If you have been on X lately, you may have seen a horrific video of an attempted murder out of Belfast, Northern Ireland, from earlier this week. The suspect, Hadi Alodid, 30, who is now in police custody, attempted to behead Stephen Ogilvy, an Irishman in his 40s, with a knife. Oglivy suffered severe lacerations on his face and neck and the loss of his left eye. Alodid is a Sudanese migrant who entered the United Kingdom illegally in 2023, requested asylum, and was immediately granted leave to remain until 2028.
This comes after a string of high-profile murders and other crimes across the United Kingdom at the hands of largely Muslim migrants from the third world. Thousands of young girls were raped by grooming gangs across at least 50 cities and towns across Britain, mostly by Pakistani Muslims. British authorities looked the other way to avoid accusations of racism by Muslims until Elon Musk and others blew the lid off the scandal on social media. When Sikh man Vickrum Digwa killed 18-year-old Brit Henry Nowak last December, Digwa cried racism to the police, who proceeded to handcuff Nowak for absolutely no reason as he bled to death.
After the brutal attempted murder of Ogilvy on June 8, Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for “calm,” and Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister Naomi Long continued to placate Muslims instead of pointing out the obvious issue at hand. “I also know that there are many people in our community from ethnic minority backgrounds who are terrified today about any kind of retaliation or backlash against them, which we have seen in the past,” she told the BBC.
Clearly, the British government has no interest in protecting its citizens. Thankfully, an Irish bystander came to Ogilvy’s aid, beating his attempted murderer with a shovel to end the attack. This highlights the difference between America and Britain. In some circumstances, a man with a shovel can beat a man with a knife, but a couple of well-placed hollow points, even at a modest 1,000 feet per second, would have ended the conflict in a far quicker, cleaner, more decisive manner.
We are citizens of the United States; the British are subjects of the crown. Sure, our founding documents lay out the distinctions, but the true difference lies with our half-billion privately owned guns. In the U.K., guns are heavily regulated, and only half a million Brits own roughly 2 million guns, the lion’s share being shotguns used for grouse and pheasant hunting.
In Federalist 46, James Madison references Americans’ “advantage of being armed,” which he contrasts with European nations. In modernity, this advantage means the ability to defend yourself and your family without waiting for the police, which, in Henry Nowak’s case, sided with his killer anyway.
Our guns don’t prevent all violent crime. Of course, there is plenty of violence in most large American cities, but the bloodbath predicted by gun-control activists never came to pass. The murder rate is falling dramatically as the rate of concealed carry sits at an all-time high. Citizens of 29 states, over half of the U.S. population, can now carry a pistol without a permission slip from the government. Fourteen additional states are legally obligated to issue carry permits to qualified applicants. Only citizens of seven states and D.C. have any real trouble obtaining a firearm. Another advantage that Americans enjoy, and I think Madison would agree, is the ease with which we can move across state lines.
RESTORING AMERICA: EVERYTHING IS ON THE LINE. WE CAN’T TAKE MIDTERMS FOR GRANTED
The Second Amendment did not prevent unconstitutional surveillance or deranged COVID-19 lockdowns. It did not prevent the government from importing millions of migrants who do not care to learn American values, and it did not prevent governmental atrocities such as Waco. However, we have not seen the type of crackdown on free speech, jailing of citizens en masse for “racism,” or the replacement-level importation of migrants from the third world that has occurred in Britain.
Most importantly, our guns give us a fighting chance. A Pakistani rape gang or a Sudanese beheading-enthusiast would have a rough go of it in most jurisdictions in the U.S. of A.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a writer, musician, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.