Author Topic: Interesting article about English gun laws throughout recent history. (Part 1 )  (Read 5191 times)

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Offline Robertt S

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England and Gun Control --- Moral Decline of an Empire
Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.
Et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium.
 Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634)

 The Legacy of Revolutions
 
It seems that when it comes to the issue of gun control, England has never gotten over the shock of the American Revolution, when a band of patriots, ordinary armed citizens, citizens who were very protective of their rights and liberties, challenged the mighty British empire, and ultimately prevailed.
Here is the historical background. After the Puritanical rule of the Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), the British populace welcomed the restoration of King Charles II, condoning the pageantry and permissiveness within his court as well as tolerating the restrictive gun control laws he implemented in the realm. (i.e., the Game Act of 1671). The policies (and religion) of his brother successor, King James II, on the other hand, were not tolerated, and within a few years Parliament orchestrated the Glorious Revolution (1689) that ousted James II and established Parliament's supremacy over the Crown. Included among the Declaration of Rights (Feb. 13, 1689) which Prince William of Orange and his wife Mary, James II's Parliamentary chosen successors, had to agree to accept before they could ascend the throne of England was: "That the subjects which are protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions, and as allowed by Law." Notice in the statement the lack of equality of citizens before the law (i.e., Protestant vs. Catholic), the arbitrary government prerogative to restrict the natural rights of citizens, and the violation of Sir Edward Coke's wise dictum, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium, "a man's home is his castle," and that a man has a right to possess arms to protect his property, himself, his home, and family. Ditto for Sir William Blackstone's (1723-1780) fifth and last auxiliary right of a citizen, the God-given right of a person to keep and bear arms for his basic and natural right of resistance to oppression and for self-preservation --- "So long as those [liberties of Englishmen] remain inviolate, the subject is perfectly free; for every species of compulsive tyranny and oppression must act in opposition to one or other of those rights."(1) Be that as it may, with the Declaration of Rights, the natural right to self-protection in England became subjected to arbitrary government infringement.
It goes without saying that while we as Americans believe man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, Property, and those natural rights encapsulated in the Bill of Rights that allow us to pursue Happiness unimpeded by government (i.e., as long as we don't violate the equal rights of others) --- the British allowed their government to assign them "rights" which could then be restricted or qualified out of existence at will by government ---- be it the despotic, capricious rule of the Crown or the tyrannical, arbitrary, Parliament majority, or for that matter, the UN.*
And so, near Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, when the British attempted to apprehend the leaders of the brewing rebellion, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and intended to seize and confiscate the arms and ammunition the patriots had stored at Concord --- the shot was fired that was heard around the world. A band of armed patriots --- an organized militia with small private arms, the Minutemen of the revolution --- routed the mighty Red Coats, the disciplined and highly professional force of the British Empire.
The rest, as they say, is history...despite a protracted assault on our liberties by the advances of creeping (democratic) socialism, globalism, public mis-education, and liberal mass media indoctrination --- our Constitutional Republic survives and America remains the freest country in the world.
 
Pinochet's Nightmare
 
Great Britain, once considered by some to be perhaps the most civilized country in the world, has allowed itself to be carried by the continental wave of European democratic socialism. And now led by the heirs of the Fabian socialists of the Labor Party, Britain has betrayed the code of conduct of civilized nations and international jurisprudence by kidnapping and holding General Pinochet, a former head of state, under arrest at the extradition request of a socialist Spanish judge on dubious criminal charges to satisfy left-wing, global political correctness. Gen. Pinochet was apprehended Oct. 17 while recuperating from back surgery and is being held under house arrest at the Wentworth Estate outside London. Initially, a British high court prevailed and the charges were temporarily suspended. But then on November 25, 1998, the Law Lords, a House of Lords British tribunal voted 3 to 2 to have Gen. Pinochet stay in England to face extradition charges to Spain, "for crimes against humanity, murder and genocide." It now appears Prime Minister Tony Blair blackmailed the House of Lords with the intimation, only two days prior to the ruling, that the peerage could lose its hereditary membership in the name of "democratic reform." To make matters even worse for the ruling, it has now been found the judge, Lord Justice Hoffman, who cast the deciding vote had a serious conflict of interest with ties to Amnesty International, a group which has long campaigned against Pinochet.
How low can you stoop to trample the rule of law? If Pinochet, who saved his country from Marxist tyranny and then after re-establishing the rule of law handed over the reins of power to democratic rule in Chile, faced extradition "for crimes against humanity, murder and genocide," then why not other dictators e.g., Fidel Castro, the longest ruling tyrant in the world, who still reigns over the communist, island-prison of Cuba. In fact, Castro, who was visiting Spain at the time of Pinochet's travails, declared he would be happy to see Pinochet extradited to face criminal charges. But as a recent report by Accuracy In Media (AIM) succinctly put it: The revolution he launched on September 11, 1973, was relatively bloodless. According to official reports, 3,200 people were killed or disappeared. Allende himself committed suicide with a gun that was a gift from Fidel Castro.
By contrast, Fidel Castro had executed 22,000 people by the end of 1969, according to the estimate of an intelligence officer at the Spanish embassy in Havana. The bloodletting did not stop then. A Cuban scholar, Dr. Armando Lago, estimates that the total is now 30,000. Tens of millions were killed by Lenin and Stalin in Russia and by Mao Tse-tung and his successors in China. The butchers of Tiananmen Square may have killed as many in one day as the Chilean military killed in the 17 years of Pinochet's rule, but their ringleader, Jiang Zemin, was recently an honored guest at the Clinton White House.(3)
Allow me again to digress briefly and mention, at least for now, another ongoing story and related embarrassing situation for Britain, the Irish problem, the protracted insurrection aimed at the heart of the British nation and which has nearly brought the once great empire to its knees. And let us say it, despite the trading of personal liberty for public security and the step-by-step imposition of draconian gun control and the restrictions of other civil liberties in the name of fighting IRA terrorism, the Irish problem remains unresolved. The measures have provided neither peace, tranquility, nor safety --- long-lasting peace remains to be seen.
The British authorities had been impotent to stop terrorist attacks, yet British subjects have been left disarmed, denied personal safety in the streets and the right of self-protection and of self-defense in their own homes. Under England's present gun control laws only certified members of approved target shooting gun clubs are allowed to keep firearms, which must be .22 caliber or smaller, and which must be kept locked up at the gun club at all times. There are also no veritable self-defense laws in England.(4)

