'PATRIOT' SCENE STUNS AUDIENCE; PRODUCER,
GIBSON DEFEND
CHILDREN
SHOOTING GUNS IN FILM
CHILDREN
SHOOTING GUNS IN FILM
A screening of SONY's PATRIOT in Los Angeles on Thursday night
left the
audience jumping about scenes in the Revolutionary War film that depict
young children carrying guns -- and using them! The controversial scene
begins when Gibson's character reaches into a chest and gives his sons
rifles.
"They go into woods and ambush the Redcoats, killing around 15 men. One
son is around 13 years old, the other is 10," says an insider. A loud
"gasp" was heard in the screening room as the camera zoomed in for a
closeup of the kids. Shots are fired. Blood splatters on Redcoats. Mel
Gibson defended the scene over the weekend, declaring that he would let
his own kids take up weapons in self-defense. Gibson says he's taken his
children to shooting ranges.
audience jumping about scenes in the Revolutionary War film that depict
young children carrying guns -- and using them! The controversial scene
begins when Gibson's character reaches into a chest and gives his sons
rifles.
"They go into woods and ambush the Redcoats, killing around 15 men. One
son is around 13 years old, the other is 10," says an insider. A loud
"gasp" was heard in the screening room as the camera zoomed in for a
closeup of the kids. Shots are fired. Blood splatters on Redcoats. Mel
Gibson defended the scene over the weekend, declaring that he would let
his own kids take up weapons in self-defense. Gibson says he's taken his
children to shooting ranges.
In the movie, Gibson goes to war only after one of his sons is
killed.
Screenwriter Robert Rodat attempts to portray the complexities of war,
as he did with SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
"This war will be fought not on the frontier nor on distant
battlefields, but among our homes. Our children will learn of it from
their own eyes..." says Mel Gibson's Benjamin Martin in PATRIOT [opening
last week in June]. The movie's theme -- take arms up against those who
would take your arms -- is bound to stir the national debate over gun
control. Producer/Director Roland Emmerich conceded that the film may
become a rallying call for pro-gun advocates and militias. "Rosie
O'Donnell and Hillary Clinton may want to spend the holiday checking out
PERFECT STORM," laughed a viewer after the screening.
Screenwriter Robert Rodat attempts to portray the complexities of war,
as he did with SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
"This war will be fought not on the frontier nor on distant
battlefields, but among our homes. Our children will learn of it from
their own eyes..." says Mel Gibson's Benjamin Martin in PATRIOT [opening
last week in June]. The movie's theme -- take arms up against those who
would take your arms -- is bound to stir the national debate over gun
control. Producer/Director Roland Emmerich conceded that the film may
become a rallying call for pro-gun advocates and militias. "Rosie
O'Donnell and Hillary Clinton may want to spend the holiday checking out
PERFECT STORM," laughed a viewer after the screening.
In the Absence of
Guns
Guns
In Britain, defending your property can
get you life.
By Mark Steyn
Celebrity news from the United Kingdom: In
April, Germaine Greer, the
Australian feminist and author of 'The Female Eunuch', was leaving her house
in East Anglia, when a young woman accosted her, forced her back inside, tied
her up, smashed her glasses, and then set about demolishing her ornaments with
a poker.
A couple of weeks before that, the 85-year-old mother of Phil Collins,
the well-known rock star, was punched in the ribs, the back, and the head on a
West London street, before her companion was robbed. "That's what you have to
expect these days," she said, philosophically.
Anthea Turner, the host of Britain's top-rated National Lottery TV show,
went to see the West End revival of 'Grease' with a friend. They were spotted
at the theatre by a young man who followed them out and, while their car was
stuck in traffic, forced his way in and wrenched a diamond - encrusted Rolex
off the friend's wrist.
A week before that, the 94-year-old mother of Ridley Scott, the director
of 'Alien' and other Hollywood hits, was beaten and robbed by two men who
broke into her home and threatened to kill her.
