase “niggertown Saturday night” apparently mixed with the nineteenth century phrase “suicide special,” which is a cheap single action revolver, to form “Saturday night special.”

Revolvers were one technological development that began to make some Britons rethink the desirability of the right to bear arms. The second development was the growth of the mass circulation press. Newspapers, like guns, had been around for quite a while, but the late nineteenth century witnessed several printing innovations that made printing of vast quantities of newspapers extremely cheap.

The Walter press, patented in England in 1866, introduced stereotype plates. Printers discovered ways to make sheets of any desired length, thereby allowing rolls of paper to be fed into cylinder presses, and greatly accelerating printing speed. Machines for folding newspapers were brought on-line. By the late nineteenth century, typesetting machines were coming into use. All of these developments made possible the production of low-cost newspapers, which even poor people could buy every day. As audiences expanded, papers became increasingly sensationalist, and the “yellow journalism” of publishers such as the United States’ Joseph Pulitzer was born.

Hearst’s [errata: Pulitzer's] British counterparts were fervently devoted to sensation, and especially loved lurid crime stories. In 1883 a pair of armed burglaries in the London suburbs set off a round of press hysteria about armed criminals. The press notwithstanding, crime with firearms was rare. As this Essay will detail, the propensity of the press to sensationalize what sociologists call “atrocity tales” to create “moral panics” while demanding greater government regulation is one of the factors dramatically increasing the risk that a nation will descend down a slippery slope; but while media sensationalism can spur action, media attention is not necessarily sufficient by itself to produce results. Eighteen-eighty-three did see the first serious attempt at gun control in many decades, when Parliament considered and rejected a bill to ban the “unreasonable” carrying of a concealed firearm. In 1895, strong pistol controls were rejected by a two to one margin in the House of Commons.

The developments of the British press, and the press attitude towards crime and guns in the late 19th century, have their own parallels in the United States today. Television news is cutting loose its last ties to traditional standards imposed from the days of print journalism. In the “infotainment” produced by organizations such as NBC News, depiction of reality is less important than the production of entertaining and compelling “news” pieces. Thus, when the “assault weapon” panic of 1989 broke out, television journalists paid little attention to whether “assault weapons” actually were the “weapon of choice” of criminals. Instead of being on the reality of gun (p.407)crime, the focus was on the sensational footage of guns firing full automatic, while newscasters decried the availability of semi-automatics. Police statistics show that so-called assault weapons are used in about 1% of gun crime.[37] In other contexts, displaying one thing while talking about another would be decried as fraud.

As the nineteenth century came to a close in Britain the press had not as yet persuaded the public to adopt gun controls. Buyers of any type of gun, from derringers to Gatling guns faced no background check, no need for police permission, and no registration. As criminologist Colin Greenwood wrote, “[a]nyone, be he convicted criminal, lunatic, drunkard or child, could legally acquire any type of firearm.”[38] Additionally, anyone could carry any gun anywhere. The English gun crime rate was at its all-time low. A somewhat similar situation prevailed on the American frontier in the 1880s where everyone who chose to be, was armed, and “[t]he old, the young, the unwilling, the weak and the female … were … safe from harm.”[39] The frontier crime rates, except for the results of “voluntary” bar fights among dissolute young men, were less than a tenth of the rates in modern-day United States and British cities.

The official attitude about guns was summed up by Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, who in 1900 said he would “laud the day when there is a rifle in every cottage in England.” Led by the Duke of Norfolk and the mayors of London and Liverpool, a number of gentlemen formed a cooperative association that year to promote the creation of rifle clubs for working men. The Prime Minister and the rest of the aristocracy viewed the widespread ownership of rifles by the working classes as an asset to national security, especially in light of the growing tension with imperial Germany.[40] While shotguns were seen as bird-hunting toys of the landed gentry, rifles were lauded as military arms suitable for everyone. Yet, within a century, the right to bear arms in Britain would be well on the road to extinction. The extinction had little to do with gun ownership itself, but instead related to the British government’s growing mistrust of the British people, and the apathetic attitude of British gun owners.(p.408)

IV. The Early Twentieth Century through World War II

A. The First Step

In 1903, Parliament enacted a gun control law that appeared eminently reasonable. The Pistols Act of 1903 forbade pistol sales to minors and felons and dictated that sales be made only to buyers with a gun license. The license itself could be obtained at the post office, the only requirement being payment of a fee. People who intended to keep the pistol solely in their house did not even need to get the postal license.[41]

The Pistols Act attracted only slight opposition, and passed easily. The law had no discernible statistical effect on crime or accidents. Firearms suicides did fall, but the decline was more than matched by an increase in suicide by poisons and knives.[42] The homicide rate rose after the Pistols Act became law, but it is impossible to attribute this rise to the new law with any certainty. The bill defined pistols as guns having a barrel of nine inches or less, and thus pistols with nine-and-a-half inch barrels were soon popular.