 The Rise in British Crime and Violence
 
Despite the talking heads on the evening news implying otherwise, violent crime is steadily coming down in American cities, despite the fact there are more guns in America than ever before (i.e., refuting the simplistic public health view of "more guns, more crime"[5]) and record numbers of citizens carrying permits for concealed firearms. Only Switzerland, where virtually every home houses a fully automatic firearm and every adult male citizen is armed and expected to participate in the national polity as well as local self-government, can boost a longer-lived but just as stable a republic as ours. To make matters worse for British citizen disarmament, despite their draconian gun control laws and their loss of civil liberties, crime has steadily increased in Britain in the last several years: "Britons are chagrined by the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice study that says a person is nearly twice as likely to be robbed, assaulted or have a vehicle stolen in Britain as in the United States. The Trans-Atlantic cousins can take comfort in the fact that the United States remains far ahead of Britain in violent crimes, including murder and rape, although the gap is narrowing there as well."(6)
Additionally, the study revealed, "In 1995, the last year for which complete statistics were available for both countries, there were 20 assaults per 1,000 people or households in England and Wales but only 8.8 in the United States."(4) While the U.S. still leads in the most violent crimes, rates for serious crimes such as murder are coming down relative to Great Britain. In fact, the Associated Press recently reported that U.S. murder rates have reached a 30-year low and "serious crimes reported by police declined for the sixth straight year in 1997."(7)
During this period of the study which was conducted by a Cambridge University professor and a statistician from the U.S. Department of Justice and reported in The Washington Times, several types of crimes rose steadily in Britain while declining in America. For example, "Robberies rose 81 percent in England and Wales but fell to 28 percent in the United States. Assault increased 53 percent in England and Wales but declined 27 percent in the United States. Burglaries doubled in England but fell by half in the United States and motor vehicle theft rose 51 percent in England but remained the same in the United States."(6)
To make matters worse for England (and this is also true for Canada), in those countries where citizens are disarmed in their own homes, day burglary is commonplace and dangerous because criminals know they will not be shot at if caught flagrante delicto; whereas in the U.S., burglars prefer night burglaries and they try to make sure homeowners are not at home to avoid being shot at by the intended victims. A recent report on this dangerous practice and the rising tide of thievery and burglaries in England has dubbed Britain "a nation of thieves." The London Sunday Times noted: "More than one in three British men has a criminal record by the age of 40. While America has cut its crime rate dramatically Britain remains the crime capitol of the West. Where," asks the British author, "have we gone wrong?"(8)
Ironically, the most drastic ascendancy of crimes in Britain was found in those types of felonies where recent studies in the U.S. have shown that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, not only save lives, but protect private property, reduce injuries to good people, and crime is generally deterred.(9) For example, the use of firearms to protect oneself against violent predators has proved to be an effective self-defense measure in the United States according to several studies described in the monumental books, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (1991) and Targeting Guns (1997) by Prof. Gary Kleck of Florida State University; Don B. Kates, et. al., in the Tennessee Law Review journal; David Kopel in at least two books, Guns --- Who Should Have Them (1995) and The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (1993); and Dr. Edgar Suter and other members of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research in various articles in the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (1994-1995).(10,11)
Even U.S. government studies have had to admit the beneficial aspects of gun ownership in the hands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens, particularly in the area of self-protection. For example, a 1993 Department of Justice study found that "67.2 percent of people who had used a weapon to defend themselves against violent crime believed it had helped their situation." The results of this study are, of course, also in line with the 1996 epochal paper and subsequent book, More Guns Less Crime --- Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws (1998) by University of Chicago professor John Lott and researcher David Mustard, which found that allowing people to carry concealed weapons deters violent crime --- without any apparent increase in accidental deaths. The work of these researchers, based on 16 years of studying FBI crime data for all 3,054 U.S. counties, concluded that "if states without right-to-carry laws had adopted them in 1992, about 1,570
 murders, 4,177 rapes, and 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided annually."(12)
 

