Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Friday, April 04, 2008

U.K. disarmament groups are also 'anti-body armor'

Our friends across the pond seem to be more than a little agitated about a new product that claims to be a "bullet proof hoodie" (never mind, for the moment, the dangerously naïve myth that anything a person can wear can be made "bullet proof," rather than bullet resistant).

Gun control groups have condemned a new “bullet-proof hoodie” which claims to protect against street violence.

The £300 Defender hoodie makes the wearer’s upper body invincible to every bullet up to a high velocity rifle, its makers claim.
Again, it's not really my purpose here to address the claim of making the wearer’s upper body invincible," or to point out my skepticism about the hoodie's ability to stop handgun cartridges like the .460 S&W Magnum--if someone else wants to test that, they're welcome to try. £300 ain't exactly cheap--about $600. More than enough to buy a decent defensive handgun . . . oops--I forgot--this is a defense-free zone we're talking about here.

Still, in the U.K., even something as purely defensive in nature as body armor is apparently considered excessively martial.
But gun control groups said today that the company was practising “exploitation at its most grotesque”. They predicted a rise in gang violence, saying children would buy the hoodie as a status symbol.

Raymond Stevenson, a spokesman for Don’t Trigger, an international anti-gun campaign based in Brixton, London, said: “It’s not helping kids to provide them with bullet-proof armoury. These companies are just encouraging the escalation of the urban warfare.

“It’ll give people the false impression that they’re protected and will encourage more aggressive behaviour.”
If "children" (especially urban children) can plunk down the equivalent of $600 for clothing, I can only assume that the British economy is doing a lot better than ours.

I tend to believe that the best protection against someone who intends to shoot you is to not allow him to live long enough to do it, rather than to try to interpose material between you and his gun that will (hopefully) slow the bullet down enough to keep you alive, but I acknowledge there are some cases in which something like this could be a real life saver.

Citizen disarmament groups in Britain, though, would prefer that this life saver not be available. One can perhaps justify a rabidly anti-gun position on pacifistic grounds, but when a person argues that it's wrong to sell something that only stops bullets, there is no disguising his wish to deny citizens any means of self-protection at all.

According to these groups, apparently, people are under a moral obligation to be perforated by any bullet that comes their way.

11 comments:

Yuri Orlov said...

That's just sick. Not only do they not want you to be able to defend yourself, they don't want you to take even the smallest step to help you survive being shot.

"Baaaa....."

me said...

come on gorebal warming...sink that island! The sane ones got out long ago.

me said...

sorry, just remembered a couple things I commented on. The padding of lamp posts and the removal of fire extinguishers from flats.

Apparently the brits have decided that the best way to handle anything is to runaway from anything dangerous or to create a bubble-wrap society. 2+2 CAN equal 5 if 4 frightens you. Personal responsibility doesn't exist.

I'm also realized my earlier comment is off target, a better event would be a real life "28 days later", if we could all watch online feeds of their security cameras.

If it weren't for the fact that our masters follow their masters lead in many things it would be side splitting hilarity.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Padded lamp posts? Good Lord.

I'd heard about the fire extinguishers (unbelievable), but the lamp posts are new to me.

What the hell happened over there--when did they trade in their stiff upper lips for limp wrists?

MadRocketScientist said...

They talk about the real problem, and then take a hard right about how to fix it.

The problem:
“It’ll give people the false impression that they’re protected and will encourage more aggressive behaviour.”

Their Fix:
Don't let them be protected.

The right fix:
Why the hell do these kids feel the need to be so damned aggressive? Maybe we should focus on redirecting all that aggression and energy into something constructive.

Sebastian said...

It very well may stop the large handgun rounds. The trick to getting through soft body armor is being fast and small. Larger, slower moving projectiles are generally stopped, since its energy can be spread across many fibers of Kevlar. You can still get through being large and fast, but the larger you are, the faster you have to be going.

A .22 magnum will go right through most soft body armor.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

True--drilling a big hole requires more energy than drilling a small one. When Reed's gets some more .22 Reed Express barrels for the Cz-52 in stock, I'm going to have to get one--a .22 caliber bullet at 45 grains and about 2170 fps can't be good for soft body armor.

Again, though, the actual effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the hoodie is not really my point--I'm more interested in the PSH about kids in Kevlar.

Anonymous said...

The thing is, in the perfect world of many of the disarmers LEOs are the "only ones" who will be armed. Thus, being protected from bullets means that you are planning to be a criminal.

Anonymous said...

And to think, Great Britain was once a nation to be reckoned with!

Anonymous said...

--when did they trade in their stiff upper lips for limp wrists?


They didn't. They just developed limp dicks in the interest of pragamatism.

Anonymous said...

Will the UK outlaw condoms because they encourage casual sex? Or prohibit seat belts because they encourage reckless driving?