Former Bond girl Britt Ekland had her jewelry torn from her arms outside a
shop in Chelsea; Formula One Grand Prix racing tycoon and Tony Blair
confidante Bernie Eccelestone was punched and kicked by his assailants as they
stole his wife's ring; network TV chief Michael Green was slashed in the face
by thugs outside his Mayfair home; gourmet chef to the stars Anton Mosimann
was punched in the head outside his house in Kensington....
Rita Simmonds isn't a celebrity but, fortunately, she happened to be
living next door to one when a gang broke into her home in upscale Cumberland
Terrace, a private road near Regent's Park. Tom Cruise heard her screams and
bounded to the rescue, chasing off the attackers for 300 yards, though failing
to prevent them from reaching their getaway car and escaping with two jewelry
items worth around $140,000.
It's just as well Tom failed to catch up with the gang. Otherwise, the
ensuing altercation might have resulted in the diminutive star being
prosecuted for assault. In Britain, criminals, police, and magistrates are
united in regarding any resistance by the victim as bad form. The most they'll
tolerate is "proportionate response" - and, as these thugs had been beating up
a defenseless woman and posed no threat to Tom Cruise, the Metropolitan Police
would have regarded Tom's actions as highly objectionable. "Proportionate
response" from the beleaguered British property owner's point of view, is a
bit like a courtly duel where the rules are set by one side: "Ah," says the
victim of a late-night break-in, "I see you have brought a blunt instrument.
Forgive me for unsheathing my bread knife. My mistake, old boy. Would you mind
giving me a sporting chance to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed
before clubbing me to a pulp, there's a good chap?"
No wonder, even as they're being pounded senseless, many British crime
victims are worrying about potential liability. A few months ago, Shirley
Best, owner of the Rolander Fashion boutique whose clients include the
daughter of the Princess Royal, was ironing some garments when two youths
broke in. They pressed the hot iron into her side and stole her watch, leaving
her badly burnt. "I was frightened to defend myself," said Miss Best. "I
thought if I did anything I would be arrested."
And who can blame her? Shortly before the attack, she'd been reading
about Tony Martin, a Norfolk farmer whose home had been broken into and who
had responded by shooting and killing the teenage burglar. He was charged with
murder. In April, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment - for
defending himself against a career criminal in an area where the police are
far away and reluctant to have their sleep disturbed. In the British
Commonwealth, the approach to policing is summed up by the motto of Her
Majesty's most glamorous constabulary: The Mounties always get their man -
i.e., leave it to us. But these days in the British police, when they can't
get their man, they'll get you instead: Frankly, that's a lot easier, as poor
Mr. Martin discovered.
Norfolk is a remote rural corner of England. It ought to be as peaceful
and crime-free as my remote rural corner of New England. But it isn't. Old
impressions die hard: Americans still think of Britain as a low-crime country.
Conversely, the British think of America as a high-crime country. But neither
impression is true. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is 60 percent
higher than that in the United States. True, in America you're more likely to
be shot to death. On the other hand, in England you're more likely to be
strangled to death. But in both cases, the statistical likelihood of being
murdered at all is remote, especially if you steer clear of the drug trade.
When it comes to anything else, though - burglary, auto theft, armed robbery,
violent assault, rape - the crime rate reaches deep into British society in
ways most Americans would find virtually inconceivable.
I cite those celebrity assaults not because celebrities are more prone to
wind up as crime victims than anyone else, but only because the measure of a
civilized society is how easily you can insulate yourself from its snarling
underclass. In America, if you can make it out of some of the loonier cities,
it's a piece of cake, relatively speaking. In Britain, if even a rock star or
TV supremo can't insulate himself, nobody can. In any society, criminals prey
on the weak and vulnerable. It's the peculiar genius of government policy to
have ensured that in British society everyone is weak and vulnerable - from
Norfolk farmers to Tom Cruise's neighbor.
