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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 579, July 18, 2010 "I eventually came to the conclusion that the police didn't actually know anything about the laws they were enforcing."
Locked up just before Open Heart Surgery for Downloading Mr Luty's eBook
Special to The Libertarian Enterprise All my life I've known that I was born with a congenital heart defect and that I would eventually need open heart surgery to rectify it. Fast forward 38 years and my time had come. I spent some time with my parents the week before my operation, waiting for the call to come into hospital. There were a number of cancellations and one occasion where I actually came into hospital, got comfortable in a bed for the operation the next day to only be told that the time slot in the operating theatre had been taken by a transplant operation and that I'd have to go home. So, I called my parents to come and pick me up and take me back their place. By now I was feeling sick to the stomach thinking about the operation. I didn't relish the thought of having my chest sawed in half; being put on a bypass machine and having someone stop my heart to start cutting it up with a scalpel to replace certain defective parts. I spent a few more days with my parents before I got a 100% positive confirmation that I was going to go in for the operation. With only one day to go before this I felt quite sick to the stomach and needed to do something to take my mind off things. Therefore, I decided to go back to my place one last time before I went under the knife. So, you can imagine the sicker feeling I got when I walked up the stairs to my flat and saw that my front door had been smashed in, screwed back together and the lock replaced—meaning my key no longer worked so I couldn't gain access to my own home. My immediate thoughts were still centred on the operation I was going in for the next day but now I had the additional stress of a break in. I grabbed my mobile phone and called my brother and he said that the only thing I could do was call the cops. Naively I did this and they asked me to wait where I was until they got a unit out to see me. It was at this point that one of my neighbours arrived on the scene. "Have I been burgled?" I asked him. He then went into a full description of what had happened. Apparently a mass of police came along and broke down my door. He said they spent some time in my flat and removed quite a lot of stuff. He tried to explain to them that I was having an operation but none of them took the time to listen to him. I went into my neighbour's house and had a coffee to calm myself as I waited for the police to arrive. My weak heart was beating heavily in my chest as I continued to become more and more stressed. Then I saw the police car arrive so I went back up to my flat. A lone police man came up the stairs and asked me to confirm my name and such. He then asked me to open my car and he found my mp3 player and portable hard drive. These were promptly confiscated by him, along with some copies of Alex Jones latest documentaries and a copy of Innocence Betrayed—A History of Gun Control. Then he read me my rights. Now, if I had my health, I might have started to become very upset verbally at this point but I had to revert to calming measures that I had learnt over years of having to deal with a congenital heart defect. I climbed into the back of the police car with the knowledge that I was being arrested for class 1 firearms possession. Apparently, my father's fully legal to own old antique deactivated rifle, which was given to him in the 70s in Saudi and was legally imported into this country, my BB gun and my blank firer were class one firearms in someone's opinion—and this was the reason I was going to spend the day before my open heart surgery in a police cell. I remember the ride back to the police station mostly because of the short conversation I had with the police man as I was handcuffed in the back of the his car. Now I'm a firm supporter of the US second amendment and I believe in it because it prevents a tyrannical state more than it allowing you to also defend yourself from low level street criminals. But this police man was under the impression that I shouldn't have guns of any kind, even toy ones and antiques. I found this a pathetic position to hold but he was the police man and I was the handcuffed prisoner so I couldn't see any point in continuing with that conversation. I felt that zipping up my mouth and keeping my opinions to me, myself and I alone was the best option at that point. After this, there was a long period of silence and I think the police man was expecting me to argue with him—but I refused to take the bait. He then started to ask me about my heart condition in what seemed like a cynical tone to me—as though he believed that I was just making it up as some sort of excuse. I explained it calmly to him in detail and that was it for the rest of the trip. I ended up in the police station getting searched, photographed, finger printed and my mouth swabbed before being locked up in a cell for the rest of the afternoon. By this time, I thought that the operation would be put on hold yet again—possibly until I was charged with something. I had visions of trying to survive in a hostile prison environment with a severe heart defect that would soon kill me and no one caring about getting it sorted. Half way though the afternoon I got a visit from a doctor who asked my about my condition. He held his stethoscope up to my chest and instantly confirmed it as he heard my irregular heart beat. Soon after this, things started to happen and I was lead to an interview room where I met a solicitor that had been appointed to me and we discussed what had been found in my flat. Then a CID officer came in with the three so called 'weapons' I mentioned earlier and started off a tape recorder to record my interview. He asked me if any of them looked threatening and dangerous and I proceeded to explain that none of them were since...
