Thanks For Being A Good Citizen? Jail!
As most of us are aware, England has some pretty strict gun laws. As a matter of fact according to an article at Learnenglish.org, “Britain has the most severe gun control laws in the world. Handguns or pistols are banned for civilians, even for sports purposes. You must get a certificate from the police to own a shotgun or a rifle for hunting , and the certificates aren’t easy to get”.
Of course laws alone don’t keep guns off the streets. As we say in the U.S. “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”, so in order to get illegal guns off the streets England depends on her citizens to help.
That’s what makes today’s story so amazing.
I found an article in the Liverpool Echo, and another in the Liverpool Daily Post that told the story of Shaun Wood, 22. It seems that Mr. Wood got himself into a little financial trouble.
I’m sure it’s happened to all of us. Get behind on the payments, the phone starts to ring, threats start to fly, it can be pretty unnerving. Making it especially difficult for Mr. Wood was the fact that he was behind in payments to his drug dealer.
Having dealt with a few people trying to collect credit card payments, I can only imagine to what lengths a drug dealer will go in trying to collect. But it seems that Mr. Wood’s dealer was willing to work with him. According to the articles, “To pay off the £200 cannabis bill he agreed to store small amounts of the drug at his home in Clayford Crescent, Knotty Ash.”
These “deals” have a way of getting out of hand, and Mr. Wood was ordered to hold increasingly serious drugs, including crack cocaine, until he was given a MAC sub-machine gun and ammunition to store.
In testimony in the Liverpool Crown Court, “Charles Lander, prosecuting, told the court after three months holding the weapon the pressure eventually got to Wood, who had repeatedly asked for the gun to be removed.”
“He picked up the weapon and began to walk around Southport – eventually going to the town’s police station where `visibly shaking and distressed’ he voluntarily handed it over.”
“Wood told officers he had simply wanted to get rid of the firearm and had been contemplating suicide”.
The police of course proclaimed Mr. Wood a hero and rewarded him appropriately. Just kidding, they threw him in jail!
England has a statutory five year jail term for possessing such a weapon, and apparently it doesn’t matter that someone pretty much forced him to have it.
“Judge Sean Duncan said he accepted the circumstances were exceptional enough to reduce the statutory five year jail term and sentenced Wood to 2½ years in prison. He branded Wood’s decision `brave’”.
This has got to be about the dumbest thing I have read for sometime. Someone gets a very dangerous, illegal weapon off the street and ends up in jail for doing so.
Doesn’t this discourage anyone else from turning in guns in the future? The next time someone is trying to dispose of a gun don’t you think it will likely be left somewhere where a child could possibly find it? I doubt that it will be turned in to police. I don’t think I would subject myself to a probable jail sentence by turning one in.