A couple of days ago in London, a Polish woman, Magda Pniewska was accidentally caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between two gangs. Her death has shocked Poland, a country where gun battles just do not happen. Now that Magda is dead, her parents have talked of her fear of living in South London and the differences she experienced between there and Poland.On a visit home, Magda had told her parents she was afraid and that she heard gunshots at night and sometimes even during the day. She had taken her dog, Bandera, over to England with her for protection, and seldom left the flat alone.No one doing anything about crime is an interesting phenomenon that seems to be limited in the West to the more Socialist countries (such as Britain and NZ) that have been experiencing high rates of family breakdown and casual family relationships. Maybe I'm making a bit of a leap here, but then maybe not. I remember Theodore Dalrymple remarking that he felt far safer in American cities at night than he did in down town Auckland and America has a high rate of legal private gun ownership. While as Britain is disarmed.
"She only felt safe here [in Brzeg]. If something happens in London, nobody does anything about it, but if something happens here people do something about it," said her mother.
A major difference between NZ and Britain is that we haven't been disarmed ... yet. As we have the "doubtful honour of being among the most violent and crime-ridden societies in the western world," I wonder if we were disarmed as a population, if we would become more dangerous to live in than South London. Because, when you disarm a population, it appears only the criminals have guns.
I was particularly struck by the similarity with Britain, where if a crime is committed in London, no one does anything about it. That sounds pretty familiar. How many people don't report thefts in NZ because they know nothing is done. Compared with Poland, both Britain and New Zealand are pretty bad on following up on crime.
Poland has an almost identical crime rate to Great Britain, but the vast majority of incidents are petty offences such as theft, and violent crime in Poland is lower than in the UK.That's just the weirdest of statements. How could Poland and Britain have an identical crime rate when when violent crime is far higher in Britain. Do they just count up all the incidences of crime and put them together indiscriminately into one hat and say, there ya go, there's our crime rate?
In contrast, south London has been plagued by gun crime in recent years. In the past 12 months, the Metropolitan Police recorded almost 900 gun-related offences in Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Wandsworth alone.
Local police spokesman Miroslav Dziadek said that in his 18 years in Brzeg [Poland], he had never come across anything remotely like the killing of Magda.... "Every policeman has a gun. If he goes out he takes a gun. It makes an impression on people. Knowing that a policeman has a gun and he will use it if he has to makes people more law-abiding."As a child, it was made very clear to us that NZ was like Britain. Our police didn't need guns, because if they had guns it would encourage the criminals to get guns as well, thus increasing the likelihood of more dangerous crimes. It made a real impression on me, so the first time I saw a cop in Australia wearing a gun on his belt, it was almost frightening. Now I realise I was indoctrinated in Socialist theology that really had no bearing on reality.
Most violent criminals grew up fatherless as a result of Socialist policy that encouraged the decline of the middle class bourgeois family structure of Mum, Dad and biological children. We are seeing the result of this in Britain, of which Theodore Dalrymple has much experience, and are seeing what occurs in such a society when it is disarmed.
I wonder when our *Disarmament Minister will spring into action.
Related Links:
Disarmament in Australia and Britain ~ Crusader Rabbit
Murdered Polish nurse came to the UK looking for a better life ~ UK Telegraph
* Not a joke. NZ actually has a Disarmament Minister as part of the Government. So far, most of the attention has been directed outside of the country, pontificating to others how they should not have weapons.