The corner of Scotland that will be forever Trumpton

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website, about the terrifying lessons Scotland has learned about Donald Trump from our own ill-fated dalliance with him a few years ago.  You can read the article HERE.

A rare opportunity for me to #VoteBlue

Of course the whole "45" thing is a none-too-subtle way of saying "don't blame me, I voted Yes", so in anticipation of tomorrow night's likely results across the pond, allow me to just say this - don't blame me, I voted Democrat.  Or strictly speaking, I voted Democrat and also for a range of left-wing parties and candidates in some of the lesser contests.

Voting in American elections always feels like quite an alien process, mainly because I actually have to make an active decision every single time - it's not like here, where I ritualistically vote for the same party I've voted for since I was 18 (albeit things have become slightly more interesting in Scotland since STV was introduced for local government elections).    I always think I should try to apply some kind of logical consistency to how I make the decision - for example, vote tactically for a centrist mainstream candidate in circumstance A, but stick to principle by voting for a no-hoper left-wing candidate in circumstance B.  But I've realised it's hopeless trying to come up with a set of rules that cover every occasion, so I just go by what 'feels right' and hope for the best.

With this being the first time I've voted in a US election since the independence referendum, it suddenly occurred to me just how murderously hard I will find it to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 if she's a presidential candidate, simply because of the disgraceful remarks she made about Scotland, telling a London interviewer she would "hate to see you lose Scotland".  You?  Lose?  OK, Obama made some thoroughly reprehensible comments as well, but at least he didn't imply that Scotland was a possession to be kept or lost, nothing more than a trophy that conferred status on our "owners".

Mind you, the dilemma will probably be solved for me, because if at all possible I try not to vote for candidates who support the death penalty, and the last time I checked Clinton still does.

Wisdom on Wednesday : The more things change, the more they stay the same...

"The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."

200-year-old words from the forefather of Latin American independence, Simón Bolívar.

Wisdom on Wednesday : Gun control is good, apart from the reduction in sexual arousal

"Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following - if Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns, or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun."

American freelance writer Quentin R Bufogle.

Who's talking the most nonsense about Edward Snowden? Rod Liddle.

Our old friend Rod "Scotland is NOT a nation" Liddle has penned a piece in the Spectator with the supremely ironic title "Who’s talking the most nonsense about Edward Snowden? It’s a tough contest". It really isn't, Rod.

"Edward was a fairly low-level CIA technical contractor in Hawaii when he released to the world details of his government’s clandestine electronic surveillance programme (Prism) and also some stuff about our own much-loved GCHQ in Cheltenham. Apparently shocked to the core to discover that the security services were secretly spying on people, Edward was gripped by a spasm of narcissistic outrage and said: ‘I don’t want to live in a society which does these sorts of things.’ No, indeed — at which point he duly fled the immoral and abusive USA for a bolthole in the open, transparent, consensual and liberal People’s Republic of China, where ‘these sorts of things’ are beyond the pale."

What someone who has been down a hole for the last few weeks might be forgiven for not picking up from those words is that Snowden in fact fled to Hong Kong, which may be technically part of the People's Republic of China, but is universally recognised (except by those playing tedious rhetorical games) as a distinct jurisdiction with radically different values and traditions. It does, by all accounts, have a relatively good track record of protecting free speech that puts mainland China to shame. It's true that it doesn't have such an impressive democratic tradition, but whose fault is that? Why, that would be the United Kingdom, that renowned "beacon of liberty throughout the world". If Britain had democratised Hong Kong in the 1950s, 60s or even 70s, and given the new system a chance to bed down before the handover to China in 1997, it would have been very hard for Beijing to reverse the process. Instead there was a last-minute reform package in 1995 which seemed to have the sole purpose of salving London's imperial conscience, and which was unsurprisingly dispensed with by the new regime two years later. China can now quite accurately claim to have control over a Hong Kong that is more democratic than it was for all but two years of its period as a British colony.

"He had been expected to depart the next day on a flight to the freedom-loving bastion that is Cuba, from which destination he was expected to take a further flight to Venezuela and hence to that last recourse for faux-leftish narcissistic whistle-blowers, Ecuador. This supposed stage of his trip, then, comprises exclusively belligerent and corrupt gringo-hating quasi-socialist banana republics where the respective records on human rights leave a little to be desired, frankly. Ecuador, for example, has recently been castigated by both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for ‘undercutting’ freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as well as having a corrupt and politically partisan judiciary and locking up people on trumped-up terrorism charges. When he eventually arrives in Quito, will Edward be forced to conclude once more that he does not wish to live in a society which ‘does these sorts of things’? Or will he manage, somehow, to square it with his overweening conscience — in the manner of that other supreme narcissist, the WikiLeaks weirdo Julian Assange, who is still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy and appears every so often on the balcony to wave to his deluded supporters (Mr J. Pilger Esq.) and smirk at Jemima Khan.