Offline Robertt S

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Part ( 2)

Women --- Lacking Guns and The Right To Self-Protection

Moreover, as it refers to women specifically, studies in the U.S. have shown that guns are the great equalizer for females when accosted in the streets or assaulted in their homes. When a woman is armed with a gun, up to 83 percent of the time she will be successful at preventing rape, and only half as likely of being injured in the process.(9) Armed with this information, more American women are becoming gun owners. It has been estimated that between 1988-1996, gun ownership for women nationwide has jumped by 70 percent and the Department of Licensing of Firearm Units shows that 18.6 percent of concealed gun permit holders in Washington state are women. And, interestingly, according to Lott's research "for each additional woman carrying a concealed handgun, the murder rate for women is reduced by 3 or 4 times more than one additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men."(12) This statistic bolsters criminologist Don B. Kates' findings in the 1980s that a woman with a gun who is willing to use it will deter rape in 83 percent of cases. These figures should be good news in the U.S. for the 17 million American women estimated to carry guns.(13)

On the other hand, British women (like men) have no such right to self-defense and are barred from having handguns for self-protection in the home (i.e., when attacked, they are suppose to flee and leave their homes to their assailants hoping they can escape), not to mention the ability to carry concealed guns for self-defense when accosted in the streets. While the number of rapes in the U.S. is still higher than in Great Britain, it's falling, whereas the rate of sex crimes and violent assaults in England and Wales is increasing rapidly due to their permissive criminal justice system and tendency to rehabilitate rather than punish criminals --- and, of course, the stringent policy of citizen disarmament. This pusillanimous policy advertises to sex criminals that they have nothing to fear not only from their criminal justice system but also from their intended victims.

The Irish Problem --- One Final Caveat

While it's obvious to the most naïve observer that one of Great Britain's reasons for citizen disarmament is that it does not have a Second Amendment guaranteeing the natural right to self-defense, there are other slightly less obvious reasons such as England's Fabian socialist incrementalist drive toward statism and authoritarianism at the expense of individual rights and freedom. A still more elusive reason (i.e., which to my knowledge has not yet been aired), is the fact that like it or not, England has been waging a war, unsuccessfully by everyone's account, to squelch the terrorist IRA in which, at least in Northern Ireland, every young Catholic man is a suspect and the British government will not allow him the right to keep and bear arms and the right of self- (and family-) defense. Not surprisingly, young Protestant terrorists of Northern Ireland (e.g., Ulster's Union) have become almost as much of a threat to Catholics who are frequently victims of terrorist acts in Northern Ireland.

But have these draconian gun control laws worked in Great Britain, a nation which at the turn of the century was free of crime and terrorism and had only relatively modest gun control laws? Facts corroborate that they have not. Crime has steadily increased along with Third World immigration, the rise of socialism and the welfare state, the persistent political (and religious) conflict of Northern Ireland, and gun control laws becoming more strident.

How about the terrorist threat? While Great Britain had no trouble dispatching the Argentinean army and its professional air force in the Falklands War, it has been repeatedly humiliated by the IRA. So much so that the British government has been forced to come to the negotiating table and deal with the IRA's political arm, Sinn Fein, and its leader, Jerry Adams, as an equal. Why? Consider this fact: the FBI officially estimates the active IRA to be a mere 200 members on an island the size of Arkansas. And yet, this small band has kept the proud British army at bay for decades, and ultimately, as has recently taken place, has forced them to negotiate with their terrorist leaders as equal, despite gun control and the implementation of strict anti-terrorist measures throughout the United Kingdom.

With "...Neither Liberty Nor Safety"

In short, as a student of history with a great admonition and respect for the flowering of Western civilization in the form of the British classical liberalism of the late 19th century, the enlightened reign of Queen Victoria when England ruled the seas, and other marvels of British culture and history --- I remain perplexed by the unwillingness of the British to see the light and change course when faced with the inimical gains of socialism, statism, and modern liberalism (i.e., authoritarianism) in Great Britain** --- particularly, the British government's relentless attack against citizen ownership of private firearms, even for sporting purposes, and the step-by-step disarmament that prevents ordinary, law-abiding British subjects to protect themselves, their families, and their properties, not even in their own homes. Nor am I happy about Britain's not-so-subtle and repeated criticism of our cherished traditions and rugged individualism particularly those contained in our Bill of Rights in such respected publications as The Economist, with its expressed and graphic contempt (i.e., satirical cover of menacing guns, editorials, etc.) for our Second Amendment to the Constitution, the right of Americans to keep and bear arms --- the palladium of our liberties, the right that protects all others.

