“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
–St. Augustine.
My Member-Guest partner and long-time friend John Bays arrives in Southside today. Once again, we are teeing it up in a Member-Guest golf tournament.
Over the years John and I have met with mixed success. We have, on occasion, won our flights, played in shoot outs for the title, finished 2nd, and we actually won it all one year at Maryland Golf & Country Club (much to the chagrin of the much more talented [on paper, at least] runners up). We have drank martinis, Scotch, red wine, and beer, consumed copious amounts of crab balls, smoked cigars, and survived the sleep deprivation our post round revelry has imposed upon us. Bottom line: We have fun.
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The Commentaries on the Laws of England, commonly known by the informal name Blackstone’s Commentaries, is an influential 18th-century treatise on the common law of England by Sir William Blackstone, originally published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford between 1765 and 1769. The work is divided into four volumes, on the rights of persons, the rights of things, of private wrongs and of public wrongs.
The Commentaries were long regarded as the leading work on the development of English law and played a role in the development of the American legal system. They were in fact the first methodical treatise on the common law suitable for a lay readership since at least the Middle Ages. The common law of England has relied on precedent more than statute and codifications and has been far less amenable than the civil law, developed from the Roman law, to the needs of a treatise. The Commentaries were influential largely because they were in fact readable, and because they met a need. As such, they were used in the training of American and British lawyers long after the death of Blackstone.
The Commentaries are often quoted as the definitive pre-Revolutionary source of common law by United States Courts. Opinions of the United States Supreme Court quote from Blackstone’s work whenever they wish to engage in historical discussion that goes back that far, or farther (for example, when discussing the intent of the Framers of the Constitution).
Sir William Blackstone wrote and believed that individuals have the right to possess weapons suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law, framing this as a public acknowledgment of the natural right to resist oppression and preserve oneself when legal protections fail.
But Blackstone while Blackstone believed it to be a “right” of Englishmen to defend themselves, he characterized it as an “auxiliary right”. By contrast, the Constitution’s Framers believed the “right to keep and bear arms” to be a fundamental right–from God–which government was obligated to protect, and which was not to “be infringed.”
Today, as reflected in the article below, Great Britain has rejected Blackstone’s view that possessing weapons is even an “auxiliary right”. Which is an infringement of rights historically practiced in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro. Citizens are so much pliable if they cannot fight back.
Today law abiding Britons cower in fear, incapable of defending themselves against the criminal element, and in danger of being punished it they were to attempt to defend themselves. Do not think it can happen here?
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, the right to keep and bear arms is under serious attack by Governor Abigail Spanberger (D.) and General Assembly Democrats. The right is virtually dead in California, New York City, and Chicago. Get pulled over in Maryland for speeding, admit that you have a gun in the car, and get ready to go to jail. Even if you are a properly licensed gun holder in another State, and you are just passing through “The Free State”.
Our freedoms and liberties are gifts from God. These gifts were secured by the blood and treasure of those brave Americans who fought the British Empire during the Revolutionary War.
The right to keep and bear arms, to defend one’s self, not just against the criminal element, but conceivably against a tyrannical government is dear. Indeed, without the right to keep and bear arms, you have no right to free speech, religion, property, or due process.
Remember these things the next time you hear a political candidate or elected official tell you that he only supports “reasonable, common sense, gun control measures”. He is lying. He will tell you he is an avid sportsman, and wants to protect hunting and sports shooting. The rights of Englishmen to defend themselves, the Constitution’s right to “keep and bear arms” was not to secure your rights to shoot Bambi, or clay pigeons. This right is to defend yourself against the world, including, if necessary, your own government.
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The British Nanny State: No Guns Allowed
In Victorian London, Dr. Watson carrying a service revolver was unremarkable. In modern Britain, self-defence is treated as a crime—and the state prefers it that way.
BY: William Grice, The American Thinker (August 28, 2026).
A Study in Disarmament
“Have you any arms?”
“I have my old service revolver and a few cartridges.”
“You had better clean it and load it. He will be a desperate man, and though I shall take him unawares, it is as well to be ready for anything.”
I went to my bedroom and followed his advice. When I returned with the pistol, the table had been cleared, and Holmes was engaged in his favourite occupation of scraping upon his violin.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1887)
It is difficult to imagine a scene more alien to the modern British nanny state.
Not because Arthur Conan Doyle’s London was safer than ours, but because Watson’s possession of a service revolver is treated as entirely unremarkable.
Sherlock Holmes asks whether he has arms. Watson replies that he does. Faced with a desperate and potentially dangerous man, he is told to clean the revolver, load it, and bring it with him.
Since the Dunblane Massacre in 1996, however, the UK Parliament has passed extraordinarily restrictive Firearms Acts that effectively banned private handgun ownership across Great Britain.
Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe MP argued, “they don’t want the public to have guns… we now have a society that needs radical change and we need to release the individual.”
Cue much shock and horror from the chattering classes and mainstream media.
Yet, aside from joining the Armed Forces or police, ordinary Britons are completely disarmed, and public weapons training is all but strangled by government mandate.
Granted, a privileged few are allowed weapons: landed gentry boasting Shotgun Certificates, gamekeepers begging police for Firearm Certificates, and some target shooters at clubs.
But past the wall of red tape lies a clear rejection of liberty. The UK’s laws treat the ideal that a free citizen has the right to arm himself and his family against danger as completely illegitimate.
Laughably, enthusiasm for armed policing has collapsed within the force itself: a direct result of putting a police marksman on trial for murder after he stopped a black gang member, Chris Kaba, who was using an SUV as a weapon against police. Color me shocked.
For context, it was a getaway car tied to escalating violence: masked me fired a shogun outside a primary school the night before and, earlier, Kaba had shot a man in both legs at a nightclub.
A good thing Sherlock wasn’t on the case, then, for if A Study in Scarlet were set in modern Britain, Holmes’s famous line wouldn’t be “You had better clean it and load it,” but “You had better hide it, Watson, or the Armed Crime Unit will be raiding 221B before we even catch the cab”!
Firearms, Foreigners, and the Channel Fantasy
As a boy I fired a 20-gauge double-barrelled shotgun in Devonshire, and I’ve had plenty of trigger time on the British Army Reserve’s SA80 L85A2/A3, and it’s a bloody fun rifle. Low recoil, built like a brick, and easy enough to strip, clean, and zero, these rifles all happily take a beating and still perform well during Annual Combat Marksmanship Tests.
I’ve played with the semi-automatic L98A2 variant, too, though Heckler & Koch only ironed out the mechanical gremlins in the big boy’s version, I believe.
Escaping the UK’s suffocating gun laws, in any case, I’ve also managed to have a blast with the Glock 17 and a CZ 452-2E ZKM, bolt-action rimfire rifle out in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.
However, from 5.56mm NATO to 9mm rounds, even down to humble .22 rimfire, the authorities in London regard such pursuits with disdain when undertaken by white Britons.
The irony is deafening. Europe is being flooded daily with military-aged male illegals from the Middle East, Africa, and parts of South Asia, while Anglo-Saxons have no Second Amendment rights.
Men who revel in sexual violence towards non-Muslim women, as exemplified by Pakistani rape gangs, or carry out deadly terror attacks across Europe in defence of their “holy” Qur’an.
Moreover, until recently, such men, if granted protection, could even bring pre-existing spouses and children to the country without meeting the salary requirements or paying any visa fees. They never even applied for an entry visa but are still provided free room and board in hotels.
British citizens who marry foreign nationals, by contrast, must generally meet that £29,000 minimum income requirement and pay substantial visa fees. Naturally.
Genuine refugees, whether Afghan schoolgirls, Christian Karenni in Burma, or South African Boer families fleeing persecution, are completely crowded out by this predatory invasion.
Perhaps it’s no surprise the UK Government doesn’t want an armed populace then.
After all, community militias equipped with SA80s could deliver effective section fire up to 400 metres from recreational speedboats and defend the Channel, leaving politicians red-faced.
Deliberate fire at 10 rounds per minute would easily suppress and halt enemy people smugglers.
Then again, under such a fantasy scenario, rules of engagement would likely compel Border Force, Port and Maritime Regiments, and the Royal Navy to prevent such community action.
After all, nothing offends the modern British state quite like self-defense, especially pre-emptive; when human rights lawyers like Lord Hermer rule the roost, self-preservation becomes the real crime.
American Freedom
In America, the Founding Fathers understood what London’s political class forever refuses to admit: a disarmed populace is not a peaceful society, but a conquered one. A dying democracy.
The Second Amendment isn’t really about clay pigeons; it is the ultimate check on state overreach and a declaration of individual liberty. Here in the UK, we have lost that freedom.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a policeman, teacher, clergyman, doctor, or serve in His Majesty’s Armed Forces. Law-abiding citizens in the UK face strict restrictions on weapons.
Meanwhile, foreign criminals in South London and Islamists still acquire illegal firearms.
Full Second Amendment rights might go too far for Britain, in my opinion, but granting them to emotionally mature, active community members would be a net positive.
Considering our demographic changes and the nature of recent attacks, this should certainly extend to all native-born women.
One need only consider the case of the Sudanese migrant, Hadi Alodid, to understand why; the sub-human attempted to behead a man with a kitchen knife in Belfast and gouged out his eyes.
This is one of countless horrors, and by disarming Anglo-Saxons (while abandoning border control), London is forfeiting its legitimacy, little by little. The people have had enough.
Some Americans don’t know how precious their Bill of Rights really is.
The right to keep and bear arms.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 