Thursday, 18 August 2005

The right to self-defence

Now this I do like: Stephen Franks presenting "a medal to Auckland man Michael Vaimauga, who was arrested for assault after he stopped a burglar breaking into a shop." Good on him.

"
'The state has no right to punish citizens for defending themselves and their property when the state cannot defend them,' said Mr Franks." Quite true. My concern however with the carefully written policy Mr Franks has written for ACT is that it is silent on the right to use a gun in self-defence. Why is that I wonder? He almost said as much here in his otherwise excellent defence of Paul McIntyre, but held back. Why, I wonder?

My own view on this is that "
all citizens have the right to self-defence and the right to possess the means of self-defence." As I said just the other day, as long as the means of self-defence are disallowed us, we have no right to defend ourselves. We can only hope that a trained kick-boxer might be around to help us out of a jam. Fortunately, Libertarianz recognise this as well.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Deadman said...

Peter - What is New Zealand law as regards private gun ownership???

Anonymous said...

There are two people present when someone is beaten up or threatened by a thug- the enactor and the recipient. The police have no presence. For the clowns who perport to be 'protecting' us to demand the public take no action to protect themselves is laughable. If I can obtain an illegal pistol for a reasonable price, I shall unhesitatingly purchase it. As a very experienced user of side arms in the past, and not being particularly insane,the general public is quite safe from my activities. I have nothing but contempt for the anal retentives who would deny me the opportunity to protect myself. They are quite evidently incapable of doing so as the constant stream of outrages against peacefull law-abiding contributors to society that move across out television screens each evening so depressingly demonstrate.
Satisfying the police that you are a pillar of society through visits from the constabulary to your neighbours and passing a rather fascile gun written and oral test will enable you to purchase a rifle. To possess a pistol requires membership of a pistol club for at least a year, your own weapon is locked away at the range for another year until you are able to take it home. It needs to be kept locked away from any eyes until you intend to take it out to the range. It is all quite extraordinarily childish. Just another example of the Stalinist attitudes of our 'servants'.

Anonymous said...

it wasnt long ago that levying war on your own people was punishable by hanging, sadly todays cotton-wool politicians seem to be getting away with high treason (levying war on the people of NZ) and ordering the police to drag people who defend themselves, others and property through the courts. Its not uncommon for police to believe the story of the assailant claiming "my victim attacked me" - awww diddicums - you wouldnt have been harmed if you didnt mug/rob/assault/burgle/vandalize.