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SSANZ Newsletter January/February 2005 First
published in
(SSANZ SSANZ) Newsletter
– Jan/Feb 2005 Newsletter - March 2004 “Make My Day”, or Self-Defence? ACT MP Stephen Franks has launched a Bill aimed at restoring
the rights of people to adequately defend themselves and their property Published below are excerpts from the speech he
delivered to introduce the Bill at the recent ACT Conference: “Remember
your heart pounding the last time you found yourself wide awake and straining
to hear that noise again? The bedroom clock says 3:53AM. Were those footsteps
on the drive? Should you get out of bed? What will you do if someone is
there? Surely that noise is your garage door opening – your heart is
thumping so hard you can’t listen properly. If you can’t phone in
time, will your yelling wake the neighbours? Now
imagine yours is one of the 100,000 rural families whose neighbours
could never hear the loudest call from your house Someone cleaned out your workshop six months ago.
The police had their suspicions, but said it was hopeless unless they caught
them red-handed The suspects (locals) don’t have to work
– they all seem to be on ACC, or Sickness, or some other benefit They’ve been sullen since the burglary, when
you banned them from coming through your place to go eeling You’re not supposed to grab your shotgun
– even if you were allowed to keep it handy. You wish you still had the
dogs. Just as you decide to relax, you hear someone trying to start your truck What can you do? What the law says you should do,
and what any decent self-respecting adult would do are entirely different
things Police advice of the past few years boils down to
“do nothing”. Take no risks. Try to get a look at the thieves –
if you can without offending them Call the police and, in the morning, your insurance
company. Theoretically, you can defend your property with force, but you
cannot strike or harm anyone It’s unclear what kind of force is in the
minds of the well-meaning fools responsible for this state of the law Attorney-General Margaret Wilson’s Crown Law
Office officials don’t know – so if you risk taking a weapon to protect
yourself, they’ll tell the police to charge you whatever your local cop
thinks. They believe it’s only fair to the criminals to let the courts
decide in cool hindsight what you should have done Odds are a jury will refuse to convict, but the cost
of your defence – legal fees begin at $20,000
- could bankrupt you You’ll lose your firearms licence,
and the crims will target your family Fifty years ago, you might have gone out to make
sure there was enough fuel in the truck, assuming a neighbour
needed it urgently. No one needed to lock anything in the country. Twentyfive years ago, a normal man would have yelled to
his wife to call the cops, grabbed the shotgun, and confronted the thieves in
the drive. If they abandoned the truck to scarper on foot, he might have used
threats to hold at least one for the cops So what has changed – the law, or just the
culture? It is both The law would have supported our man until 1980.
That year the right to make a credible threat of harm went with the removal
of the defence of provocation. Then changes in 1982
and 1986 made it an offence to carry a weapon in these circumstances I have launched a campaign to restore commonsense to
the Crimes Act. As it did 25 years ago, the Act must once again support
law-abiding defenders instead of criminal invaders You can see the change in culture from the
Government’s hysterical response In rejecting any change, Justice Minister Phil Goff
raised the spectre of “Americanisation”,
and the shooting of door-to-door salesmen. Instead of getting behind rural
people the Agriculture Minister damned it as “a licence
to shoot trespassers” They’re wrong. My Bill does not legitimise vigilante punishment for trespassers. It goes
nowhere near it Essentially, it reinstates the self-defence rights lost in 1980 I am proud of this Bill. It reflects a stand for
freedom and personal responsibility. Until this generation, the State did not
dream of claiming a monopoly on the right to enforce the law. The right of
Citizen’s Arrest is written into the Crimes Act, to the embarrassment
of the police who keep urging people never to use it Enforcing the law is a right and was, only a short
time ago, a responsibility of every able-bodied person. It is time we
challenged the smugness of that common judicial pronouncement: “I can’t
allow you to take the law into your own hands” It has always been in those hands There has never been a time when there were enough
police to protect every New Zealander in this stretched-out land. The mutual
trust and security that was part of our heritage did not come from having
police to watch every prospective scumbag. It came from decent and
self-reliant families who knew they shared responsibility for upholding behaviour standards and the law in their communities It was not until 1974, for example, that bank staff
ceased their annual revolver practices. Every teller was expected to know how
to stop robberies with the revolver under the counter. To listen to Mr Goff, you would think Why are the politicians who claim to represent
ordinary working people so hostile to self-defence?
I’ll venture an explanation: we are heretics. We don’t believe in
the new Labour religion Labour
knows the ordinary people scoff at its feminist gods, and it hates that So the Government doesn’t trust the people
with any of their longstanding rights and responsibilities. In particular, they
will not trust the people with their ancient right to defend themselves My project is a challenge to the Labour
safety god ‘Spectator’ magazine put it in these terms:
“It is a sign of the decline of any great civilisation
that its people begin to worship strange gods. Now we have a new divinity
that commands the adoration of the governing classes, as nannying
and multiple breasted as Diana of The Spectator then referred to a recent fatal
shooting in Meanwhile, frightened members of the public went to
the aid of the injured They used their mobiles to report to the police that
the killer had decamped Emergency services continually assured them over the
telephone that help was on the way when it was not. The lie was to cover the
shame of not admitting that help was frozen by police rules What has gone wrong? Are our police less courageous?
I don’t believe that But they repeatedly emphasize that valour is for mugs. Whenever some brave citizen stands up
to a robbery, or attempted rape, any media praise is followed by a police
warning that it was, nevertheless, foolish People in rural areas get the same fatuous advice:
“don’t aggravate them, don’t try to defend yourself, just
call us or try to get away, don’t take the law into your own hands etc”
– notwithstanding the practical impossibility of police help arriving
in time And now the police don’t merely stand back
themselves. They lock phone lines so that victims cannot call their neighbours for help. They tell victims help is nearly
there when it hasn’t even left the police station. Apparently lying is
okay My project is part of a mission to reinstate respect
in our law. The principles of self reliance and individual initiative were
deeply embedded in our Crimes Act as recently as 25 years ago I’m on a mission to reinstate them All who trust the people, instead of patronising and despising them, should welcome
this.” Stephen Franks MP stephen.franks@parliament.govt.nz
Fax: 04 473 3532
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