Interview – Mike Lindsay: Having any tool for purpose of self-defense is a crime in the UK

A lot of these laws stem from the premise that violence is itself bad, rather than violence must be justified and used appropriately.
As such even intending to use a legal item as a weapon and keeping it as such is identified as planning ahead of time to do something predatory and illegal.
Yet often times the same object if just conveniently nearby would be legal to use in justified self defense.

So what actually becomes illegal is being intelligent enough to plan ahead for self defense.
While at the same time you be required to be a member of a gun club for months or over a year to even have the ability to purchase a gun in many English Common Wealth nations.
So illegal to plan to protect yourself and illegal to have the ability to do it spur of the moment.

Many firearm storage requirements also limit storage to a state that makes it impractical to retrieve and load the firearm for immediate use in rapid unexpected self defense.
My understanding is that generally stored unloaded and separate from ammunition. Which means a location for a firearm and a location for ammunition both typically locked must be visited before manual dexterity involving loading the firearm while nervous about whatever was serious enough to justify immediate lethal force.
You almost have to be storing it in a manner not officially permitted to be lucky enough to use a gun for self defense.

This situation of course creates a general fake relationship with law enforcement because even saying the wrong intent for an item is a crime, not just doing something illegal with it. So citizens have to be sure to say the proper lie to avoid charges. That cricket bat, oh yes he is quite into practicing cricket, no it has nothing to do with the recent spat of burglaries in the neighborhood. No, nobody is planning any type of self defense with an unlawful weapon.

Knowing you have to lie to your local authorities, which is increasingly a more and more severe crime, in order to do something as basic as plan to defend yourself with mediocre equipment certainly puts the authorities at odds with any self reliant civilians and the general desire to submit to the rule of law.
But the government counters that by having one of the most widespread state based surveillance systems and as islands already has natural borders that resist widespread smuggling yet still cannot stop it.

"We don't have to protect you and we won't let you protect yourself."

Deanimator said:

"We don't have to protect you and we won't let you protect yourself."

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That is good interpretation. I heard in some places one can not even use pepper spray for self defense. If we love and respect everyone we come across perhaps everything will be ok.

paulsj said:

If we love and respect everyone we come across perhaps everything will be ok.

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I'm currently reading a book about the Rape of Manila in 1945. Your suggestion seems to be at best a hit or miss proposition... mostly miss.

Thanks for the link, read some of it just now but will read the rest tonight after work.

Deanimator got it in one. Police bearly make it out to burglaries or general nuisance calls (eg from neighbours) and also frown upon self defence. What is a citizen to do when people are actively walking the streets with "zombie knives" which are supposedly banned? You only have to read the weekly headlines to see how bad an epidemic stabbings are in London yet the London mayor Sadiq Khan doesn't bother doing anything about it.

When applying for a Firearms Certificate (FAC) you must give a good reason to have one. Target shooting or stalking are good reasons, self defence is not and your FAC application will be revoked immediately.

The sad thing is that many of my fellow Brit's have been brainwashed into thinking that guns are bad and that the bans have worked. Given the rise of knife crime rising in the UK, despite it being legal, some people are starting to wake up and think "I should be able to defend myself."

I live in Atlanta, a pretty major city. Average response times to emergency calls - burglar-in-house/assault-in-progress type calls - is 10 minutes. Ten minutes is a LONG time to be on your own without the right tools.

Fortunately, my nation and state do not (yet) force me to choose between having the right tools and being in compliance with the letter of the law.

Laws not much better in Canada.

It is sobering to realize such people make laws every day. This is the I-know-what's best crowd. They walk among us undetected until a 2nd Amendment conversation emerges. We must, however, cut them some slack because, after all, they have good intentions.

They not only "know what's best", they also have armed security around them.

I remember when Britain( WW 2) begged the USA for rifles for the Home Guard. They said never again would they disarm the populace. They took away their weapons before the war ended.

I grew up in the UK. I feel very fortunate to now live in a country where I not only have the right to defend myself, but can go about my daily life armed in such a manner that I am able to do so.

ATLDave said:

I live in Atlanta, a pretty major city. Average response times to emergency calls - burglar-in-house/assault-in-progress type calls - is 10 minutes. Ten minutes is a LONG time to be on your own without the right tools.

Fortunately, my nation and state do not (yet) force me to choose between having the right tools and being in compliance with the letter of the law.

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A friend once stopped by my apartment in Berea, Ohio to report a woman screaming in the Metropark. He called a total of three times. We later found out the calls were being relayed to the Metroparks Rangers. Their response time? Twenty five years and counting...

George P said:

They not only "know what's best", they also have armed security around them.

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That's SOP. Recall Ted Kennedy's bodyguard caught illegally carrying an Uzi SMG in Washington, DC.