While the Act was, in the short run, harmless to gun owners, the Act was of considerable long-term importance. By allowing the Act to pass, British gun owners had accepted the proposition that the government could set the terms and conditions for gun ownership by law-abiding subjects.[43] As Frederick Schauer points out, for a government body to decide “X and not Y” means that the government body has implicitly asserted a jurisdiction to decide between X and Y. Hence, to decide “X not Y” is to assert, indirectly, an authority in the future to choose “Y not X.”[44] Thus, for Parliament to choose very mild gun controls versus strict controls was to assert Parliament’s authority to decide the nature of gun control.[45] As this Essay shall discuss in regards to the granting of police authority over gun licensing, establishing the proposition that a government entity has any authority over a subject is an essential, but not sufficient, element for a trip down the slippery slope.

B. Dangerous Weapons

The early years of the twentieth century saw an increasingly bitter series of confrontations between capital and labor throughout the English-speaking world. In Britain, the rising militance of the working class was beginning to make the aristocracy doubt whether the people could be trusted with arms. When American journalist Lincoln Steffens visited London in (p.409)1910, he met leaders of Parliament who interpreted the current bitter labor strikes as a harbinger of impending revolution.[46] The next set of gun control initiatives reflected fears of immigrant anarchists and other subversives.

As the coronation of George V approached, one United States newspaper, the Boston Advertiser, warned about the difficulty of protecting the coronation march “so long as there is a generous scattering of automatic pistols among the 70,000 aliens in the Whitechapel district.” The paper fretted about aliens in the United States and Britain with their “automatic pistols,” which were “far more dangerous” than a bomb. The Advertiser defined an “automatic pistol” as a “quick-firing revolver,” and called for gun registration, restrictions on ammunition sales, and a ban on carrying any concealed gun, all with the goal of “disarming alien criminals.”[47]

What was the “automatic pistol/quick-firing revolver” that so concerned the newspaper? In 1896, the British company of Webley-Fosberry introduced an “automatic revolver.”[48] It reloaded with the same principle as a semi-automatic pistol, but held the ammunition in a cylinder, like a revolver. It was an inferior gun. If not gripped tightly, it would misfire. Dirt and dust made the gun fail. Although the gun’s most deadly feature was, supposedly, its rapid-fire capability, rapid firing also made the gun malfunction.[49] The so-called automatic revolver that was “more dangerous than the bomb” was more dangerous in the minds of overheated newspaper editorialists than in reality. In this way it is comparable to today’s “undetectable plastic gun,” which is non-existent, and the “cop-killer teflon bullet,” which was actually invented by police officers.[50]

As the Webley-Fosberry and its modern equivalents show, media pressure for new laws does not necessarily have to be based on real-world conditions. That is, an item need not necessarily be particularly dangerous in (p.410)order for the media to describe it as dangerous. For example, whatever else may be said about marijuana, we now know that the “Reefer madness” stories from the mass media in the 1920s and 1930s were scientifically inaccurate; marijuana does not impel users to commit violent crimes. However, when the media and public know little about an item, such as Webley-Fosberry revolvers, self-loading firearms, or marijuana, it is easy for reporters to talk themselves and their audience into a panic.

C. Dangerous People

Whatever the actual dangers of the automatic revolver, immigrants scared authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Crime by Jewish and Italian immigrants spurred New York State to enact the Sullivan Law in 1911, which required a license for handgun buying and carrying, and made licenses difficult to obtain. The sponsor at the Sullivan Law promised homicides would decline drastically. Instead, homicides increased and the New York Times found that criminals were “as well armed as ever.”[51]

