Teen Pleads Guilty to Plotting UK Terrorist Attack with Firearm

We all know how the UK feels about guns. There’s no real need to rehash its animosity toward the right to keep and bear arms. We’re all aware.

But we also know that a lot of people here think the policies over there are the bee’s knees.

Yet I can’t help but wonder why, if their gun control laws are so good, they were so worried about a kid planning an attack like this.

Muhammad Billal, 18, was arrested on February 11 and charged with two counts of preparation of terrorist acts, relating to an alleged gun attack plan and travelling to Somalia.

The defendant, from Nelson in Lancashire, was also charged with four counts of collecting information likely to be of use to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism relating to possession of issues of Rumiyah, the Islamic State online propaganda magazine, between last April and August.

Billal, who was not represented by a lawyer, admitted all the charges against him during a hearing at the Old Bailey on Friday.

The court heard his terror attack planning involved researching “accessible shooting ranges” and the purchase of “chest rigs” designed to hold ammunition between February and October last year.

He also conducted online reconnaissance of potential attack locations, and sought to illicitly buy a firearm.

He also booked a trip to Somalia, with a visa to enter Ethiopia and an intention to cross the border into Somalia.

In other words, he was serious.

Yet it also seems that without a gun, his plan would be less than useless. Did the authorities believe that an 18-year-old–a teen, though also a legal adult in both the US and the UK–had a way to obtain a gun despite the plethora of gun control laws in the country?

My guess is that they did.

Luckily, he was caught before then, but I can’t help but think of what would have happened if he hadn’t been.

This young man would have had a firearm in a country where they’re cracking down on pocket knives, meaning there would be no armed resistance until law enforcement arrived. Even then, many police officers there are unarmed. All they can do when faced with an armed terrorist is either run, hide, or bleed. That’s it.

During that time, how many others would die? How many lives would be shattered?

The issue has never been whether criminals and terrorists can get guns. That answer will always be “Yes, they can.”

The issue is whether people can defend themselves. In the UK, that answer is “No, they can’t.”

That’s the way they want it. They’ve had enough time to change it otherwise, so it’s clear they want people unable to defend themselves. The fact that the British people are losing their country isn’t lost on me, either. They can’t defend themselves from that, even, so nothing here is good news.

Sure, they caught this kid. They might even catch the next ones.

Sooner or later, though, they’re going to miss one, and no one will be there to stop him when the killer starts, unlike what happened at Greenwood Park Mall when a mass killer tried and got lit up by an armed citizen who wanted no part of being killed or seeing more people murdered.

You get to pick which country you want.

I’d rather have armed citizens.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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