Legends from a small country: 'Kill a Tourist Day'

An Irish actress was grazed by a bullet while riding in a taxi in Cape Town on New Year's Eve. And the story was retold in the Brit media, intertwined with urban legends, as urban legend fundi Arthur Goldstuck tells.

Legends from a small country: 'Kill a Tourist Day':

As it is, a report the following day in the Daily Mail, by Mail on Sunday correspondent James Tapper, kicked off with this strong innuendo: 'Actress Victoria Smurfit has revealed she came within inches of death when a gunman opened fire on a taxi she was travelling in while holidaying in South Africa – the nation that will stage the World Cup in just six months.'

Mr Tapper may like to know that a man was killed with a shotgun in what police believed to be a gang fight, in London just the previous week. As far as can be ascertained, not a single newspaper anywhere in the world linked this to the fact that London would be hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. Nor did they do so when a man was stabbed to death after chasing two muggers in London the same week. Nor did they do so when schoolboys were stabbed after a gang invaded a party in London that very weekend. Barely a day goes by without a violent incident in London involving killings and stabbings, but nary a connection to London being a host city in a mere two years' time.

And now, with 2010 (that's twenty-ten, not two thouand and ten) less than 100 days away we'll probably see more such stories. Twenty-ten, of course, is not the year, but the kick-off for the World Cup. There have been some discussions about whether it is twenty-ten or two-thousand and ten, but we've heard nothing but twenty-ten for the last six years. I thought I'd better record that, because in another century or so it may be disputed. There was a rather heated discussion in the alt.usage.english newsgroup recently about whether our ancestors called 1907 "nineteen seven" or "nineteen oh seven" or something else.

So just for the record, if Blogspot is still around in 2110, the year two-thousand and nine was followed by twenty-ten, both the year and the World Cup. We didn't call it "twenty-nine" because that could be confused with "29", but twenty-ten is OK, and has been OK for six years at least.

Oh yes, and it is quite common in South Africa for people to fire guns into the air to celebrate the New Year. Stupid, yes. Dangerous, yes. But still common, though not as common as it used to be (it's even more common in Albania, I believe, I wonder what sports event they could be hosting?)

And people have been killed because of such things. A few years ago a bullet went through a corrugated iron roof and illed a baby lying asleep in its cot. It was a rather unusual calibre, and police did ballistics tests, and worked out where the shot must have been fired from, and searched houses in the vicinity, and found some guy who had a vintage rifle and admitted that yes, he had fired it into the air on New Years morn, at or around midnight. He was charged with culpable homicide, and found guilty. The story of how the police solved the case is displayed in the police museum in Pretoria, so it's probably not an urban legend.

So if you're planning to come to South Africa for the World Cup, don't worry; 2010 starts long after New Year.

The sheer lunacy of anti-gun control freaks

I've always thought that anti-gun control freaks were a bit nuts, but this takes the cake. Hat-tip to Mark Stoneman's Clio and me.

FactCheck.org: Did gun control in Australia lead to more murders there last year?:

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated

The picture is utterly bizarre.

If dissidents in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany had had firearms and used them to resist arrest, most of them would have died sooner rather than later, and many more of them would have died.

If you want to avoid arrest in a totalitarian country, your best chance is to avoid or evade the police, not confront them, whether you are armed or not. And then try to skip across the border into a free(er) country, assuming there is one nearby.

I know something of this from personal experience.

Last week I got together with a friend, and we compared our police files from the apartheid era, which recently became available in the archives. We're planning to write an article on memoiries of a surveillance society, based on the contents of the files, and comparing the fantasies of the Security Police and the Department of Justice with reality.

In my file I discovered that the Minister of Justice had signed a banning order for me on 11 January 1966. I never received it, so I didn't know about it until I saw it in the file.

At the time I was working as a bus driver in Johannesburg, trying to save enough money to go and study overseas. On the afternoon of 18 January 1966, when I was about to go to work, I had a phone call from a Detective Sergeant van den Heever, asking if he could come and see me. I said I was about to go to work. He then asked if he could come and see me in the morning. I said I would be doing overtime in the morning, but said that I could go and see him between my overtime and my regular shift if he told me where I could find him.

I did not go to work, that afternoon, but went to see an Anglican priest friend, the student chaplain at the university, to tell him about this and ask his advice. We thought that Van den Heever would either be coming to confiscate my passport, or to give me a banning order, in which case I would not be able to study overseas. We decided that the wisest course would be to leave the country immediately.

So at 10:00 pm we set out for Beit Bridge and the Rhodesian border, which we crossed the next morning when the customs post opened at 6:00 am. The priest friend came to drive my mother's car back. My mother arranged with a travel agent in Johannesburg for me to collect a plane ticket at Bulawayo, and I got on a plane in Bulawayo, and arrived in London two days later, on 20 January 1966.