Footnote

*This is in fact the case with the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which is not comparable to our Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights.(2)

**Democratic socialism is socialism nonetheless and it reigns supremely in England where only the press is freer than in America, as evidenced, to their singular credit, in their superlative coverage and investigative journalism in chronicling our serious scandals, (e.g., the strange death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, evidence of government prior knowledge in the Oklahoma City bombing, etc.) where our own "respectable" media was often negligent, except in reporting the sordid details of the Monica Lewinsky matter.

References

 

1. Blackstone W. Commentaries on the Laws of England. First edition, 1765. Reprinted, 1974. Quoted by L. Adams in The Second Amendment Primer, Birmingham, AL, 1996, p.60.
2. Faria MA Jr. Vandals at the Gates of Medicine --- Historic Perspectives On the Battle Over Health Care Reform. Macon, GA, Hacienda Publishing, Inc., 1995, p.116.
3. Hypocrites pillory Pinochet. AIM Report, December-A. 1998, http://www.aim.org.
4. Kopel D. Gun Control in Great Britain: Saving Lives or Constricting Liberty? Office of International Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 1992, p.46. Quoted by Murphy C. Current in Theory and Reality of Self-Defense in Great Britain. Gun News Digest, Spring 1997, p.22-23, 45.
5. Faria MA Jr. The perversion of science and medicine (Parts I-IV). Medical Sentinel 1997;2(2):46-53 and 2(3):81-86, http://www.haciendapub.com.
6. Marshall T. Is Times Square safer than Piccadilly Circus? The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, Oct. 19-25, 1998.
7. Sniffen MJ. Murder rate reaches 30-year low. Associated Press, Nov. 23, 1998.
8. Ungoed-Thomas J. A nation of thieves. London Sunday Times, Jan. 11, 1998. Quoted by J. Tartaro in Great Britain --- "a nation of thieves." Gun News Digest, Fall 1998, p.27.
9. Faria MA Jr. Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine. Macon, GA, Hacienda Publishing, Inc., 1997, pp.107-120.
10. Suter EA. Guns in the medical literature --- a failure of peer review. J Med Assoc Ga 1994;83(3):137-148.
11. Suter EA, Waters WC IV, Murray GB, et al. Violence in America -effective solutions. J Med Assoc Ga 1995;84(6):253-263.
12. Lott JR. More Guns Less Crime --- Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1998.
13. Kelly C. Blown away. Penthouse, Nov. 1998. Quoted by Peggy Tartaro in Penthouse puts women gunowners at 17 million. Gun News Digest, Winter 1998-1999, p.42.

Dr. Faria is a consultant neurosurgeon and author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (Macon, Georgia, Hacienda Publishing, Inc., 1995) and Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (Macon, Georgia, Hacienda Publishing, Inc., 1997). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Sentinel, the official journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 1999;4(2):52-55. Copyright©1999 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

Offline Willy The Londoner

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The rest, as they say, is history...despite a protracted assault on our liberties by the advances of creeping (democratic) socialism, globalism, public mis-education, and liberal mass media indoctrination --- our Constitutional Republic survives and America remains the freest country in the world.
 

I do not think I should get into this one!!!!!

Willy

PS have you actually read all these or have you just copy and pasted them?

« Last Edit: December 17, 2012, 10:22:36 pm by Willy The Londoner »
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Offline Philip

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 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)  Dream on or Drone on

Offline Willy The Londoner

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A. I could not have put it better myself

Willy
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Offline Willy The Londoner

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Whey Hey! ;D I've got my Smileys back.

Now who shall I upset with them today? ::)

Willy
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Offline Scottish_Robbie

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Two very interesting posts Robert...

Willy Do you think yu may take a day off trying to upset people...especially our 'American Cousins'....LOL ;D ;D ;D
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" Winston Churchill

Offline Rhonald

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But have these draconian gun control laws worked in Great Britain, a nation which at the turn of the century was free of crime and terrorism and had only relatively modest gun control laws? Facts corroborate that they have not. Crime has steadily increased along with Third World immigration, the rise of socialism and the welfare state, the persistent political (and religious) conflict of Northern Ireland, and gun control laws becoming more strident.

The inputs to this topic sentence is not logical. The body identifies 4 plausible reason for the increase of crime:
1.) Crimes have increased along with 3rd world immigration? - implies that gun control led to greater 3rd world immigration.
2.) rise of socialism and the welfare state (yes I would say that increased welfare - implies poorer people - leading to crime)
3.) the Northern Ireland conflict
4.) gun control becoming more strident

The author says there are 4 inputs to the problem but only blames gun control as the culprit. If this was the case, then there would be only 1 input - gun control - and that inturn has caused the other 3 so called inputs.