And that's where America is headed if those million marching moms make
any headway in Washington: Less guns = more crime. And more vulnerability. And
a million more moms being burgled, and assaulted, and raped. I like hunting,
but if that were the only thing at stake with guns, I guess I could learn to
live without it. But I'm opposed to gun control because I don't see why my
neighbors in New Hampshire should have to live the way, say, my sister-in-law
does - in a comfortable manor house in a prosperous part of rural England,
lying awake at night listening to yobbo gangs drive up, park their vans, and
test her doors and windows before figuring out that the little old lady down
the lane's a softer touch.
Between the introduction of pistol permits in 1903 and the banning of
hand-guns after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Britain has had a century of
incremental gun control -"sensible measures that all reasonable people can
agree on." And what's the result? Even when you factor in America's nutcake
Jurisdictions with the crackhead mayors, the overall crime rate in England and
Wales is higher than in all 50 states, even though over there they have more
policemen per capita than in the U.S., on vastly higher rates of pay
installing more video surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the Western
world. Robbery, sex crimes, and violence against the person are higher in
England and Wales; property crime is twice as high; vehicle theft is higher
still; the British are 2.3 times more likely than Americans to be assaulted,
and three times more likely to be violently assaulted. Between 1973 and 1992,
burglary rates in the U.S. fell by half. In Britain, not even the Home
Office's disreputable reporting methods (if a burglar steals from 15 different
apartments in one building, it counts as a single crime) can conceal the
remorseless rise: Britons are now more than twice as likely as Americans to be
mugged; two-thirds will have their property broken into at some time in their
lives. Even more revealing is the divergent character between U.K. and U.S.
property crime: In America, just over 10 percent of all burglaries are "hot
burglaries" - committed while the owners are present; in Britain, it's over
half. Because of insurance-required alarm systems, the average thief
increasingly concludes that it's easier to break in while you're on the
premises. Your home-security system may conceivably make your home more safe,
but it makes you less so.
Conversely, up here in the New Hampshire second congressional district,
there are few laser security systems and lots of guns. Our murder rate is much
lower than Britain's and our property crime is virtually insignificant. Anyone
want to make a connection? Villains are expert calculators of risk, and the
likelihood of walking away uninjured with an $80 television set is too remote.
In New Hampshire, a citizen's right to defend himself deters crime; in
Britain, the state-inflicted impotence of the homeowner actively encourages
it. Just as becoming a drug baron is a rational career move in Colombia, so
too is becoming a violent burglar in the United Kingdom. The chances that the
state will seriously impede your progress are insignificant.
Now I'm Canadian, so, as you might expect, the Second Amendment doesn't
mean much to me. I think it's more basic than that. Privately owned firearms
symbolize the essential difference between your great republic and the
countries you left behind. In the U.S., power resides with "we, the people"
and is leased ever more sparingly up through town, county, state, and federal
government. In Britain and Canada, power resides with the Crown and is
graciously devolved down in limited doses. To a north country Yankee it's
self-evident that, when a burglar breaks into your home, you should have the
right to shoot him - indeed, not just the right, but the responsibility, as a
free-born citizen, to uphold the integrity of your property. But in Britain
and most other parts of the Western world, the state reserves that right to
itself, even though at the time the ne'er-do-well shows up in your bedroom
you're on the scene and Constable Plod isn't: He's some miles distant, asleep
in his bed, and with his answering machine on referring you to central
dispatch God knows where.
These days it's standard to bemoan the "dependency culture" of state
welfare, but Britain's law-and-order "dependency culture" is even more
enfeebling. What was it the police and courts resented about that Norfolk
farmer? That he "took the law into his own hands"? But in a responsible
participatory democracy, the law ought to be in our hands. The problem with
Britain is that the police force is now one of the most notable surviving
examples of a pre-Thatcher, bloated, incompetent, unproductive, over-paid,
closed-shop state monopoly. They're about as open to constructive suggestions
as the country's Communist Mineworkers' union was 20 years ago, and the
control-freak tendencies of all British political parties ensure that the
country's bloated, expensive county and multi-county forces are inviolable.