As in modern United States, sensational police confrontations with extremists also helped build support for gun control. In December 1910, three London policemen investigating a burglary at a Houndsditch jewelry shop were murdered by rifle fire. A furious search began for “Peter the Painter,” the Russian anarchist believed responsible. The police uncovered one cache of arms in London: a pistol, 150 bullets, and some dangerous chemicals. The discovery led to front-page newspaper stories about anarchist arsenals, which were non-existent, all over the East End of London. The police caught up with London’s anarchist network on January 3, 1911, at 100 Sidney Street. The police threw stones through the windows, and the anarchists inside responded with rifle fire. Seven-hundred and fifty policemen, supplemented by a Scots Guardsman unit, besieged Sidney Street. Home Secretary Winston Churchill arrived on the scene as the police were firing artillery and preparing to deploy mines. Banner headlines throughout the British Empire were already detailing the dramatic police confrontation with the anarchist nest. Churchill, accompanied by a police inspector and a Scots Guardsman with a hunting gun, strode up to the door of 100 Sidney Street; the inspector kicked the door down. Inside were the dead bodies of two anarchists. “Peter the Painter” was nowhere in sight. London’s three-man anarchist network was destroyed.[52] The “Siege of Sidney Street” turned out to have been vastly overplayed by both the police and the press. A violent fringe of the anarchist movement was, however, a genuine threat; President William McKinley was only one of several world leaders assassinated by anarchists.(p.411)

While the “Siege of Sidney Street” convinced New Zealand to tighten its own gun laws, the British Parliament rejected new controls. Parliament turned down the Aliens (Prevention of Crime) Bill, that would have barred aliens from possessing [errata: and carrying] firearms without permission of the local Chief Officer of Police.[53] The 1993 Virginia legislature had less fortitude than the 1911 British Parliament. After a Pakistani national used a Kalashnikov rifle to murder three people outside of CIA headquarters, the Virginia legislature rushed to enact broad restrictions on gun carrying by legal resident aliens.[54]

British resistance to gun controls finally cracked in 1914 when Great Britain entered The Great War, later to be dubbed World War I. The government imposed comprehensive, stringent controls as “temporary” measures to protect national security during the war. Similarly, the United States continues to live under various “temporary” or “emergency” restrictions on liberty enacted during the First or Second World Wars.[55] Few restrictions on liberty, especially when imposed by fiat, are announced as permanent. Even when Julius Caesar and, later, Octavian, destroyed the Roman Republic by making themselves military dictators for life, they claimed to be exercising only temporary powers because of an emergency.

Randolph Bourne observed that “war is the health of the state,” and it was World War I that set in motion the growth of the British government to the size where it could begin to destroy the right to arms, a right that the British people had enjoyed with little hindrance for over two centuries. After war broke out in August 1914, the British government began assuming “emergency” powers for itself. “Defense of the Realm Regulations” were enacted that required a license to buy pistols, rifles, or ammunition at retail. As the war came to a conclusion in 1918, many British gun owners no doubt expected that the wartime regulations would soon be repealed and Britons would again enjoy the right to purchase the firearm of their choice without government permission. But the government had other ideas.

The disaster of World War I had bred the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Armies of the new Soviet state swept into Poland, and more and more workers of the world joined strikes called by radical labor leaders who predicted the overthrow of capitalism. Many Communists and other radicals thought the World Revolution was at hand. All over the English-speaking world governments feared the end. The reaction was fierce. In the United States, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched the “Palmer raids.” Aliens were deported without hearings, and United States citizens were searched and arrested without warrants and held without bail. While the United States was torn by strikes and race riots, Canada witnessed the government (p.412)massacre of peaceful demonstrators at the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.

In Britain, the government worried about what would happen when the war ended and the gun controls expired. A secret government committee on arms traffic warned of danger from two sources: the “savage or semi-civilized tribesmen in outlying parts of the British Empire” who might obtain surplus war arms, and “the anarchist or ‘intellectual’ malcontent of the great cities, whose weapon is the bomb and the automatic pistol.”[56] At a Cabinet meeting on January 17, 1919, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff raised the threat of “Red Revolution and blood and war at home and abroad.” He suggested that the government make sure of its arms. The next month, the Prime Minister was asking which parts of the army would remain loyal. The Cabinet discussed arming university men, stockbrokers, and trusted clerks to fight any revolution.[57] The Minister of Transport, Sir Eric Geddes, predicted “a revolutionary outbreak in Glasgow, Liverpool or London in the early spring, when a definite attempt may be made to seize the reins of government.” “It is not inconceivable,” Geddes warned, “that a dramatic and successful coup d’etat in some large center of population might win the support of the unthinking mass of labour.” Using the Irish gun licensing system as a model, the Cabinet made plans to disarm enemies of the state and to prepare arms for distribution “to friends of the Government.”[58]

Although popular revolution was the motive, the Home Secretary presented the government’s 1920 gun bill to Parliament as strictly a measure “to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them.” In fact, the problem of criminal, non-political misuse of firearms remained minuscule.[59] Of course 1920 would not be the last time a government lied in order to promote gun control.