The notion, for either Assange or Snowden, that there might be greater evils in the world, and that they might well be aiding these greater evils, simply does not impinge. For Snowden, clearly, it is the precise opposite of that old exhortation, my country right or wrong. It’s any country but my country, no matter how wicked it might be. It is again the unthinking absolutism of the fool, or the tyrant."

Hmmm. You, Rod, might not be able to understand why the human rights abuses committed on an unimaginable global scale by the world's sole superpower are of slightly more concern to the average international citizen than the human rights abuses committed by Ecuador, but I can assure you there are intelligent hamsters in Auchtermuchty who can.

Clinton doesn't just oppose "separatism" - he opposes democratic self-determination

Our old friend Duncan Hothersall was full of beans yesterday about the supposed 'endorsement' of the No campaign by Bill Clinton. In truth, of course, it was no such thing - the comment Clinton made was vacuous and full of creative ambiguity, and as Jeff Breslin has pointed out, was entirely misconceived if it was intended to subtly steer listeners towards the 'correct' conclusion. Both unionists and nationalists agree that it's possible and desirable to be both Scottish and British, thanks all the same Bill, so there's no need for you to worry your pretty little head over that issue. Indeed, the SNP were quickly able to confirm that their philosophy is entirely in accordance with the one Clinton set out, and while they were at it they could also have pointed out that they share Clinton's fervour for motherhood and apple pie.

But if we leave aside what Clinton actually said, and turn our attention to what he almost certainly thinks, then perhaps Duncan has a point. You see, Clinton has form on this. During his presidency, he launched an utterly disgraceful intervention into the internal affairs of a neighbouring state by not only coming down firmly on the side of the federalists in Quebec, but also by disputing Quebec's right to seek independence even if the majority voted for it. In case anyone doubted that this position was part of a wider belief-system, he astonishingly went out of his way to commend Russia's "rightful" defence of its national sovereignty in Chechnya (while quibbling about some of the specific methods used to do this).

This is the problem, Duncan - Clinton doesn't just oppose 'separatism', he also opposes democratic self-determination. He's an unreconstructed 'territorial integrity' dinosaur, who thinks that the vested interest of an international elite in keeping all national borders exactly as they are should trump the democratic will of citizens.

Is that really the sort of friend you want, Duncan?

As you might have guessed, I'm not Clinton's greatest fan - all he really achieved in office was the effective disenfranchisement of millions, who were hoping for a slightly wider choice in 1996 than between two right-wing Republicans. The fact that Dick Morris ran his campaign that year says it all. In a sense, the George W Bush presidency was a monster of Clinton's own creation - after eight years of triangulation, it's little wonder that many liberal voters were sick of being told they had nowhere else to go, and either stayed home or voted for Nader.

The black hole where the US media's coverage of third party candidates should be

It was an interesting experience watching CNN's election coverage as one of the roughly 1% of voters who had plumped for someone other than Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Although I'd been in that position before, in past elections I'd voted for the relatively high-profile Ralph Nader. This time it was as if third party candidates didn't exist, and indeed as if their voters didn't exist either. The subliminal message was "if you didn't vote Democrat or Republican, you didn't participate in this election". Psychologically, it's very hard to swim against that tide, and I found that I had to remind myself a few times why the easy option of a vote for Obama really wouldn't have been such a great idea.

This subtle pressure on voters to conform is undoubtedly very convenient to some. At about 6am, I saw a former Clinton adviser talking about his party's "growing up" process in 1992, which included an embrace of the death penalty. The Democrats "wouldn't have been ready" to make that change four years earlier, he added with a degree of smugness. This repugnant notion that putting people to death somehow equates with "maturity" is enabled by the assumption that left-liberal voters have nowhere else to go - or if they're uppity enough to think they do have somewhere else to go, that they can and should be browbeaten back into line. Witness the disgraceful attempt to pin the blame for Bush's 2000 election victory on Nader and his supporters. Seemingly it had never occurred to the "centrists" and "moderates" (ahem) that their complicity in maintaining a discredited electoral system might just have consequences for them, as well as for the constituencies of opinion that they are happy to patronise and marginalise.

On a more positive note, it's conceivable that CNN may have been kind enough to actually count my Senate vote, because I happened to vote for the winning candidate - an unashamedly socialist independent. Which is a timely reminder that if enough people persevere with voting for third party candidates for long enough, eventually some of those candidates will make a breakthrough, and then they can't be ignored anymore.