Now imagine what would have happened if I had done what the gun nut above suggested.

Detective Sergeant van den Heever comes to my door with the banning order, and I have a gun and shoot him.

The SB (Security Police) usually went in pairs, and so I'd have to be pretty quick to shoot his buddy as well before he either overpowered me or shot me.

We lived in a block of flats, and at that time of day people would be arriving home from work, so the incident would probably be witnessed by other residents who would undoubtedly call the police, even if they didn't know that the two bodies lying at the door of my flat were those of policemen in plain clothes.

So banning might be delayed, but arrest for a real crime would follow shortly. Then would follow a period of interrogation, with the possibility of slipping in the shower and falling through a 7th-floor window (defenestration). If that didn't happen there would be an appearance in court, an open and shut case of murder, followed by hanging.

Cool.

One bloke who was banned tried to follow the path of armed resistance. Not with firearms; he took a suitcase full of explosives and took it to Johannesburg station. It killed an old lady and disfigured her granddaughter. His name was John Harris. He was hanged on 1 April 1965.

Or, of course, one could use firearms. Go to Norwood police station (where, if my banning order had been delivered, I would have had to report every Monday between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm) and make like Columbine High School -- shoot everyone in sight.

Ultimately, the result would be the same.

But the gun nuts who write stuff like that above are too stupid to see it.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps they would go into a school or a shopping mall and open fire on everyone in sight, and think that that would save them from the Gulag or whatever. Or they could join their likeminded buddies in the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.

So instead of saying idiotic things like "In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated", let the gun nuts say exactly how having legal firearms would have prevented them from being rounded up and exterminated.

And if they feel so strongly about it, perhaps they could strike a blow for freedom and smuggle arms to all the poor dissidents cooped up in Guantanamo Bay.

Weasel words: liberal (and gun control)

Though I still describe myself as a political liberal (I was a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party when it existed), it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what "liberal" means in conversation, whether written or oral.

As an ordinary adjective, "liberal" can mean free, generous, or unrestricted.

• "Liberal abortion laws" are laws that allow unrestricted abortion.
• "Liberal drug laws" are laws that allow unrestricted drug use.
• "Liberal gun laws" are laws that allow unrestricted gun ownership.

Well, not quite, because the way many people speak and write, "liberals" are in favour of "gun control" (whatever that means).

At some point there is a cross-over from "liberal" in a general sense, meaning having few or no restrictions, and "liberal" as a political philosophy. And sometimes there is another inversion there too.

People often speak of "liberal" in the sense of a political philosophy as if it were the opposite of "conservative".

Perhaps that is a hangover from 19th century British politics, when, from 1850 to 1920, the Liberal and Conservative parties were the main players on the political stage.

In fact the opposite of "liberal" (in the political philosophy sense) is not "conservative", but "authoritarian", and the opposite of "conservative" (again in the political philosophy sense) is not "liberal" but "radical".

The result of all this is that when people use the word "liberal" it is often difficult to know what they are talking about without asking for more information.

And then there is the "gun control" that "liberals" are alleged to be in favour of.

It is rarely defined by those who use the term, so it is difficult to know what it means, other than that, whatever it is, those who use the term are against it.

But I assume that it means that people who are against it believe that owning a gun should be like owning a camera rather than like owning a motor vehicle.

When one buys a motor vehicle, it is registered, and has a distinctive number plate so that it can be identified, and one needs a licence to drive it on a public road, and in order to get a licence one needs to pass a test to show that one is competent to drive it without endangering other road users.

When one buys a camera, one does not need to register it, and though it has a distinctive serial number from the manufacturer, there is no central registry keeping track of who owns which camera.

The difference is, of course, that when used incompetently, carelessly or recklessly both guns and motor vehicles can cause damage to property and injury or death to other people.

So I wonder if those who are against gun control are also against motor vehicle control and testing the competence of drivers. Do those who say that gun control means that only criminals will own guns also believe that only criminals own motor vehicles?

Gun culture - Child killed at creche

The gun culture kills again -- is a cell phone worth a child's life?

The Times - Child killed at creche:

Police spokesman Captain John Maluleke said yesterday’s killing was triggered when a 15-year-old boy was robbed of his cellphone by an 21-year-old man at the Steytler Square park in Westdene, off Park Lane North and Fourth Avenue, while walking home.

“The schoolboy ran home and called his father, who was armed with a gun, and they drove around the area looking for his assailant. After spotting the robber, the father chased him and a shot was fired, accidentally hitting the child at the Sunbeam Creche.

“The 47-year-old father [of the robbery victim] has been charged with murder. The robber was caught by police and will be charged with robbery,” Maluleke said. Both men are expected to appear in court tomorrow.