The Conservatives' big mistake between 1979 and 1997 was an almost
willfully obtuse failure to understand that giving citizens more personal
responsibility isn't something that extends just to their income and consumer
choices; it also applies to their communities and their policing arrangements.
If you have one without the other, you end up with modern Britain: a
materially prosperous society in which the sense of frustration and impotence
is palpable, and you're forced to live with a level of endless property crime
most Americans would regard as unacceptable.
We know Bill Clinton's latest favorite statistic - that 12 "kids" a day
die from gun violence - is bunk: Five-sixths of those 11,569 grade-school
moppets are aged between 15 and 19, and many of them have had the misfortune
to become involved in gangs, convenience-store hold-ups, and drug deals,
which, alas, have a tendency to go awry. If more crack deals passed off
peacefully, that "child" death rate could be reduced by three-quarters. But
away from those dark fringes of society, Americans live lives blessedly
untouched by most forms of crime - at least when compared with supposedly more
civilized countries like Britain. That's something those million marching moms
should consider, if only because in a gun-free America women -- and the
elderly and gays and all manner of other fashionable victim groups - will be
bearing the brunt of a much higher proportion of violent crime than they do
today. Ask Phil Collins or Ridley Scott or Germaine Greer.
Australian feminist and author of 'The Female Eunuch', was leaving her house
in East Anglia, when a young woman accosted her, forced her back inside, tied
her up, smashed her glasses, and then set about demolishing her ornaments with
a poker.
A couple of weeks before that, the 85-year-old mother of Phil Collins,
the well-known rock star, was punched in the ribs, the back, and the head on a
West London street, before her companion was robbed. "That's what you have to
expect these days," she said, philosophically.
Anthea Turner, the host of Britain's top-rated National Lottery TV show,
went to see the West End revival of 'Grease' with a friend. They were spotted
at the theatre by a young man who followed them out and, while their car was
stuck in traffic, forced his way in and wrenched a diamond - encrusted Rolex
off the friend's wrist.
A week before that, the 94-year-old mother of Ridley Scott, the director
of 'Alien' and other Hollywood hits, was beaten and robbed by two men who
broke into her home and threatened to kill her.
Former Bond girl Britt Ekland had her jewelry torn from her arms outside a
shop in Chelsea; Formula One Grand Prix racing tycoon and Tony Blair
confidante Bernie Eccelestone was punched and kicked by his assailants as they
stole his wife's ring; network TV chief Michael Green was slashed in the face
by thugs outside his Mayfair home; gourmet chef to the stars Anton Mosimann
was punched in the head outside his house in Kensington....
Rita Simmonds isn't a celebrity but, fortunately, she happened to be
living next door to one when a gang broke into her home in upscale Cumberland
Terrace, a private road near Regent's Park. Tom Cruise heard her screams and
bounded to the rescue, chasing off the attackers for 300 yards, though failing
to prevent them from reaching their getaway car and escaping with two jewelry
items worth around $140,000.
It's just as well Tom failed to catch up with the gang. Otherwise, the
ensuing altercation might have resulted in the diminutive star being
prosecuted for assault. In Britain, criminals, police, and magistrates are
united in regarding any resistance by the victim as bad form. The most they'll
tolerate is "proportionate response" - and, as these thugs had been beating up
a defenseless woman and posed no threat to Tom Cruise, the Metropolitan Police
would have regarded Tom's actions as highly objectionable. "Proportionate
response" from the beleaguered British property owner's point of view, is a
bit like a courtly duel where the rules are set by one side: "Ah," says the
victim of a late-night break-in, "I see you have brought a blunt instrument.