It should also be pointed out that the US media's treatment of third parties is infinitely worse than anything we've ever seen in this country. Even when British politics was a genuinely straight fight between the Conservatives and Labour, the BBC used to faithfully report the results for Liberals and fringe candidates (indeed they probably did so more faithfully than they do now).

* * *

A quick update on my previous post - somewhat surprisingly, Puerto Rico seems to have broken the habit of decades by voting against the constitutional status quo. The most popular option was to become the 51st US state, so it'll be intriguing to see if their wishes are respected, or if "only English-speaking states are welcome here". Unfortunately, the attempt to abolish the death penalty in California failed, which is without question a considerable setback for the abolitionist movement throughout the US. I do still firmly belief that America will join the civilised world eventually, but it may take a few more decades yet.

US Presidential election : help required!

Just wondering if Scot Goes Pop readers would be interested in helping me with a small dilemma. As some of you know, I'm a dual UK/US national, and I'm in the middle of trying to work out who to vote for in the US election. The problem is as follows -

Opposition to the death penalty is pretty much my most fundamental political belief. I've therefore always followed the principle of voting for an anti-death penalty candidate, unless there wasn't one on the ballot paper. I do this even if it's a fringe candidate.

There is no real cost to doing this, because I vote in a strongly Democratic state in which Republicans (or at least Republican presidential candidates) have no chance whatsoever.

However, the only left-of-centre, anti-death penalty presidential candidate in "my" state this time round is Peta Lindsay, who represents an out-and-out revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party, and who regards Cuba as the template for the rest of the world to follow. Now, I'm all for acknowledging the good side of the Cuban system as well as the bad, but such views are a bit strong for even my taste.

Nevertheless, it remains the case that Barack Obama favours the death penalty in principle. Although he would perhaps be keen to significantly reduce its application, he has spoken approvingly about the idea of putting terrorists to death. I find it very hard to vote for someone with that position when there is a clear, cost-free alternative. Lindsay also has an exemplary stance in opposition to Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, something which can hardly be said of Obama.

So what do you think I should do - vote for Obama in spite of my beliefs, or vote for the Bolshevik? I've put a poll at the top of the sidebar, but you don't have long to vote, because I want to make a decision today!

* * *

UPDATE : Here are the final results of the poll -

Barack Obama 30%
Peta Lindsay 70%

Many thanks for all the votes and comments. I think using my 'ask the audience' lifeline has proved sufficient on this occasion, and I won't need to resort to going 50/50 or phoning a friend. But, alas, I still don't think I'm about to win any "life-changing money".

No, Virginia, America hasn't gone bat**** crazy - and here's the proof.

Far too much nonsense is spoken on this side of the pond every time someone in the US commits a mass murder with legally-obtained firearms. There seems to be a genuine belief among some commentators that less guns would somehow make incidents like this less likely to happen. What poppycock. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Just like the civilians of Hiroshima weren't actually mass-murdered and irradiated by an atomic bomb - if Harry Truman hadn't had a nuclear weapon handy, he could just as easily have got the job done by bashing people over the head with a police truncheon, one-by-one.

As you know, at moments like this I much prefer to turn to Kevin Baker and his Fan Club over at The Smallest Minority, an oasis of non-paranoid thinking in an otherwise communist world. And I'm so glad I popped over there today, because it turns out that the real problem in this instance is not that there are too many guns in American cinemas, but that there are far too few, and that in any case the noble minority who sensibly have a firearm in their pocket as they're munching on their popcorn haven't given anything like enough thought to the logistics of shooting someone in the head in such challenging terrain -

"I took my grandson to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter on its opening weekend. When we got to the theater, I took my Kel-Tec PF9 out of the center console (in a pocket holster) and put it in my pants pocket. He saw. "You carry a gun in the theater?" he asked. "It's my job to protect you," I replied.

Now I have to practice head-shots with the thing. Maybe I ought to get the laser..."

Also worthy of note is the first reply to Baker's latest inspiring attempt to make the world a safer place -

"I felt it important enough to break my silence here and note that violent crime continues to drop in this country and world wide, making incidents like this outliers. Of course the media will cover this story to the point of nausea and make it seem like it happens everywhere all the time which it does not."