In 1989 in the United States, various police administrators and drug enforcement bureaucrats set off a national panic about “assault weapons” by claiming that semi-automatic rifles were the “weapon of choice” of drug dealers and other criminals. Actually, police statistics regarding gun seizures showed that the guns accounted for only about 1% of gun crime. Most people in the United States swallowed the 1989 lie about “assault weapon” crime, and most Britons in 1920 swallowed the lie about handgun crime. Indeed, the carnage of World War I, which was caused in good part by the outdated tactics of the British and French general staffs, had produced a general revulsion against anything associated with the military, including rifles (p.413)and handguns.

Thus the Firearms Act of 1920 sailed through Parliament. Britons who had formerly enjoyed a right to arms were now allowed to possess pistols and rifles only if they proved they had “good reason” for receiving a police permit.[60] Shotguns and airguns, which were perceived as “sporting” weapons, remained exempt from British government control.

Similarly, the horror of use of poison gas during World War I’s trench warfare made the Firearms Act’s ban on small CS self-defense spray canisters seem unobjectionable.[61] In the hands of British citizens, CS was considered by the central government to be impossibly dangerous, requiring complete prohibition–much more dangerous than a rifle or shotgun. Yet when the CS is in the hands of the government, the central government now mandates that CS be considered benign. When local police authorities protested the Home Secretary’s issuance of CS gas and plastic bullets to local police forces and argued that the central government had no authority to force police departments to employ dangerous weapons against their will, the court ruled for the central government on the theory that the Crown’s “prerogative power to keep the peace” allowed the Home Secretary to “do all reasonably necessary to preserve the peace of the realm.”[62]

The treatment of CS is emblematic of the transformation of British arms policy during the twentieth century. Principles about the use of force were changed from the traditional Anglo-American to the Weberian, with the monopoly of force becoming crucial to the state’s definition of its rightful power. Instead of worrying about cheap German handguns among the people, the British would have been better to guard against fancy German ideas among the government.

D. The Firearms Act

In the early years of the Firearms Act the law was not enforced with particular stringency, except in Ireland, where revolutionary agitators were demanding independence from British rule, and where colonial laws had already created a gun licensing system.[63] Within Great Britain, a “firearms certificate” for possession of rifles or handguns was readily obtainable. Wanting to possess a firearm for self-defense was considered a “good reason” for being granted a firearms certificate.

The threat of Bolshevik revolution, which had been the impetus for the (p.414)Firearms Act, had faded quickly as the Communist government of the Soviet Union found it necessary to spend all its energy gaining full control over its own people, rather than exporting revolution. Ordinary firearms crime in Britain, which was the pretext for the Firearms Act, remained minimal. Despite the pacific state of affairs, the government did not move to repeal the unneeded gun controls, but instead began to expand the controls.

In 1934, a government task force, the Bodkin Committee, was formed to study the Firearms Act. The Committee collected statistics on misuse of the guns that were not currently regulated, such as shotguns and airguns, and collected no statistics on the guns under control, namely rifles and handguns. The Committee concluded that there was no persuasive evidence for repeal of any part of the Firearms Act.[64] Since the Bodkin Committee had avoided looking for evidence about how the Firearms Act was actually working, it was not surprising that the Committee found no evidence in favor of decontrol.

Spurred by the Bodkin Committee, the British government in 1936 enacted legislation to outlaw (with a few minor exceptions) possession of short-barreled shotguns and fully automatic firearms.[65] The law was partly patterned after the 1934 National Firearms Act in the United States, which taxed and registered, but did not prohibit, such guns.[66] In 1973 and 1988, when the government was attempting to expand controls still further, gun control advocates claimed that the Bodkin Committee report was clear proof of how well the Firearms Act of 1920 was working, and why its controls should be extended to other guns.[67]

As a result of alcohol prohibition, the United States in the 1920s and early 1930s did have a problem with criminal abuse of machine guns, a fad among the organized crime gangsters who earned lucrative incomes supplying bootleg alcohol, although most such firearms were owned by peaceable citizens. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 had sent the American murder rate into a nosedive, but in 1934 Congress went ahead and enacted the National Firearms Act anyway.

In Britain, there had been no alcohol prohibition, and hence no crime problem with automatics, or other guns. Before 1920, any British adult could purchase a machine gun; after 1920, any Briton with a Firearms Certificate could purchase a machine gun. During the 1936 British debate, the government could not point to a single instance of a machine gun being misused in Britain,[68] yet the guns were banned anyway. The government (p.415)explained its actions by arguing that automatics were crime guns in the United States and there was no legitimate reason for civilians to possess them. The same rationale is used today in the drive to outlaw semi-automatic firearms in the United States. Since some government officials believe that people do not “need” semi-automatic firearms for hunting, the officials believe that such guns should be prohibited, whether or not the guns are frequently used in crime.