Their ancestors would arrive at a country with people living there and claim it; now, they can't defend themselves.

Deanimator said:

That's SOP. Recall Ted Kennedy's bodyguard caught illegally carrying an Uzi SMG in Washington, DC.

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Or Bloomberg getting special treatment from Bermuda so his armed guards could have their guns in a peaceful area where the cops are unarmed. Who was HE afraid of in Bermuda?

Zoogster said:

[E]ven intending to use a legal item as a weapon and keeping it as such is identified as planning ahead of time to do something predatory and illegal.

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This is based on The Divine Right of Kings, which includes The Right of High Justice. Only the King and his representatives have the right to kill or injure subjects. Individual subjects do not have the right to kill or injure anyone unless they have been given this right by a representative of the Crown. Even the declared intent of self-defense is illegal and technically a sin against God.

I'm glad that I'm not a Subject - so far... .

theotherwaldo said:

This is based on The Divine Right of Kings, which includes The Right of High Justice. Only the King and his representatives have the right to kill or injure subjects. Individual subjects do not have the right to kill or injure anyone unless they have been given this right by a representative of the Crown. Even the declared intent of self-defense is illegal and technically a sin against God.

I'm glad that I'm not a Subject - so far... .

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So, feudalism is still alive and practiced.

P5 Guy said:

So, feudalism is still alive and practiced.

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-And the wanna-be aristos of all political parties as well as the new kings of Silicon Valley and Hollywood want to spread this feudalism as far and wide as possible under its new label, "Democratic Socialism".

The notion that the state has a monopoly on legitimate use of violence is much broader than royal sovereignty, and is common across most forms of government. The question is how absolute that monopoly is. Self-defense is a legal exception (usually in the form of an affirmative defense) to the monopoly.

I live in the UK. I, like most people I know, do not live in fear of crime, of being robbed, burgled, assaulted or murdered. I live in a nice market town with a low crime rate. My sons live in cities, members of my family live in London and other bits of the UK. They do not live in fear of crime or especially feel the need to be prepared for self defence beyond usual sensible precautions (locking doors etc.). You have a very different mindset about these things in the USA and its very hard to see how these two ideologies can ever agree. The closest analogy I can think of is religion, either you believe in a deity or you don't, but its nigh on impossible to change someones mind.
UK law allows for 'reasonable force' in self defence; this is usually interpreted as 'you can hit him with the cricket bat to protect yourself but not if he is unconscious on the floor'.

TheSquire said:

UK law allows for 'reasonable force' in self defence; this is usually interpreted as 'you can hit him with the cricket bat to protect yourself but not if he is unconscious on the floor'.

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In that, it's the same as American law. You can legally stop an assailant, but you can't finish him off once he's helpless. The difference is in the UK, if you have that cricket bat because you think the world is a bad place and you think you need it for self-defense, you're committing a felony under UK law. Any planned self-defense with anything beyond bare hands in the UK is a felony.

I doubt the average person in the UK will understand what their laws actually say until it's too late. Feeling that you live in a place where self-defense could never be necessary would be nice--provided it was realistic and not a fantasy. Understanding that you have no legal right to live in the face of an attack is pretty ugly and actually an unnecessary restriction unless your government believed self-defense scenarios will occur and chose to punish anyone who dared believed they had the right to live in the face of a violent assault.

TheSquire said:

I live in the UK. I, like most people I know, do not live in fear of crime, of being robbed, burgled, assaulted or murdered. I live in a nice market town with a low crime rate. My sons live in cities, members of my family live in London and other bits of the UK. They do not live in fear of crime or especially feel the need to be prepared for self defence beyond usual sensible precautions (locking doors etc.).

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It's interesting to hear people from the UK saying such things. But then again, I have family who live in small towns, or more expensive areas of large cities who feel the same. They drive everywhere in their personal vehicles, from safe place to safe place, and rarely encounter the more aggressive violent side of life there.

My wife and I, both from different parts of Manchester, have seen the ugly side. Public transportation (which goes through and services rough neighborhoods), and walking to and from it in the evening darkness, is where it becomes quite obvious. Unfortunately, when you have to work the job you can get, and use public transportation or your own two legs to get there, you get exposed to this element of society. Those who can afford a nice car, and a home in a nice neighborhood, paid for by the good job they have, can go from one known safe place to another without encountering the aggression and violence that some others must avoid on a daily basis.

It might sound dramatic to some, but that's reality for a lot of people I've known in the UK.

I come by my awareness of the need to defend myself and my family honestly.
I live on the southern side of Hidalgo County, Texas, not far from where they are building the Border Wall.
This is a major conduit for smugglers and "undocumented aliens", with running gun battles between local gangsters a common occurrence.
I still feel safer here than I did in South Central Los Angeles, where everyone knew that the law-abiding citizens were all unarmed... .