Nothing very surprising there, you might think, until you discover that this was Markadelphia, regarded by the KBFC as the blog's resident liberal "Antichrist" figure. And that usefully illustrates America's real problem - it's not that there are millions of gun zealots out there, it's that the so-called left are too cowed to face them down directly, and indeed that many on the left buy into the gun free-for-all ideology themselves. How else can we explain that the first response of a 'liberal' to a blogpost about defending yourself in a cinema with guns talks about anything other than the fact that the post is just utterly unhinged? I mean, if this incident is such an 'outlier', Mark, don't you think it might have been worthwhile to point out that the belief that it's too risky to take your grandson to the cinema without a lethal weapon may just be a tad disproportionate? Or if it isn't disproportionate, that it might be more rational (and fairer on others) to just forego trips to the cinema until such time as the whole unspeakable mess is sorted out?

In truth, of course, while a 'newsworthy' event like this is certainly an outlier, the daily toll of routine gun deaths in the US is anything but. 81 Americans per day die from firearm violence - and the per capita death rate is almost twenty times higher than Scotland's.

Vote for Ron?

In theory I have the right to vote in the forthcoming US presidential primaries, although it remains to be seen whether I'll actually be able to exercise that right, because on previous occasions my requests for a ballot paper have only met with a 70-75% success rate. However, assuming I do get the opportunity, I'll be in the novel position of deciding who to vote for in the Republican primary - there's absolutely no point in participating in the Democratic ballot, because for better or worse it's a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will be the candidate. So here's the dilemma : how do I go about deciding who is the least worst of all the extreme right-wing candidates vying for the presumptuous post of Global Emperor? Or should I even be trying to decide that? Should I instead vote for the most extreme candidate of the lot, to maximise Obama's chances of being re-elected?

Before my New Year's Resolution to stop posting at PB, I explained my dilemma over there. The poster Edmund of Tokyo had some very solid practical advice - I should plump for Rick Perry, because he has the dual attributes of being fundamentally unelectable, but also not the sort of chap who would blow up the world in the unlikely event that he is elected. This is a persuasive argument, but I'm actually coming round to the peculiar idea that I might vote for Ron Paul instead. I say 'peculiar' because in many ways he stands for all the things I most detest - abolition of what little there is of a welfare state in the US, completely unfettered gun ownership rights, etc, etc. But the beauty of a Paul candidacy would be the long-overdue airing of certain issues that will otherwise remain buried, ie. does the US have any right to maintain a global empire in the 21st Century? Is it really OK for it to carry out extra-judicial killings on other countries' sovereign territory? Should it stop and question its uncritical support for Israel once in a while?

And if the calamity happened and Paul actually was elected President, one point of reassurance is that he would have a relatively free hand to pursue his constructive agenda in the foreign policy sphere, but to some extent might be hampered by Congress in his attempts to leave the poor to starve.

All of this may be totally academic, of course, because if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucuses today (Tuesday), the momentum behind him would probably be unstoppable, and the contest would be over before it really started.

NOTE : 'Vote for Ron' is slang for voting for no-one, or for 'none of the above' (RON stands for 're-open nominations').

Lingua americana

Laura Agustin has caused a stir by criticising journalist Nicholas Kristof for using the American term "seventh-grader" in relation to a twelve-year-old girl he helped to "rescue" in Cambodia. Agustin's broader point is a very profound one - that the use of such terminology betrays the unconscious and pernicious colonial mindset that underpins the whole "rescue industry". But it also reminded me of the much more minor irritation caused by the innumerable petty ways that Americans attempt to force the rest of the world to conform to their norms on a day-to-day basis. One good example is postal codes. If I was writing a letter to someone in another country, I'm confident I would take special care to copy the postal code exactly as it's written. But I can tell you from experience that if you send your address to someone in the US, there's at least an 80% chance that the reply will delete the space in the middle of your postcode. American zip codes don't have spaces, you see, so a postal code with a space is automatically interpreted as an error. And then there's the issue of names. Most of my family and friends call me Jimmy, but I've had experiences where I've literally said to an American "Hi, I'm Jimmy", and the instant reply was "oh hi, Jim". It seems that the American practice is to only use nicknames like Johnny and Jimmy for very small children, and to switch to the shorter names for older children and adults. Ah, well. They're perfectly entitled to their own traditions, but there are times when I can't rid myself of the feeling that I'm dealing with people who have been instructed by a stage hypnotist not to hear the second syllable of my name, no matter how clearly I pronounce it.

The most hilarious example of this mindset has to be Bill Mallon's claim that the selection of Rio de Janeiro as the host city for the 2016 Olympics was proof that the IOC is "international-centric". For the uninitiated, "international" is code for that peripheral part of the world that lies beyond the borders of the US, and where a mere 96% of the global population live. That's the rough equivalent of residents of the Isle of Wight splitting the UK into two distinct regions for the sake of convenience - "Wight" and "The Rest". And it has to be said the government and media are disgracefully Rest-centric.

