Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Why not tell them to just yell "Baaa-baaaa"

like the sheep they want them to be?

A chilling excerpt from this review of Guns and Violence: The English Experience:
Coming to the aid of crime victims is strongly discouraged. British subjects are taught that, if they are attacked by a criminal, they should not yell “Help! Help!” because such cries might encourager a bystander to use physical force against the criminal. Rather, victims are supposed to yell, “Call the police.” Likewise, the government tells Britons that when they are attacked, they should not fight back, but should instead curl into a ball or take a similar defensive posture.

If a properly-behaved British bystander does “call the police,” the response may be lethally slow. Vicky Horgan and her sister Emma Walton were shot by Stuart Horgan on June 6, 2004.[33] A total of sixty calls to 999 (the US’s equivalent to 9-1-1) were made, but help did not arrive for over an hour. The Express explained that a major cause of the delay was police reluctance to confront an armed criminal.
May I never find it necessary to visit England.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

curl into a ball or take a similar defensive posture--that's fantastic. i think it's a good metaphor for how to greet all the challenges of life in general. in britain, though, make sure it's not a fetal position. you'll want to use the "foetal" version. cheerio.

10:10 AM, June 14, 2006  

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