Forgive me for unsheathing my bread knife. My mistake, old boy. Would you mind
giving me a sporting chance to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed
before clubbing me to a pulp, there's a good chap?"
No wonder, even as they're being pounded senseless, many British crime
victims are worrying about potential liability. A few months ago, Shirley
Best, owner of the Rolander Fashion boutique whose clients include the
daughter of the Princess Royal, was ironing some garments when two youths
broke in. They pressed the hot iron into her side and stole her watch, leaving
her badly burnt. "I was frightened to defend myself," said Miss Best. "I
thought if I did anything I would be arrested."
And who can blame her? Shortly before the attack, she'd been reading
about Tony Martin, a Norfolk farmer whose home had been broken into and who
had responded by shooting and killing the teenage burglar. He was charged with
murder. In April, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment - for
defending himself against a career criminal in an area where the police are
far away and reluctant to have their sleep disturbed. In the British
Commonwealth, the approach to policing is summed up by the motto of Her
Majesty's most glamorous constabulary: The Mounties always get their man -
i.e., leave it to us. But these days in the British police, when they can't
get their man, they'll get you instead: Frankly, that's a lot easier, as poor
Mr. Martin discovered.
Norfolk is a remote rural corner of England. It ought to be as peaceful
and crime-free as my remote rural corner of New England. But it isn't. Old
impressions die hard: Americans still think of Britain as a low-crime country.
Conversely, the British think of America as a high-crime country. But neither
impression is true. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is 60 percent
higher than that in the United States. True, in America you're more likely to
be shot to death. On the other hand, in England you're more likely to be
strangled to death. But in both cases, the statistical likelihood of being
murdered at all is remote, especially if you steer clear of the drug trade.
When it comes to anything else, though - burglary, auto theft, armed robbery,
violent assault, rape - the crime rate reaches deep into British society in
ways most Americans would find virtually inconceivable.
I cite those celebrity assaults not because celebrities are more prone to
wind up as crime victims than anyone else, but only because the measure of a
civilized society is how easily you can insulate yourself from its snarling
underclass. In America, if you can make it out of some of the loonier cities,
it's a piece of cake, relatively speaking. In Britain, if even a rock star or
TV supremo can't insulate himself, nobody can. In any society, criminals prey
on the weak and vulnerable. It's the peculiar genius of government policy to
have ensured that in British society everyone is weak and vulnerable - from
Norfolk farmers to Tom Cruise's neighbor.
And that's where America is headed if those million marching moms make
any headway in Washington: Less guns = more crime. And more vulnerability. And
a million more moms being burgled, and assaulted, and raped. I like hunting,
but if that were the only thing at stake with guns, I guess I could learn to
live without it. But I'm opposed to gun control because I don't see why my
neighbors in New Hampshire should have to live the way, say, my sister-in-law
does - in a comfortable manor house in a prosperous part of rural England,
lying awake at night listening to yobbo gangs drive up, park their vans, and
test her doors and windows before figuring out that the little old lady down
the lane's a softer touch.
Between the introduction of pistol permits in 1903 and the banning of
hand-guns after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Britain has had a century of
incremental gun control -"sensible measures that all reasonable people can
agree on." And what's the result? Even when you factor in America's nutcake
Jurisdictions with the crackhead mayors, the overall crime rate in England and
Wales is higher than in all 50 states, even though over there they have more
policemen per capita than in the U.S., on vastly higher rates of pay
installing more video surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the Western
world. Robbery, sex crimes, and violence against the person are higher in
England and Wales; property crime is twice as high; vehicle theft is higher
still; the British are 2.3 times more likely than Americans to be assaulted,
and three times more likely to be violently assaulted. Between 1973 and 1992,
burglary rates in the U.S. fell by half. In Britain, not even the Home
Office's disreputable reporting methods (if a burglar steals from 15 different
apartments in one building, it counts as a single crime) can conceal the
remorseless rise: Britons are now more than twice as likely as Americans to be
mugged; two-thirds will have their property broken into at some time in their
lives. Even more revealing is the divergent character between U.K. and U.S.
property crime: In America, just over 10 percent of all burglaries are "hot
burglaries" - committed while the owners are present; in Britain, it's over
half. Because of insurance-required alarm systems, the average thief
increasingly concludes that it's easier to break in while you're on the
premises. Your home-security system may conceivably make your home more safe,
but it makes you less so.
