Unionist

My deepest apologies, Mike. I should not have suggested that.

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C_steam

I'm with Mike on this one, but we should extend it to punishment also. For example, convicted terrorists could duel using explosive body suits - the remaining intact body parts of the winner of the duel could get a couple of weeks parole as a reward.

We should also add trial by ordeal for certain crimes, if only as it would be better viewing than daytime TV.

( - this was not a serious post, BTW)

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douglas denny

Much better to allow everyone to be armed as a right - as in America. (In fact we still have that right stated in the Bill of Rights - completely ignored of course).

You pay the penalty for this radical policy of having a few nutters go amok every now and then; and the hospitals see a lot more gunshot wounds in their professional capacity - but rape; burglary; muggings; theft and violent crime against the person diminish to vanishing levels where people carry arms, especially where they can carry concealed arms, or openly, as in Florida.
You also have to allow the police to be fully armed of course.

Also you have the wonderful bonus though that no government will ever try to usurp the will of the people when they are all armed. The founding fathers of the American Constitution were very clever in putting the right to bear arms into the constitution. That's why they did it.

We only lost the right to bear arms in this country after the first world war when there was a genuine fear by the government of insurrection by the people who were striking and generally agitating in a big way, and the first gun laws came into being, mainly to find out how many there were in the country and start to control them.

The gun laws are now ridiculously draconian - but do absolutely nothing to reduce handgun crime which has gone up over 600% since the ban on handguns came into being after Dunblane.
Well known saying: If you outlaw guns - then only outlaws will have guns - and they do - and are increasing, and the reality is the government can do nothing to stop it. They are so easily concealed to bring into the country, or converted from replica guns of which there are many hundreds of thousands here already.

DED.
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douglas denny

I had a guided tour around 'Spice Island' in Old Portsmouth once; and was told the last 'offical' duel (with pistols) was carried out outside a pub which is just a few yards down from the 'Still and West' pub which is right at the end of Old Portsmouth.
Cannot remember the names of the duellists,or the date... or the outcome.


Pistols certainly even the odds. There was a famous chappie who was a dwarf, a favourite of the monarch; jumped out of a cake or something like that: might have been the original 'Tom Thumb'. He was however, a most excellent shot. Cannot remember the era, think it was mid eighteenth C. Any one who attempted to demean him was offered a duel. He shot (dead) more than one I believe.
Anyone insulting him was in for serious trouble.

DED.
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Mikeuk

I think this was the last fatal duel in England in 1845, but I have always believed it was fought close to where Clarence Pier now stands.

However this may be wrong. I found this on the net regarding Gosport.

Ahead is the Browndown firing range, a scene of military desolation with rusty narrow-gauge railways leading to huge shingle butts. It is an eerie landscape which has been used for military training for more than 300 years. Perhaps it is appropriate that it is the site of the last recorded duel between Englishmen, when Lt Hawkey of the Royal Marines fired at and mortally wounded Capt Seton of the 11th Dragoons to settle a matter of honour.

That's not quite right though. Englishmen certainly fought later duels abroad where the authorities were more relaxed about such matters, and quite right too.

Treitschke upholds the honour of the duel and lambasts late-Victorian England where, he claims, officers were involved in an unseemly fistfight in a railway carriage.

In today's gay-infested army it would probably be dildos at dawn.

Mikeuk

Sir Jeffrey Hudson, court dwarf to Henrietta Maria, the Queen of Charles I

Mikeuk

Just got my thoughts in order on this.

The original dispute took place at the King's Assembly Rooms Southsea Common, on the site of the present Clarence Pier funfair. It was a dispute over a woman - what else?

The parties must have taken a wherry to Gosport from Bath Square - near the old 'Still' pub.

mrabody

I and others on the law and order committee advocated for reduced restrictions on firearms ownership, but were voted down.

douglas denny

Sounds like the same parties in the duel I was told about.
I was told by the guide the actual duel was in the front of what was then a pub/tavern whatever, of the time. (No longer a pub now though).
I know it exactly but cannot remember what the building is called now. It is a dull blue colour and not very attractive. It is about three or four buildings East of the Still & West, set back from the narrow roadway which passes down from the S&W and just before the closed-off area where the Victory class yachts are stored. There is a yard/ ground in front of it which is where the duel was fought (cobbled I think from memory), between the building and the cobbled roadway .
... or so I was told. Needs further research.

Pity UKIP's policy was not to reduce the firearms laws to more reasonable levels. How our poor Olympic pistol shooters manage to get any practice I do not know.
The laws are ridiculous now and make legal firearms certificate holders more likely to give up with the draconian requirements and difficulties placed in their way. Probably deliberately. There are few young people coming into the gun clubs, or schools cadet forces, and fewer taking an interest in joining the armed forces as a result. Kipling and Baden-Powell who thought all young people should be taught the discipline of shooting would be spinning in their graves if they knew what was happening in this country now with all the political correctness and anti-military nonsense pushed by the liberal left-wing neo-communist fascist lot presently in control. (I won't say 'governing' us as they aren't capable of governing - they havn't a clue how to).
I was told by someone who is aware of the police internal policies in these matters that the Chief Constable's desire for Hampshire is to try to reduce the number of firearms licences by 50 a year if possible. Presumably so they are zero eventually. Presumably as a directive from the Home Office. Presumably as a directive from the EU.

It would seem that regulations are being squeezed tighter everywhere in the EU which suggests they don't want firearms in the EU generally available in the public domain. Why? It cannot be to increase safety to the public, (which is always used as the excuse for more regulation especially after such unfortunate one-off incidents as the nutcase at Dunblane), as that does not sensibly apply to legalised arms in society; nor does it stop the terrorist threat of explosive suicide bombers who don't need firearms.

So why? Well I would suggest the following (using a bit of lateral thinking and knowing how the blighters like control of the public to the Nth degree) ...it is likely our EU masters (and government) think there cannot be armed insurrection or resistance if the public are 'disarmed' - so that when the EU armed Gendarmerie come into the streets of Britain to suppress the civil disobedience that will come eventually with the disillusionment that is building-up and is inevitable with the EU's excessive powers here in Britain and the people can do nothing about them.

The government has not studied history - they do not realise/remember that control of firearms was tried in Northern Ireland and did not work. In fact wherever gun control to try to stop insurrection is tried, and everywhere there are governments wishing to suppress insurgency, - it simply does not work. The IRA in Northern Ireland; The Tamils in Sri Lanka; Basques in France/Spain; and more numerous African countries than you can shake a stick at. Arms are always available.
Separatist Militias and 'freedom fighters' can always get enough firearms if they become organised enough as an opposition and wish to become armed.

That is another reason why we must oppose the EU.

I do not want to see an armed "British Independence Army" forming in this country to regain our independence, as happened in Northern Ireland. But it could happen here if the people are denied democracy as is being done so recklessly, gratuitously and cynically by our present politicians who do not seem to care about the dangers of destabilising the democratic traditions we have built up in this country over centuries.

History shows that ultimately, armed insurrection is the only recourse of a disgruntled population who dislike their government enough, and arms are always available no matter how hard governments try to suppress the availability of them. President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena of Romania found that out the hard way in 1989.

DED.
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Mikeuk

Going east from the Still there is the old Customs House and then the weatherboarded store attached to it. Then Quebec House - once a sea bath. All that is on the south side of the street.

V unlikely to have been fought there. In 1845 it would have been very busy indeed.

My mother's family come from that very area,