I would say that at the turn of the century England was a far different place and that the lax gun control at that time was not the reason of England's prosperity but a by product. New laws are in-acted in the attempt to control or curb a problem. To suggest that gun control laws affect an increase or decrease in crime misses the point. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms  Look at the chart and you see the USA as #4. Look at the top 3 and see how much higher then the USA. I was surprise to see Thailand as #3 being that it a country that is predominately Buddhist in its belief, but I could understand the top 2.

The reason for wishing to own a gun is more directly related to if the need for gun control should be required. If I live in a crime infested area where many have guns, then I sure hope I can get one too. If I live next door to a person soon to go off the deep end, then I sure hope he can not get a gun easily.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2012, 10:39:40 am by Rhonald »
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Offline David E

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Once again we can see the complete polarisation within a small group (us) and very likely reflective of whole Societies on the issue of gun control vs changes in crime rates etc etc etc.

There are those that passionately feel that gun control minimises crime and injury...and there are those that have exactly the opposite view.

There are many and varied Laws, Ordinances, Customs and Traditions across many Countries that define how, what and why their Citizens can or cannot own firearms.

But one critical fact seperates all other Countries from the USA model...and that is that the right to bear arms is written in the American Constitution and to change this is well nigh impossible. I cannot find evidence on "the net" that any other country has such a Law as part of it's Constitution.

If it is a Citizens absolute Constitutional right to bear arms, then you have to accept all the consequences of that Right...whether they be good, bad or indifferent.....or you need to change the Constitution. As far as changes to the Constitution goes, it is almost impossible to mandate such a change as it requires a Public Plebiscite with greater than 70 % acceptance...For this reason alone, most attempts to change a Constitution fail because of the huge suspicion that the Public has about any National referendum that seeks to change this "holy of holies, the Constitution).

In Aus, these attempts to change our Constitution always fail, because the questionaire always is loaded with other agendas and is never a clear question , put simply.

In a statistical sense it is entirely possible to pluck numbers from many sources that firstly prove that gun control fixes everything including in-growing toenails ...or secondly causes every ill that any society has.

America is unique in the way it handles the Public Right to bear Arms and until the Constitution is amended, America must suffer both the right and the wrongs of that Constitutional imperative.

If you want to make an omelette...you gotta break an egg.....very sad, but very true.

Offline Rhonald

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The thing about the 2nd admenment - the right to bear arms -  is that the definition of arms:
arm
noun
1.
Usually, arms. weapons, especially firearms.
is that as the definition implies - usually firearms, but the definition for arms can also mean hand grenades, rocket launchers, & flamethrowers. So since these weapons are curbed in the ability to aquire, then why cannot certain firearms also be cut back? I sure am glad America has no NGA  National Gernade Association.

But one critical fact seperates all other Countries from the USA model...and that is that the right to bear arms is written in the American Constitution and to change this is well nigh impossible. I cannot find evidence on "the net" that any other country has such a Law as part of it's Constitution.


Article 10 of Mexican Constitution of 1917 states the following:
 "Article 10. The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have the right to possess arms within their domicile, for their safety and legitimate defense, except those forbidden by Federal Law and those reserved for the exclusive use of the Army, Militia, Air Force and National Guard. Federal law shall provide in what cases, conditions, under what requirements and in which places inhabitants shall be authorized to bear arms."[11]

Mexico's constitution has a right to keep and bear arms for its citizens. However, it is much more restrictive than the USA's Second Amendment:
 1.Members of hunting clubs may be able to acquire hunting guns in of a non-prohibited caliber.
 2.There is one gun store in the country (in Mexico City). It takes about a month for purchases to be approved. Approval will be denied once you own more than 2 handguns or 10 long guns.
 3.Carry permits exist for outside of your home, but are rarely granted.
 4.Mexican citizens and immigrants can have firearms in their homes, and only of permitted firearms. The privilege of carrying a firearm outside of one's home is limited to what is authorized by Mexican federal law.
 5.All privately-owned firearms are registered with the Mexican army.

Of course with the drug wars going on there, having or not having a gun would not make me feel any safer.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2012, 05:02:47 pm by Rhonald »
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Offline David K

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Hey Phillip...Drone on means something quite different to those the AfPak region, far away from dear old blighty

---------
The Woes of an American Drone Operator

By Nicola Abé,  December 17, 2012  "De Spiegel"

 - - For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It's the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren't flying through the air. They're just sitting at the controls.

Bryant was one of them, and he remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,250 miles) away. There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact.

"These moments are like in slow motion," he says today. Images taken with an infrared camera attached to the drone appeared on his monitor, transmitted by satellite, with a two-to-five-second time delay.

