Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their
teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use
in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures
show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the
world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily.
Strong evidence that bans work then, eh?
In
Not really evidence of that or the opposite. There might have been even more handguns had they not been banned.
But it is evidence of strong demand for the pieces.
It is strong evidence that banning handguns does not stop criminals or indeed feral children from getting hold of them and using them on the innocent, it does however prevent the law-abiding from owning them and extends the state’s power over the individual.
“prevent the law-abiding from owning them and extends the state’s power over the individual.”
And makes it one heck of a lot harder for Britain to win gold in the Olympics pistol shoot, not to mention the legal hoops the Government and the IOC has to jump through to allow London to host shooting events in 2012.
Idiots.
Any ‘law abiding person’ who thinks they need a gun to have fun is not the sort of ‘law abiding person’ I would like to live nextdoor to.
Anybody who wants ‘a gun for fun’ has failed the sanity test in my opinion.
We also need to separate illegal handguns from still legal ones in the gun crime figures. The press conveniently tend to ignore that the fastest growth in gun crime is because of LEGAL weapons such as imitation guns, converted guns, airguns, ‘leakage’ from the Armed forces, Police, authorities etc. This demonstrates that handguns have indeed been made more difficult to get hold of because of the ban.
Those of you that want to see handguns legal again – know that this will increase supply to criminals – but you don’t care about that – you just want to be able to have ‘fun with a gun’ – that is your real motivation.
As for the argument that burglaries and street crime will drop and us ‘law abiders’ will be able to ‘protect ourselves’ and ‘bump off the gangster scum’. The more likely scenario is that burglars and other gangsters will be more likely to carry guns (having been given a justification and easier access) and householders, children and innocent bystanders will be more likely to die.
Who would want to live their lives (literally) sleeping with a ‘gun under the pillow’? Because that is the only way a householder would get to their gun in time to tackle a burglar. Any respectable gun owner would need to keep their gun locked away to prevent theft or kids playing them. Certainly keeping one nearby in the house or walking the streets with one will only lead to many more people dying just like in the US.
But I’m sure that Tony Blair had good intentions.
“Any ‘law abiding person’ who thinks they need a gun to have fun is not the sort of ‘law abiding person’ I would like to live nextdoor to.”
I know who I’d rather live next door to…….better a gun owner than a puritan who seeks to choose for others how they should have fun.
“Those of you that want to see handguns legal again – know that this will increase supply to criminals…”
They don’t seem to be suffering from a shortage at the moment….
Neil:
Tsk. You don’t want it under the pillow. On the nightstand beside the bed is better. “Because that is the only way a householder would get to their gun in time to tackle a burglar,” is a nonsense statement, presupposing a great deal more about the layout, thickness of doors, strength of locks, etc., in any given case than you, personally, can really hope to know. In any case, the incidence of burglary appears to go down as the chance of the burglar meeting deadly force goes up.
While there are certainly other factors, our experience in the US, after years in which ever more restrictive gun control measures also matched ever increasing levels of crime, is that where liberal concealed carry laws have been enacted in about 3/4ths of states (37, IIRC, of 50 either have no laws prohibiting concealed carry or have laws which presume one has the right to a license to carry and require the state to prove in court one should not be allowed to carry), is that crime drops fairly precipitously after enacting of such “show cause” or “shall issue” legislation.
Again, as with the capital punishment argument, none of this evidence is necessarily dispositive, though the evidence that restrictions on guns and high crime levels go hand in hand is very strong.
For anyone interested, here’s something I published in EXPERIENCE, The Journal of the Senior Division of the American Bar Association, about nine years ago:
http://www.tomkratman.com/rant2ndamend.html
I’m not sure but I _think_ I may be the only lawyer (ex-lawyer, now) ever to publish a pro-gun / pro-Second Amendment article in an ABA publication.
My guess is that many legal handguns were owned by people in more rural areas, and these are largely gun crimes in inner city areas.
Unless some of these leaked out during the handover of weapons, I think it unlikely that the two are connected.
Gun crime is more about something else being illegal – drugs.
Sorry to piss on the party, but the Conservative Government of John Major introduced the handgun ban to prevent their use in a very specific type of crime, i.e. spree killings, where a single individual kills a large number of persons in a singleevent , or very closely linked series of events. This type of killing is restricted almost exclusively to persons in lawful possession of firearms, particularly semi-automatic firearms. The ‘almost’ comes from the fact that these events are sometimes committed by children who have stolen their parents firearms.
I’m not in favour of bans, but this one actually made sense.
“This type of killing is restricted almost exclusively to persons in lawful possession of firearms…”
Because someone mad enough to go on a killing spree isn’t able to obtain them illegally….?
Doesn’t compute….
News update:
“The Home Office figures – which exclude crimes involving air weapons – show the number of deaths and injuries caused by gun attacks in England and Wales soared from 864 in 1998-99 to 3,821 in 2005-06. That means that more than 10 people are injured or killed in a gun attack every day.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2328368.ece
Remember: “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
Rather wish I knew who said that first.
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