For those who don't know, I have dual US/UK nationality, so you can put these periodical anti-American rants down to a form of self-loathing.

Rejoice : 'civilisation' has been reaffirmed in Georgia

Some timely words of wisdom in the light of Troy Davis' execution -

"Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis’ conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system — not because of the execution, but because it took so long to carry out. “What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair,” said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County’s head prosecutor in 2008. “The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners.""

So, at worst, a mixed day - yes, a man who is highly likely to be innocent has just been put to death, but on the plus side one of the people responsible for that happening can now cretinously feel less "embarrassed" as a result. Also intriguing to discover that "civilisation" seemingly resides in the act of strapping an innocent man to a gurney and then pumping toxic drugs into his body until his heart stops, and not in the act of protesting against such an outrage on "street corners". You learn something new every day.

Conservapedia on Gun Control : the solution

Here, belatedly, is the solution to last week's puzzle...

Word-Search Friday : Conservapedia on Gun Control

Just before I embark on this epic post, a quick reminder that if you haven't already voted, today (Friday) is the last chance to vote for your top ten political blogs and your top ten political bloggers in the Total Politics Blog Awards. In all honesty, it'll be a relief to remove the banner from the top of the page after midnight - it's been making me feel slightly self-conscious!

Anyway, to business. After a bit of a hiatus, here's a disappointingly unalliterative Word-Search Friday, this time devoted to some indisputable facts on the subject of gun control, as revealed by the internet's only 'Trustworthy Encyclopedia'. If only I'd known this stuff before I first got into the 'debate' with the American gun enthusiasts a couple of years ago - I'm quite sure I'd never have maintained my tragic allegiance to the forces of darkness for as long as I have...

(Click to enlarge)

And here (in bold) are the words you're looking for -

Genocide : What Conservapedia reveals has "only ever occurred" after the introduction of gun control. It appears Hitler's liberalisation of Germany's gun laws prior to the Holocaust was a mere figment of our imagination, as was the fact that Iraq was awash with legally-owned guns when Saddam Hussein carried out his genocidal atrocities against the Kurds and others.

Superficially appealing : How Conservapedia characterises the argument that gun control "somehow" leads to less crime. I do hope they paid Kevin Baker royalties before inserting the word "somehow" into that sentence.

Shift voters leftwards : What Conservapedia reveals is the inevitable political effect of introducing gun control. A great pity that Hitler did liberalise the gun laws, then - he could have saved the world an awful lot of hassle if he'd simply gone in the opposite direction.

Primarily defensive weapons : What Conservapedia reveals guns are. However, with 15 gun deaths per year for every 100,000 people in the US, we shouldn't entirely overlook the popularity of the "secondary" function of firearms.

Emotionally dependent on government : What Conservapedia reveals gun control makes people. Jeez, guys, for once will you put your trustworthiness and scrupulous encylopedic neutrality to one side and simply call a spade a spade - gun control is for girls.

Finland : a country that Conservapedia reveals has a higher rate of gun ownership than the US, but a lower rate of crime. The fact that Finland also has by far the highest gun death rate in western Europe is, by contrast, merely an astonishing coincidence.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen : A Finnish mass-murderer who Conservapedia invites us to conclude would have been stopped by an "armed citizen" if only Finland had US-style gun laws. For the avoidance of doubt, there is absolutely no contradiction in the fact that Conservapedia has already praised Finland to the skies for having the laxest gun laws in western Europe, and we most certainly have no business entertaining the thought that Auvinen would never have attacked anyone with guns in the first place had the laws not been quite so lax.

Washington DC : A jurisdiction which Conservapedia points out has traditionally had strong gun control legislation, but also one of the highest crime rates in America. In case you're wondering, the fact that Washington DC borders jurisdictions in which legal guns have long been readily accessible, and the fact that there are no border controls preventing those guns from crossing into Washington DC, is of no relevance whatsoever.

The Crusades : A topic which Conservapedia reveals is no longer taught by some history teachers in English schools as a result of gun control. (Seriously - I'm not making this up. The article actually says that.) Others topics that the absence of guns has disgracefully erased from the English school curriculum include the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Holocaust.

"Cultural reasons" : Conservapedia's devastatingly convincing explanation for why the much lower gun death rate in "England" has nothing whatever to do with the UK's strict gun control legislation. Statistical evidence? Pah, who needs it, when you've got non-specific "cultural differences" to fall back on. Yet more royalties to Kevin Baker.

"Comparison can be difficult due to the presence of other factors" : Conservapedia's devastatingly convincing explanation for why we should pay no attention to the fact that other countries, such as Japan and Signapore, manage to have both strict gun control and low overall crime rates. Let me guess - would those factors be "cultural" in nature?