With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.
Second zero was the moment in which Bryant's digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.
"Did we just kill a kid?" he asked the man sitting next to him.
"Yeah, I guess that was a kid," the pilot replied.

"Was that a kid?" they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.
Then, someone they didn't know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. "No. That was a dog," the person wrote.
They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

Invisible Warfare

When Bryant left the container that day, he stepped directly into America: dry grasslands stretching to the horizon, fields and the smell of liquid manure. Every few seconds, a light on the radar tower at the Cannon Air Force Base flashed in the twilight. There was no war going on there.
Modern warfare is as invisible as a thought, deprived of its meaning by distance. It is no unfettered war, but one that is controlled from small high-tech centers in various places in the world. The new (way of conducting) war is supposed to be more precise than the old one, which is why some call it "more humane." It's the war of an intellectual, a war United States President Barack Obama has promoted more than any of his predecessors.

In a corridor at the Pentagon where the planning for this war takes place, the walls are covered with dark wood paneling. The men from the Air Force have their offices here. A painting of a Predator, a drone on canvas, hangs next to portraits of military leaders. From the military's perspective, no other invention has been as successful in the "war on terror" in recent years as the Predator.
The US military guides its drones from seven air bases in the United States, as well as locations abroad, including one in the East African nation of Djibouti. From its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the CIA controls operations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
'We Save Lives'

Colonel William Tart, a man with pale eyes and a clear image of the enemy, calls the drone a "natural extension of the distance."
Until a few months ago, when he was promoted to head the US Air Force's Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Task Force in Langley, Tart was a commander at the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, near Las Vegas, where he headed drone operations. Whenever he flew drones himself, he kept a photo of his wife and three daughters pasted into the checklist next to the monitors.
He doesn't like the word drone, because he says it implies that the vehicle has its own will or ego. He prefers to call them "remotely piloted aircraft," and he points out that most flights are for gathering information. He talks about the use of drones on humanitarian missions after the earthquake in Haiti, and about the military successes in the war in Libya: how his team fired on a truck that was pointing rockets at Misrata, and how it chased the convoy in which former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and his entourage were fleeing. He describes how the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan are constantly expressing their gratitude for the assistance from the air. "We save lives," he says.

He doesn't say as much about the targeted killing. He claims that during his two years as operations commander at Creech, he never saw any noncombatants die, and that the drones only fire at buildings when women and children are not in them. When asked about the chain of command, Tart mentions a 275-page document called 3-09.3. Essentially, it states that drone attacks must be approved, like any other attacks by the Air Force. An officer in the country where the operations take place has to approve them.

The use of the term "clinical war" makes him angry. It reminds him of the Vietnam veterans who accuse him of never having waded through the mud or smelled blood, and who say that he doesn't know what he's talking about.  That isn't true, says Tart, noting that he often used the one-hour drive from work back to Las Vegas to distance himself from his job. "We watch people for months. We see them playing with their dogs or doing their laundry. We know their patterns like we know our neighbors' patterns. We even go to their funerals." It wasn't always easy, he says.
One of the paradoxes of drones is that, even as they increase the distance to the target, they also create proximity. "War somehow becomes personal," says Tart.

'I Saw Men, Women and Children Die'

A yellow house stands on the outskirts of the small city of Missoula, Montana, against a background of mountains, forests and patches of fog. The ground is coated with the first snow of the season. Bryant, now 27, is sitting on the couch in his mother's living room. He has since left the military and is now living back at home. He keeps his head shaved and has a three-day beard. "I haven't been dreaming in infrared for four months," he says with a smile, as if this were a minor victory for him.
Bryant completed 6,000 flight hours during his six years in the Air Force. "I saw men, women and children die during that time," says Bryant. "I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn't kill anyone at all."

An Unpopular Job

After graduating from high school, Bryant wanted to become an investigative journalist. He used to go to church on Sundays, and he had a thing for redheaded cheerleaders. By the end of his first semester at college, he had already racked up thousands of dollars in debt.
He came to the military by accident. One day, while accompanying a friend who was enlisting in the army, he heard that the Air Force had its own university, and that he could get a college education for free. Bryant did so well in tests that he was assigned to an intelligence collection unit. He learned how to control the cameras and lasers on a drone, as well as to analyze ground images, maps and weather data. He became a sensor operator, more or less the equivalent to a co-pilot.
He was 20 when he flew his first mission over Iraq. It was a hot, sunny day in Nevada, but it was dark inside the container and just before daybreak in Iraq. A group of American soldiers were on their way back to their base camp. Bryant's job was to monitor the road, to be their "guardian angel" in the sky.