Conversely, up here in the New Hampshire second congressional district,
there are few laser security systems and lots of guns. Our murder rate is much
lower than Britain's and our property crime is virtually insignificant. Anyone
want to make a connection? Villains are expert calculators of risk, and the
likelihood of walking away uninjured with an $80 television set is too remote.
In New Hampshire, a citizen's right to defend himself deters crime; in
Britain, the state-inflicted impotence of the homeowner actively encourages
it. Just as becoming a drug baron is a rational career move in Colombia, so
too is becoming a violent burglar in the United Kingdom. The chances that the
state will seriously impede your progress are insignificant.
Now I'm Canadian, so, as you might expect, the Second Amendment doesn't
mean much to me. I think it's more basic than that. Privately owned firearms
symbolize the essential difference between your great republic and the
countries you left behind. In the U.S., power resides with "we, the people"
and is leased ever more sparingly up through town, county, state, and federal
government. In Britain and Canada, power resides with the Crown and is
graciously devolved down in limited doses. To a north country Yankee it's
self-evident that, when a burglar breaks into your home, you should have the
right to shoot him - indeed, not just the right, but the responsibility, as a
free-born citizen, to uphold the integrity of your property. But in Britain
and most other parts of the Western world, the state reserves that right to
itself, even though at the time the ne'er-do-well shows up in your bedroom
you're on the scene and Constable Plod isn't: He's some miles distant, asleep
in his bed, and with his answering machine on referring you to central
dispatch God knows where.
These days it's standard to bemoan the "dependency culture" of state
welfare, but Britain's law-and-order "dependency culture" is even more
enfeebling. What was it the police and courts resented about that Norfolk
farmer? That he "took the law into his own hands"? But in a responsible
participatory democracy, the law ought to be in our hands. The problem with
Britain is that the police force is now one of the most notable surviving
examples of a pre-Thatcher, bloated, incompetent, unproductive, over-paid,
closed-shop state monopoly. They're about as open to constructive suggestions
as the country's Communist Mineworkers' union was 20 years ago, and the
control-freak tendencies of all British political parties ensure that the
country's bloated, expensive county and multi-county forces are inviolable.
The Conservatives' big mistake between 1979 and 1997 was an almost
willfully obtuse failure to understand that giving citizens more personal
responsibility isn't something that extends just to their income and consumer
choices; it also applies to their communities and their policing arrangements.
If you have one without the other, you end up with modern Britain: a
materially prosperous society in which the sense of frustration and impotence
is palpable, and you're forced to live with a level of endless property crime
most Americans would regard as unacceptable.
We know Bill Clinton's latest favorite statistic - that 12 "kids" a day
die from gun violence - is bunk: Five-sixths of those 11,569 grade-school
moppets are aged between 15 and 19, and many of them have had the misfortune
to become involved in gangs, convenience-store hold-ups, and drug deals,
which, alas, have a tendency to go awry. If more crack deals passed off
peacefully, that "child" death rate could be reduced by three-quarters. But
away from those dark fringes of society, Americans live lives blessedly
untouched by most forms of crime - at least when compared with supposedly more
civilized countries like Britain. That's something those million marching moms
should consider, if only because in a gun-free America women -- and the
elderly and gays and all manner of other fashionable victim groups - will be
bearing the brunt of a much higher proportion of violent crime than they do
today. Ask Phil Collins or Ridley Scott or Germaine Greer.
Copyright 2000 American Spectator
Magazine
