British subjects are denied the right to use ANY self-defense weaponry. While Her Majesty’s Government “allows” some subjects to own shotguns, the regulation regime is onerous. And they cannot be used for self-defense. At the same time . . .
The British arms industry is a powerhouse It’s the second largest arms manufacturer in the world, second only to the United States.
Without arms sales, the U.K. economy would be hurtin’ for certain. According to Auntie Beeb, the British arms industry “directly employs 350,000 people, spread over 11,000 firms, with as many as 1.2 million people relying on it for a living.”
In 2014, the Land of Hope and Glory exported some £7.7bn worth of military weaponry. Now check this from a independent.co.uk article published last May:
More than £3bn of British-made weaponry was licensed for export last year to 21 of the Foreign Office’s 30 “human rights priority countries” – those identified by the government as being where “the worst, or greatest number of, human rights violations take place”, or “where we judge that the UK can make a real difference”.
So bad guys get arms. That’s the way of the world, yes? But we’re not just talking about jets and missiles and such. The UK is also sending small arms — guns — to bad actors.
H&K and another major German firm, Sig Sauer, turn to UK and US operations when guidelines and political pressure in Germany are likely to block exports to conflict-affected countries, according to the report – entitled Small Arms in the Hands of Children (English, German pdf) – by the Berlin Information-centre for Transatlantic Security.
The cases cited by the study include H&K’s attempts to export thousands of guns to Nepal in 2000-01.
“When it became obvious that Germany would deny such an export deal due to public pressure because of the ongoing civil war, Heckler & Koch quickly applied for an export licence for 6,780 rifles in Great Britain, which was then granted,” said the report’s authors.
So children in “developing countries” get guns. That’s the way of the world, yes? But if the British government believes its subjects shouldn’t own guns, why is it allowing UK companies to send guns to countries where they’re bound to end-up in the hands of civilians? Think of the children!
Money honey. More to the point, if statists didn’t have double standards they wouldn’t have any at all.