“O, reason not the need!” shouted King Lear after his two traitorous daughters, Regan and Goneril, disarmed him by taking away his armed retinue.[69] Goneril and Regan had asked why the King needed even a single armed retainer, since Goneril’s army and Regan’s army would protect him. The King’s “reason not the need” response was his way of saying the he should not have to justify what he wanted; he should not have to convince his daughters that he had a good reason for wanting to be armed. Unfortunately, for British gun owners, as for King Lear, it was too late. King Lear had already turned the power in the kingdom over to Regan and Goneril; British gun owners had agreed that rifle and pistol ownership should be allowed only when the government, not the citizen, believed that there was a “good reason” for it. Thus, the burden of proof in public debate was reversed. The government was not required to show that there was a need to ban short shotguns or automatic rifles; indeed, the misuse of these guns in Great Britain was so unusual that the British government could never have shown a “need” for the bans. Instead, the government faced a much lower burden. Did the government believe that citizens had a “need” for the guns in question? Obviously some law-abiding citizens thought they did, since the citizens had chosen to purchase such guns. For example, short shotguns are easy to maneuver in a confined setting, and hence are very well-suited for home defense against a burglar. Likewise, machine guns are enjoyed for target shooting and collecting, and are useable for home defense.

The Firearms Act of 1920 had not, of course, banned short shotguns or automatic rifles. The former were ignored by the Act, while the latter were subject only to a lenient licensing system. The Firearms Act had, however, moved the baseline for gun control, and had helped to shift public attitudes. The concept of a “right” to arms was giving way to a privilege, based on whether the government determined that the would-be gun-owner had a “need” according to the government’s standard.

Frederick Schauer’s classic article on slippery slopes distinguishes the pure slippery slope argument[70] from its “close relation” that Schauer calls “the argument from excess breadth.”[71] The latter argument points to the danger of adopting a policy on grounds that are too broad.[72] He points to the (p.416)example of censorship of information about how to build nuclear weapons. If the rationale for censorship is excessively broad–”the information is dangerous to public safety”–then allowing censorship of the nuclear missile information creates a precedent for censorship of many other things.[73] In contrast, if the grounds for a restrictive action are narrow–”this information has a very high risk of directly causing millions of deaths”–then there is much less risk that a desirable action, like the censorship nuclear missile construction information, will lead to undesirable actions, like the censorship of detective novels from which criminals might learn crime techniques.

The 1934 British ban on short shotguns and machine guns was a classic instance of the dangers of an excessively broad rationale. The government decided that nobody outside the government “needed” such items. Thus, the “good reason” requirement of the 1920 Firearms Act set the stage for the 1934 gun ban rationale, that “people outside the government don’t need this,” which in turn would set the stage for further prohibitions.

Another type of argument that Schauer identifies as a close relation to the classic slippery slope argument is “the argument from added authority.” Here, the argument is that “granting additional authority to the decisionmaker inevitably increases the likelihood of a wide range of possible future events, one of which might be the danger case.”[74] The British Firearms Act of 1920 offers a clear example of the dangers against which Schauer’s “added authority” argument warns. Before the Firearms Act, the police had no role in deciding who could own a gun. The Firearms Act instructed them to issue licenses (Firearms Certificates) to all applicants who had a “good reason” for wanting a rifle or pistol. Starting in 1936 the British police began adding a requirement to Firearms Certificates that the guns be stored securely.[75] As shotguns were not licensed, there was no such requirement for them.

While the safe storage requirement might, in the abstract seem reasonable, it was eventually enforced in a highly unreasonable manner by a police bureaucracy often determined to make firearms owners suffer as much harassment as possible.[76] More importantly, Parliament–the voice of the people–did not vote to impose storage requirements on gun-owners. Whatever the merits of the storage rules, they were imposed not by the representatives of the people, but by administrators who were acting without legal authority. Without the licensing system, the police never would have had the opportunity to exercise such illegal power. As the Essay discusses in more (p.417)detail below, once even the most innocuous licensing system is in place, it is more possible (although not necessarily inevitable) that increasingly severe restrictions will be placed on the licensees by administrative fiat. The recognition of this danger is one reason why the First Amendment’s prohibition on prior restraints is so wise. The rule prohibiting prior restraint recognizes that any system for licensing the press creates a risk that system will be administratively abused.