An Unhealthy Interest in Firearms

Posting a picture of himself with an imitation Beretta bedroom pistol on Facebook has landed a citizen of the Place Great Britain Used To Be in prison for five years.

If we were to take the newspaper report at face value, I would add that he also had no healthy interest in preserving his own life.

Now, I don't know if Merry Old Fleet Street has the same multiple layers of fact checking as our colonial broadsheets, but if they do the perp posed with what looks like one of those pot metal nonguns you used to see in one-inch ads in the back of Mechanix Illustrated. According to the report:

"During a search in his bedroom (Bobbies) found an imitation pistol, illegally converted to fire 8mm bullets and capable of killing."

Killing whom, pray tell? The cops might have saved the Queen a pretty pence in incarceration expenses by making the accused demonstrate his gunsmithing ingenuity through discharging one of the "8 mm bullets." My bet would be forearm lacerations and a quick bleedout.

And, Ladies and gentlemen, may I present one of our worst nightmares of the later periods of the Obama Administration.

"Det Chief Insp Reed added: 'What does a normal member of society need with a firearm? 'When we looked at his computer, we discovered he had an unhealthy interest in firearms'."

Of course it can't happen here, and I am pleased to live in a nation where the authorities would never even think of snooping in a citizen's personal computer to discover, publish, and punish his or her unhealthy interests.

H/T to Jay