He saw an eye, a shape in the asphalt. "I knew the eye from the training," he says. To bury an improvised explosive device in the road, the enemy combatants place a tire on the road and burn it to soften the asphalt. Afterwards it looks like an eye from above.
The soldiers' convoy was still miles away from the eye. Bryant told his supervisor, who notified the command center. He was forced to look on for several minutes, Bryant says today, as the vehicles approached the site.
"What should we do?" he asked his coworker.
But the pilot was also new on the job.
The soldiers on the ground couldn't be reached by radio, because they were using a jamming transmitter. Bryant saw the first vehicle drive over the eye. Nothing happened.
Then the second vehicle drove over it. Bryant saw a flash beneath, followed by an explosion inside the vehicle.
Five American soldiers were killed.
From then on, Bryant couldn't keep the five fellow Americans out of his thoughts. He began learning everything by heart, including the manuals for the Predator and the missiles, and he familiarized himself with every possible scenario. He was determined to be the best, so that this kind of thing would never happen again.

'I Felt Disconnected from Humanity'

His shifts lasted up to 12 hours. The Air Force still had a shortage of personnel for its remote-controlled war over Iraq and Afghanistan. Drone pilots were seen as cowardly button-pushers. It was such an unpopular job that the military had to bring in retired personnel.
Bryant remembers the first time he fired a missile, killing two men instantly. As Bryant looked on, he could see a third man in mortal agony. The man's leg was missing and he was holding his hands over the stump as his warm blood flowed onto the ground -- for two long minutes. He cried on his way home, says Bryant, and he called his mother.
"I felt disconnected from humanity for almost a week," he says, sitting in his favorite coffee shop in Missoula, where the smell of cinnamon and butter wafts in the air. He spends a lot of time there, watching people and reading books by Nietzsche and Mark Twain, sometimes getting up to change seats. He can't sit in one place for very long anymore, he says. It makes him nervous.

His girlfriend broke up with him recently. She had asked him about the burden he carries, so he told her about it. But it proved to be a hardship she could neither cope with nor share.
When Bryant drives through his hometown, he wears aviator sunglasses and a Palestinian scarf. The inside of his Chrysler is covered with patches from his squadrons. On his Facebook page, he's created a photo album of his coins, unofficial medals he was awarded. All he has is this one past. He wrestles with it, but it is also a source of pride.
When he was sent to Iraq in 2007, he posted the words "ready for action" on his profile. He was assigned to an American military base about 100 kilometers (63 miles) from Baghdad, where his job was to take off and land drones.
As soon as the drones reached flying altitude, pilots in the United States took over. The Predator can remain airborne for an entire day, but it is also slow, which is why it is stationed near the area of operation. Bryant posed for photos wearing sand-colored overalls and a bulletproof vest, leaning against a drone.
Two years later, the Air Force accepted him into a special unit, and he was transferred to the Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. He and a fellow soldier shared a bungalow in a dusty town called Clovis, which consists mainly of trailers, gas stations and evangelical churches. Clovis is located hours away from the nearest city.

Bryant preferred night shifts, because that meant it was daytime in Afghanistan. In the spring, the landscape, with its snow-covered peaks and green valleys, reminded him of his native Montana. He saw people cultivating their fields, boys playing soccer and men hugging their wives and children.
When it got dark, Bryant switched to the infrared camera. Many Afghans sleep on the roof in the summer, because of the heat. "I saw them having sex with their wives. It's two infrared spots becoming one," he recalls.

He observed people for weeks, including Taliban fighters hiding weapons, and people who were on lists because the military, the intelligence agencies or local informants knew something about them.
"I got to know them. Until someone higher up in the chain of command gave me the order to shoot." He felt remorse because of the children, whose fathers he was taking away. "They were good daddies," he says.
In his free time, Bryant played video games or "World of Warcraft" on the Internet, or he went out drinking with the others. He can't watch TV anymore because it is neither challenging or stimulating enough for him. He's also having trouble sleeping these days.

'There Was No Time for Feelings'

Major Vanessa Meyer, whose real name is covered with black tape, is giving a presentation at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico on the training of drone pilots. The Air Force plans to have enough personnel to cover its needs by 2013.
Meyer, 34, who is wearing lip gloss and a diamond on her finger, used to fly cargo planes before she became a drone pilot. Dressed in green Air Force overalls, she is standing in a training cockpit and, using a simulator to demonstrate how a drone is guided over Afghanistan. The crosshair on the monitor follows a white car until it reaches a group of mud huts. One uses the joystick to determine the drone's direction, and the left hand is used to operate the lever that slows down or accelerates the unmanned aircraft. On an airfield behind the container, Meyer shows us the Predator, slim and shiny, and its big brother, the Reaper, which carries four missiles and a bomb. "Great planes," she says. "They just don't work in bad weather."
Meyer flew drones at Creech, the air base near Las Vegas, where young men drive in and out in sports cars and mountain chains stretch across the desert like giant reptiles. Describing his time as a drone pilot in Nevada, Colonel Matt Martin wrote in his book "Predator" that, "Sometimes I felt like God hurling thunderbolts from afar." Meyer had her first child when she was working there. She was still sitting in the cockpit, her stomach pressing up against the keyboard, in her ninth month of pregnancy.
"There was no time for feelings" when she was preparing for an attack, she says today. Of course, she says, she felt her heart beating faster and the adrenaline rushing through her body. But then she adhered strictly to the rules and focused on positioning the aircraft. "When the decision had been made, and they saw that this was an enemy, a hostile person, a legal target that was worthy of being destroyed, I had no problem with taking the shot."

