New gun possesion issues in the Netherlands

[Michael Zeleny]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by panda:
<strong>Michael Zeleny,

If you want to find out who - actually - makes UK laws and who can influence its content, please read this previous discussion about UK political mechanisms:

http://forums.lugerforum.com/lugerforum/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=22;t=000149#00 0022

Thus, if you allow me, I would like to complete your previous statement as follows:

"The British system of parliamentary sovereignty is the very definition of representative democracy"
...which comes closest to despotism (with intermittent elections).

As far as I know (now don't get me wrong Mr. Tac, I know that you do live in the UK and I do not (anymore)), the UK PM could (almost) decide - just by himself - to enact death penalty for unlawful gun possession and no one would/could seriously oppose it.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">As far as your foregoing reformulation of my thought is concerned, we are saying the same thing in slightly different ways. As stated in the above referenced thread, since the British Labour party came into power on a wave of anti-gun hysteria, and owed their landslide victory in the most part to a promise to 'take guns off the streets', they are obliged to maintain the farce of being in control of the rapidly-spiralling numbers of gun-related criminality. This is precisely what Tocqueville meant by the tyranny of the majority, in extolling the mechanisms that mitigate the same in the American system of governance. What puzzles me is your dismissal of constitutional guarantees of rights as one of the most effective devices of this sort. It is unfortunate that the British common law tradition originally responsible for instituting the recognition of the citizens' inalienable right to keep and bear arms, is being subverted in the service of its illegitimate gainsaying.