"Controversy" : What Conservapedia reveals there has been over the success of Australia's gun control laws of 1996 and 2002, before going on to note in passing that overall gun violence has decreased since they were passed.

"No doubt contributes to its reputation as a peaceful and neutral country" : What Conservapedia reveals widespread gun ownership has done for Switzerland. Did Jimmy Carr learn his deadpan delivery from the Trustworthy Encyclopedia?

As ever, the solution will be here in a few days.

Solving the mystery of the British noble savage

My exchange on gun control with Roberta X has been continuing on a thread which is now several days old, so I thought I'd switch to a fresh post for my latest response. I had asked Roberta if she hadn't told me a couple of years ago that she'd been held up at gunpoint twice, and whether the greater likelihood of that happening in her country didn't lead her to a fairly obvious conclusion. This was her response -

"Yes, I have been held up twice at gunpoint -- but I have never been beaten up, which is far more likely in London or Glasgow than Indianapolis. Nor have I ever suffered a "hot" robbery, also much more common there than here.

I do worry about you; I know where murder is most likely to strike here and what the risk factors are (illegal drugs, dating men into drugs, living in certain neighborhoods -- I got robbed in areas I should have known better than to be in at the time of day I was in them). Your rate of violent crime is higher and it is more likely to strike outside of "high risk" zones."

You’re very carefully talking about robberies, violent crime, etc – but not murders. There’s a good reason why you’re avoiding that subject, namely the fact that the murder rate is three times higher in your own country, a statistic that can in no small part be attributed to the rate of gun ownership. I’m not in any way diminishing the terrible trauma caused by robberies, but life goes on after them. Life does not go on if you’ve just been murdered. Therefore, if gun control helps prevent murders, it’s fulfilling its primary objective, regardless of whether we give any credence to your deeply implausible suggestion that it's somehow increasing the rate at which lesser crimes are committed.

And as I’ve already pointed out, you and Kevin Baker are unwittingly harming your own case by harping on about Britain’s violent crime rate – if we’re such a violent society in comparison to the United States and yet have a much, much lower homicide rate, what can possibly explain that discrepancy other than obvious factors such as the extent of gun control? You simply don’t have a credible answer to that question, and Kevin ludicrously flaunts his own inability to answer – “Cultural differences! Oooh, la mystère!” Well, as I said on the previous thread, it must be a hell of a weird “cultural phenomenon” that makes British thugs more likely than their American counterparts to beat someone senseless, but simultaneously far more likely to refrain from actually killing anyone.

The mystery Kevin needs to solve for us is the mystery of the British noble savage. Alternatively he could just consider the obvious explanation – thugs in this country are much less likely to be armed with guns.

"As for riots, given that the States are far larger than Scotland and much more diverse, it is not at all surprising "we" have had riots more recently. Culturally, you've a lot more in common with England and they've had riots even more recently. (Indianapolis, the last riot per se was over a decade ago, smallish and actually resulted in some resolution of the specific issue)."

The point about cultural similarities with England is monumentally silly. We’re culturally closer to the Republic of Ireland than we are to the parts of England that suffered riots – when was the last serious riot in Dublin? We’re culturally closer to New Zealand than America – when was the last serious riot in Auckland? I’m sure we’re very grateful for your “Riot Forecast” service, but your time might be better spent explaining your extraordinary proposition that arming the rioters with guns will somehow assist matters in the unlikely event that we have such a major incident in the near future.

"As for ABB, he failed to obtain guns illegally *once.* He tried via legal means and succeeded. Do you really think if he had been stymied there, he would have folded his hands and said, "That's it for me, then"? I don't think just "any criminal" can lay hands of a gun in either of our countries (it helps to be a careerist instead of a whackjob); but I am sure that a determined one can. ABB had determination."

First point – you still haven’t answered the question of whether it would have been a good thing if, having failed in a serious attempt to obtain guns illegally, he had been prevented from doing so legally. Your implicit answer seems to be “it doesn’t matter”, which is frankly bizarre. However, you raise an interesting point about the determination of criminals to lay their hands on weapons, and this probably gets to the nub of why gun control is such a successful tool in suppressing the murder rate – as you openly conceded yourself, not all criminals will go to any lengths to obtain a gun illegally. Some may, but others will just commit crime opportunistically, and if they don’t happen to have a gun to hand at the time, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they’re much less likely to kill anyone.

"You cannot get rid of guns. It's impossible; not even totalitarian states manage to do so. All you can do is reduce the law-abiding to a pool of helpless victims for any lunatic or predator.