No Room for the Evils of the World

After work, she would drive home along US Highway 85 into Las Vegas, listening to country music and passing peace activists without looking at them. She rarely thought about what happened in the cockpit. But sometimes she would review the individual steps in her head, hoping to improve her performance.
Or she would go shopping. It felt strange to her, sometimes, when the woman at the register would ask: "How's it going?" She would answer: "I'm good. How are you? Have a nice day." When she felt restless she would go for a run. She says that being able to help the boys on the ground motivated her to get up every morning.
There was no room for the evils of the world in Meyer's home. She and her husband, a drone pilot, didn't talk about work. She would put on her pajamas and watch cartoons on TV or play with the baby.
Today Meyer has two small children. She wants to show them "that mommy can get to work and do a good job." She doesn't want to be like the women in Afghanistan she watched -- submissive and covered from head to toe. "The women there are no warriors," she says. Meyer says that he current job as a trainer is very satisfying but that, one day, she would like to return to combat duty.

'I Can't Just Switch Back and Go Back to Normal Life'
At some point, Brandon Bryant just wanted to get out and do something else. He spent a few more months overseas, this time in Afghanistan. But then, when he returned to New Mexico, he found that he suddenly hated the cockpit, which smelled of sweat. He began spraying air freshener to get rid of the stench. He also found he wanted to do something that saved lives rather than took them away. He thought working as a survival trainer might fit the bill, although his friends tried to dissuade him.
The program that he then began working on in his bungalow in Clovis every day was called Power 90 Extreme, a boot camp-style fitness regimen. It included dumbbell training, push-ups, chin-ups and sit-ups. He also lifted weights almost every day.
On uneventful days in the cockpit, he would write in his diary, jotting down lines like: "On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed. Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot."
If he could just get into good enough shape, he thought to himself, they would let him do something different. The problem was that he was pretty good at his job.
At some point he no longer enjoyed seeing his friends. He met a girl, but she complained about his bad moods. "I can't just switch and go back to normal life," he told her. When he came home and couldn't sleep, he would exercise instead. He began talking back to his superior officers.
One day he collapsed at work, doubling over and spitting blood. The doctor told him to stay home, and ordered him not to return to work until he could sleep more than four hours a night for two weeks in a row.
"Half a year later, I was back in the cockpit, flying drones," says Bryant, sitting in his mother's living room in Missoula. His dog whimpers and lays its head on his cheek. He can't get to his own furniture at the moment. It's in storage, and he doesn't have the money to pay the bill. All he has left is his computer.

Bryant posted a drawing on Facebook the night before our interview. It depicts a couple standing, hand-in-hand, in a green meadow, looking up at the sky. A child and a dog are sitting on the ground next to them. But the meadow is just a part of the world. Beneath it is a sea of dying soldiers, propping themselves up with their last bit of strength, a sea of bodies, blood and limbs.

Doctors at the Veterans' Administration diagnosed Bryant with post-traumatic stress disorder. General hopes for a comfortable war -- one that could be completed without emotional wounds -- haven't been fulfilled. Indeed, Bryan's world has melded with that of the child in Afghanistan. It's like a short circuit in the brain of the drones.

Why isn't he with the Air Force anymore? There was one day, he says, when he knew that he wouldn't sign the next contract. It was the day Bryant walked into the cockpit and heard himself saying to his coworkers: "Hey, what motherfucker is going to die today?"

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
This article was originally posted at Spiegel
Nothing Real can be threatened; nothing unreal exists

Offline Rhonald

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David K an interesting article you have posted. Shows once again, what ever level of technology is used, war is still hell.
Life....It's all about finding the Chicks and Balances

Offline David K

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David K an interesting article you have posted. Shows once again, what ever level of technology is used, war is still hell.
Yep, sitting here in the comfort of suburban Auckland, it seems a world away from
death and destruction raining down from the heavens via remote control.
And it puzzles me that Obama can be so distraught about Connecticut, and yet
routinely sign off on his Tuesdays Hit list, triggering the death of other peoples children.
Guess I've got quite a bit to learn about human nature  :(
Nothing Real can be threatened; nothing unreal exists

Offline David K

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David K an interesting article you have posted. Shows once again, what ever level of technology is used, war is still hell.
OR, by way of a summary: one picture is worth a thousand words
Nothing Real can be threatened; nothing unreal exists

Offline Philip

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Yes, David, my use of the word drone was deliberate. I meant it in both its meanings.
Check out:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/us-killings-tragedies-pakistan-bug-splats