He seemed rather taken aback by this and the interview soon ended because I think he realised that he wasn't talking to either an idiot or a criminal. Before leaving the interview room I asked for the reason that a warrant was served on my flat and I was told that it had something to do with an eBook that I had purchased with Paypal. Of course, I instantly knew the book in question. It was P.A. Luty's Expedient Homemade Firearms—I knew this because there was no other eBooks that I had bought with Paypal. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the police cell until I was eventually released in the evening with 4 months parole. I went back to my flat and used the new key they gave me to get in. Inside I found that everything had been overturned and left in a right old mess. My computer was missing, as were a number of videos and books. Some of my monthly copies of the Sporting Gun magazine were sprawled all over my living room table like someone had been scanning through them and all my clothes had been pulled out of the cupboards and thrown back in, in a heap. I then found my live bladed samurai sword which I had been left with, even though the 'selling of them by shops' had been banned—much like what had happened to realistic looking blank firers in this country. This made me wonder why they hadn't taken that with them either—but I eventually came to the conclusion that the police didn't actually know anything about the laws they were enforcing. The following day came soon enough and I was distracted from the tyrannical Police State raid on my flat by thoughts of the huge operation I was going to have. As I lay on the operating table, I fell into unconsciousness with visions of never waking up again, not though poor operating procedures but through conspiracy of the state—much like the guy in the film Awake, when people tried to kill him during a heart operation in order to inherit his fortune. A few moments of darkness later and I woke up in the intensive care unit with tubes down my throat helping me to breathe and other tubes coming out of my arms and stomach pumping and draining all sorts of fluid to and from my body. I thought there was a large clock ticking on the wall behind me, but that was just my new metal aortic heart valve ticking away inside me—as it still does to this day. I spent another 3 weeks in hospital with a few other complications as a result of the surgery—and I had to go back under the knife again as excessive fluid had built up around my heart after the first operation. The thought occurred to me once or twice that the stress of a tyrannical Police State raid and the unjust time in a police cell and all the resulting stress might have had some input on me having these problems. Then I was released from hospital and told to take at least 3 months off work for my breast bone to heal and to get my INR levels settled. Thankfully, the Cricket Ashes games were on TV during this period so I spent most of it watching that. I could have continued with the computer course I was taking, but that was hard because my computer was being scanned for anything illegal for a whole 4 months by the police. I eventually got all my stuff back after the parole and I wasn't charged with anything in the end. But that's not the point. My privacy was infringed, my health put in danger and freedom of information and speech was treated like it was back in Nazi Germany when they burnt books that put the government's own philosophy in doubt. There are a few things I still would like the police to consider the next time they decide to raid someone for simply buying an eBook...
I have now bought a full copy of Expedient Homemade Firearms from Amazon in proper paperback book form and I left this review... Do you get raided by the police and spend a day in a police cell one day before open heart surgery if you buy this off Amazon? You know, like what happened to me when I bought the eBook version of this book off the author's website? However, it has now been removed. So much for free speech (again)... So, we now have idiot nutters like Mr Bird and Mr Moat running around on Prozac and steroid induced shooting sprees along with the mass corporate media creating even more fear about firearms and those who believe in self defence. I had one person who tried telling me that they prefer our country and its draconian anti self defence laws to living in the USA and all the gun crime that they have there (although I doubt that this person had ever visited the US when I have been a number of times). My answer to that was that I would prefer eight to ten thousand gun related deaths a year to over 150 million people (in the last century alone) that were disarmed and then slaughtered on mass by their government. In fact I did the maths for those who are interested in statistics.... 150,000,000 divided by 10,000 equals 15,000 years at the current US yearly gun death rate to match the number of defenceless unarmed people killed in that last 100 years by their government.
TLE AFFILIATE
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