Crumbling cricket bats, Caroline! Spell me out some new legislation!

I noticed in the "Golden Dozen" today a post by Paul Walter last week concerning the Tories making a lot of noise about how they would bolster the right to "self defence" when you or your property are under threat. Whilst difficult cases like that of Munir Hussain make bad law, such things are far from the mind of politicians in election time and "my right to defend myself" clearly makes a good election slogan amongst a certain section of the population who feel that the rights of criminals have been taken too far, as witness a couple of elections ago a similar outcry about the fate of Mr Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who killed a fleeing burglar with his shotgun, and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

Conservative concern might be laudable, if it weren't for the very inconvenient fact that they, just like Labour, have been compliantly complicit in the long term policy of steadily disarming law-abiding citizens and rendering them less and less able to defend themselves and their property, whilst at the same time ensuring that when you need them, in such circumstances, the police are like as not going to be as far away on the other side of the county as they could possibly be.

Yet for all the bravura about banning one weapon after another in recent decades from all our political masters of whatever hue, prohibition in this as in so many other areas of prohibition has made the problems worse.  Gun crime is higher than it was in 1996 when the public outcry for "something must be done" led to the banning of nearly all effective handguns.  We all know the stories of the rise of knife crime on our streets.  The fact is that with a disarmed citizenry, and a seemingly ever more remote possibility of a timely police response, it is now the criminal that is routinely armed and the victim that is routinely helpless.

By way of an aside and example, a few weeks ago we had some intruders on site trying to steal bikes.  One of our students caught them in the act and rescued three bikes which he took into his flat while he called out the warden.  Although they were just kids really, these would be thieves were no ordinary cut-it-and-run types though; while the warden was on the phone to the police, using 999 as instructed when the perpetrator is still on the premises, these kids were running round and round the block, banging on the windows of the flat into which the bikes had been taken, threatening the occupants and so on.  But no, the police switchboard was more interested in the colour of the bikes, and no, there would not be a 999 response, and lo! half an hour later, having managed to get our own private mobile security on site first who managed to shoo them away, along pops two PCSOs, yes, you guessed it, on bikes, to take down more details.  And all on a Sunday evening, when you would have thought that the doughnut shops were all closed and the pubs and clubs relatively quiet!

But anyway, back to the gripe.  You see it does not matter whether you call it "reasonable force" or whether you try to make some vacuous and vain change in the wording of the law to "not grossly disproportionate force" (whatever that may mean); it is the political classes of all parties in this country who have left the victims of crime defenceless and unaided.  They can make all the hullabaloo they like; they have brought us to this.  Political point scoring will not wash here.

And this is where anarchists, and the idea of "private law" we espouse, is head and shoulders above any of this silly legislative willy waving which will just result in more courtroom consternation and a bigger statute book for government to finance from our pockets.  "Justice" in a private law society is simple.  It is based on the "non-aggression principle" and the respect of society for property and contract.  You see, "non-aggression" does not entail pacifism.  If someone attacks or threatens you or your property you may defend yourself and your property.  But the "non-aggression" principle applies to you as defender as well.  If you go beyond the force needed to to make you and your property safe from immediate threat then you yourself are stepping over into the role of aggressor and the now victim, who was attacking you and yours, has every right to legal redress against you.

It doesn't need reams of legislation.  Just the "natural law" right to be able to resist aggression against you and yours.  And you may be armed in the process.  It's not up to the State to say who can and cannot hold a firearm or a sword stick or wave a knife at a threatening intruder under such a system.  But, since everyone would, in a market anarchist system, almost certainly need to be insured against claims made by others, your insurance company is the one who will authorise whether you are the sort of person they will insure with or without a weapon that might, in the hands of the responsible user, effectively deter an intruder for little cost or harm but in irresponsible hands cause them to bear the liability for you pumping the paper-boy full of lead and claiming he was an intruder!

As Aleksandr says, "Compare the meerkat; simples!"