British Grandma's Arrest Got Me To Thinking...

See original blog posted on camedwards.com.

The fact that those who reside in England have no right to defend themselves got me to thinking about some things. We here in America have the right to defend ourselves, unlike our British neighbors across the big pond. What got me thinking though is if our right to self-defense isn't so overly restricted with various legislations as to make exercising that right so distressing and over-burdensome that it is almost not worth defending oneself at all.

Here in America, more times than not, a person who defends themselves from a criminal are often put through such distress afterwards that they often times are worse off than if they hadn't exercised their right of self defense at all. The criminal whom you defended yourself against can often sue you for damages, and if the criminal himself doesn't, many times the criminal's family does. So now you have to defend yourself in a legal battle to prove that your actions of self defense were justifiable. You are the one made to look like the bad guy, you are the one but through an emotional wringer, you are the one now being scrutinized by the public, media, jury, prosecuting attorney(s), and most likely the liberally biased judge in front of you.

What else happens to you? If you used a weapon to defend yourself the weapon is confiscated leaving you feel even more vulnerable and victimized than before. The investigations can tear apart your home and family life, let alone the forthcoming trails. There is no "innocent until proven guilty" in this country any longer. You are most likely to be treated just as guilty as the criminal is. It's up to you to prove your innocence, and if you can't do that you're up the creek without a paddle. So it looks to me more like you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent. If you can't prove that your actions of self-defense were justifiable, or if you can't afford decent legal representation, then often times you are penalized for your actions. It can be anything from having to pay for damages caused to the criminal to an all-out prison sentence for you while the criminal walks away a free man. I could give plenty of references to such cases, but I am too tired right now to reference them, and if you do a little research on your own, you can easily find the multitudes of case histories for yourself.

The point that I'm trying to make all basically boils down to the fact that often times there's such life-disrupting events that follow justifiable self-defense situations, that to many people it's not worth exercising the right in the first place. It's all thanks to the liberal lawmakers, they want your rights to be so over-regulated as to make it impractical to exercise them. Once they accomplish that, they can then have that right taken away under the justification that it's an antiquated right that is no longer used, nor needed. Which leads me to another point: Rights are like muscles, if you don't exercise them they will eventually atrophy, but that's getting into a topic for another day.

What would I do? I'd exercise my right to self-defense anyways. I'm a damn stubborn son of a gun who won't give up his God-given rights for anyone or anything, consequences be damned.