That is an unacceptable outcome."

Nobody is claiming we can “get rid of guns”. But people certainly are claiming that we can limit access to them, and as a result suppress both the gun death rate and the overall homicide rate. The statistical evidence from our two countries leaves you on very weak ground in attempting to dispute that.

To what do I owe the honour this time?

I've just spotted another visit to this blog from Tucson, Arizona (ie. Mr Kevin Baker) on my stats. Now, of course we all know that the great man is ordinarily far too busy Crusading For Liberty to grace us lesser mortals with his presence, so the obvious question - to what do I owe the honour this time? A couple of weeks ago it was the Norwegian atrocity, this time it must be...of course, it's the riots in London. Presumably I'm supposed to have come to my senses by now and realised that things would be so much better if only the rioters had easy access to firearms.

And sure enough, here's the Baker post saying pretty much that. Jeez - is there any social ill that can't be instantly solved for us by an influx of these barbarous weapons?

The chick-lit substitute for Fox News viewers

As an antidote to my withdrawal symptoms from arguing with our friendly neighbourhood 'libertarians', here's a quote from a blogpost entitled 'Going Galt' -

"All you Leftists ask yourselves a question: What will you do when the folks who provide the things you need...all quit? How will you survive when you've strangled the last doctor, dentist and power company?

I know the answer, even if you've never considered the question. You don't care. You hate humanity, and you hate yourselves for being human. You'd rather die than see mankind prosper. That's why you embrace the suicidal insanity of Leftist policies. Your subconcious has followed them to their logical conclusion, and you know, deep down, that what I'm saying is true.

Stop being selfish, bitter little brats and join the rest of us in the world of thinking, reasoning adults. It beats the alternative your psychotic class envy and lust for power is going to lead us to."

Hmmm. You see, the credibility problem with this line of argument is that there are bona fide 'leftist' countries out there we can look at to see whether this "strangulation" of doctors and dentists has actually taken place. Cuba, for example, is noted for having rather a good health care system, considering how poor the country is in other ways. And Sweden's health care system seems to have just about survived several decades of that country's considerably more democratic 'leftist' model.

But by all means don't let reality get in the way of your Randian wish-fulfillment fantasy of tens of thousands of doctors and dentists suddenly "going Galt" just because Obama has dared to inch America from the hard right to the centre-right. Atlas Shrugged is like chick-lit for Fox News viewers.

Too many legal guns in England and Wales? You'll feel better once you have some more.

Yet another virtuoso display of logical gymnastics from Mr Kevin Baker that must surely put him in firm contention for the US Olympic team. He cites the increase in the number of legally-owned weapons in England and Wales as 'evidence' of the foolishness of gun control. So just run this past me again - legalising more categories of weapon would decrease the number of legally-owned weapons? No, of course not. Even Baker himself would have to concede the blindingly-obvious - that whatever problems we may have now with an undesirably high number of legal weapons, that number would be much, much higher without legislative restrictions. So gun control does work to depress the number of legally-owned weapons. And why does that matter so much? Kevin, astoundingly, is rather keen to remind us of the reason himself -

"Forgotten Derrick Bird so soon?"

Er, no we haven't, Kevin. You, on the other hand, might wish to forget him rather urgently, because there must surely be a better advert for the legendary "responsibility of legal gun-owners" than the mass-murderer Mr Bird.

In a similar peculiar vein, Baker goes on to claim that gun control has somehow contributed to the problem of illegal weapons. Oh yes, of course it has, Kevin, it's well known that the UK has a much worse problem with illegal guns than countries with fewer legal restrictions on gun ownership, such as - to pluck an example out of thin air - the US.

He also makes bizarre reference to grenade attacks -

"There have been grenade attacks in the UK. In 2003 a 63 year-old woman lost a leg when a grenade was tossed into her Liverpool home, for example."

Are we supposed to conclude that "owning a gun for defensive purposes" would have given her premonitory powers that it was going to happen, enabling her to know exactly when to start firing wildly through her window?

Finally, if you're ever tempted to take one of Kevin's "rigorous statistical analyses" seriously ever again, you might want to consider this schoolboy howler -

"The population of England and Wales is a bit over 62 million"

No, it isn't, Kevin. That's the population of the whole United Kingdom, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. Just goes to confirm what I've always said - to hell with guns, America needs to invest in some damn good geography teachers.

UPDATE : Having thought about this some more, there's another point that baffles me. After the Cumbrian massacre, Kevin and his Fan Club assured us that the only problem was not that Derrick Bird obtained his weapons legally, but instead that there weren't a whole lot of other gun owners out there in a position to leap into action when needed and shoot Bird on sight (after all, "when there are only seconds to spare, the police are only ever minutes away").

And yet we now learn from Kevin that gun control has been an abject failure because this country is supposedly awash with guns anyway, of both the legal and illegal variety. So, according to his very own logic, it appears that widespread gun ownership isn't much use at 'protecting' the public from the likes of Derrick Bird after all. But between you and me, I think most of us had worked that out already.

Are you listening, Jimmy Wales? Yes, anti-Scottish racism is possible - and you have the word of an English court for that.

I must admit that I'm really, really impressed that a postman has been convicted by an English court of racially-aggravated criminal damage for calling Andy Murray a "useless Jock" in graffiti.  The usual complacent response if we complain about that kind of insult is that we need to locate our sense of humour, and of course the bizarre excuse for allowing Anne Robinson to get away with an anti-Welsh diatribe on TV was that Wales' status as one of the four countries of the UK ought to give Welsh people a resilience that other ethnic minorities don't have.

Spare a thought tonight for one man, though - Jimmy Wales, the founder and dictator of Wikipedia.  In all likelihood, he's currently spinning round and round, muttering "does not compute, does not compute, does not compute".  After all, it's less than a year since he loftily assured us that anti-Scottish racism was literally impossible on the grounds that "Scots are not a race", and decreed that part of the Wiki biography of Baroness Deech must therefore be purged to reflect that 'fact' -

"It is not appropriate to term the comments 'racist' - particularly without a source, as Scots are not a race, and the remarks were purely political and not about Scots as an ethnic group at all. I remain unconvinced that this incident is of any importance whatsoever outside of a narrow portion of the blogosphere."

He then went on to claim that Deech's anti-Scottish remarks on Any Questions? had been a "joke" - and in all apparent seriousness cited as 'evidence' the fact that some of the English audience-members had laughed!

* * *

I was also amused to read the story of the Swedish man who was arrested for illegal possession of nuclear material, and for trying to split atoms in his kitchen -

"Handl, 31, said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.

Only later did he realise it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police."

The Kevin Baker Fan Club must be outraged by Handl's arrest, though - after all, we all know that it is far too dangerous for governments to have a monopoly on any weapon. We'd all be much, much safer if there were millions of private owners of nuclear material. And the idea that radioactive discharges would become more common is a myth - because of course if anyone was behaving irresponsibly, a good guy would soon nuke his house to snuff out the problem.

Make your fallout room NOW

The dregs of my exchange with the Kevin Baker Fan Club are still carrying on back at the original thread, and it suddenly occurred to me what it was Baker's fatuous suggestion of how the Norwegian victims could supposedly have saved themselves reminded me of. It's Protect and Survive - the infamous series of Public Information films to end all Public Information films, that would have been shown on TV had there been a significant and imminent danger of nuclear war. They contain a series of incredibly complex and faintly ludicrous instructions about how people should spend every waking moment before the potential Soviet attack "making sure everything is ready for you and your family". It was of course the ultimate distraction technique on behalf of the government - the problem we face is not the weapons, or our trigger-happy attitude to using those weapons, the only problem is your own lack of readiness. You see, thermonuclear war needn't be the big deal everyone thinks it is - it's perfectly survivable as long as you're prepared. So if you get killed, it's nothing to do with our recklessness as a government, it's entirely your fault for not choosing the correct "fallout room", fortifying your "inner refuge" with the requisite number of hardcover books, having sufficient supplies of tuna to last for at least fourteen days, and having enough batteries to listen to the BBC Wartime Service on your trusty transistor radio.

And so it is with the Kevin Baker Fan Club. A psycopath kills dozens with legally-obtained weapons? Oh, it's not the weapons or the laws we should be looking at, that's a peripheral issue. The only problem was that Norway failed to introduce a National Indoctrination Programme advising young men that in such a situation they are required to calmly attract the gunman's attention by running towards him and pelting him with rocks. You see, widespread gun ownership is no big deal, and gun massacres are perfectly survivable. If you don't survive them, it's largely your own fault.

In truth, of course, while some people would have survived a nuclear attack, that would have been principally down to the luck of their location as much as anything. For most people, the advice in Protect and Survive would have been utterly useless. All that the absurd perception that an individual could "take responsibility for his own survival" achieved was to give certain people an alibi for not focusing on what should have been the first and only priority - making sure the unthinkable never happened in the first place. I'd suggest the same truth applies to potential gun massacres of the type we've just seen. Whatever Kevin and co might like us to believe, it's really not OK if these weapons are everywhere - some attacks are not survivable, however much responsibility we all take for our own personal safety.