if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Disarming the Innocent
by Lee
America, awash in a sea of guns, is continually portrayed as a Mecca of violence. Truly enlightened nations, like the UK, Canada, and Australia, all tout oppressive gun control measures, and state that they are necessary to avoid their country “becoming like America.” Well, in many ways they have been remarkably successful. Their gun control policies have indeed made their countries a lot different than America. And by different I mean more violent.
The experiences in the U.K. and Australia, two island nations whose borders are much easier to monitor, should also give Canadian gun controllers some pause. The British government banned handguns in 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the four years from 1998-99 to 2002-03.
Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned. Yet, since 1996 the serious-violent-crime rate has soared by 69 percent; robbery is up 45 percent, and murders up 54 percent. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen 50 percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost to its 1993 level.
The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last survey completed, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales was twice the rate of that in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004 comes out later this year, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35 percent, while those in the U.S. have declined 6 percent.
Australia has also seen its violent-crime rates soar immediately after its 1996 Port Arthur gun-control measures. Violent crime rates averaged 32-percent higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did in 1995. The same comparisons for armed-robbery rates showed increases of 74 percent.
During the 1990s, just as Britain and Australia were more severely regulating guns, the U.S. was greatly liberalizing individuals’ abilities to carry firearms. Thirty seven of the fifty states now have so-called right-to-carry laws that let law-abiding adults carry concealed handguns after passing a criminal background check and paying a fee. Only half the states require some training, usually around three to five hours. Yet crime has fallen even faster in these states than the national average. Overall, the states in the U.S. that have experienced the fastest growth rates in gun ownership during the 1990s have experienced the biggest drops in murders and other violent crimes.
Keep passing those laws, folks. Hopefully your sense of smug moral superiority is enough to drown out the screams of the victims of criminal violence. (The original article has a ton of links to data to back up the claims.)
Comments
These statistics are certainly interesting, even if we ignore the provisio on every page that “AS countries included vary across sweeps, comparisons should be made cautiously”, particularly as in the UK crime statistics have changed a lot recently.
I am interested though in one figure which is car theft in the US. Has that really fallen 75% between 1996 and 2000 or 80% since 1992? Seems a very steep drop - have the figures for US crime reporting being changed somehow or does that reflect reality?
I think I’ll cherry pick some facts. Like crime rates up 28%. And of the murders commited in 2002, firearms were used in 13.2% of the incidents and firearms were used in 22% of the attempted murders. The weapon of choice for murderers down here in Australia appears to be bare hands.
Our killers aren’t girly men, like those wimpy American gang bangers who need to use AK-47s, Uzis or other metallic phallic symbols. It must be all that Vegemite the Aussie mothers force-feed their little sons.
No arguments here about the lack of manliness among these little thugs. But how can gun crime possibly go up in the UK? You know, liberals like to say that Baltimore and DC dangerous because of guns imported from Virginia but when you have an island it seems to fly in the face of that.
Try to ignore the hard, stone cold, fresh, hard boiled facts all you want…
But Britain is the BEST country ever in the history of the Sol System.
If any thing because me and PJ live here!
You know, we could get a lot worst. We could have a government like Ireland’s (or the Republic of Ireland if you will, <snigger>).
That’s right, just keep quoting the mantra of “no guns in GB or Australia is a good thing.” As Taliban lines up to have fun with you in your neighborhoods! Just keep the emergency number for the police handy. They’ll save you!
As for me, I’m standing with Sam Colt.
snappy comeback
Actually the stolen car numbers are probably right. I worked in a police department three towns west of Newark Airport and right on Interstate 78. In the Late 80’s they put together a task force on stolen cars from the towns suffering most of the loses. They had hands on squads in the airport and the towns around. The new systems checked front and back license plate and you had to have the parking tag or have paid inside which required a parking tag to pay. More patrols in the parking lots, harder access to the lots. They did a lot of work, went after chop shops.
In our town we had a very high class mall you know valet parking and cameras. Bad guys would get a car in Newark or Irvington and pick up a crew of three or four and go to our mall and spread the crew out and take the cars they wanted. The original stolen car was used as the ram if we blocked and exit. If they got on the highway we could tie up traffic to get to Rte 78. Had a special patrol. Do some high speed chases (did a few of those). Once they got use to the fact that we were not going to give up it dropped off (is that not a tag line for Iraq).
I did the stats and crime index for 14 years before retiring. Not much fudge room and if you did have a large change the State Police would be out to look at your records under the eyes of the FBI. If they found fudging they would take over the process for you.
This just in...the press corps says that Cindy Sheehan doesn’t like guns.
Cindy Sheehan doesn’t like guns.
I’m shocked, shocked I say.
Thanks Bob for that reply, that drop in car theft stats is certainly impressive; as are some of the others.
Murcan : “The weapon of choice for murderers down here in Australia appears to be bare hands”.
Or knives. But gun deaths shot through the roof after the handgun ban - guess the crims forgot to hand their guns in.
Remember that woman a few years ago who killed her boyfriend and skinned him?
She worked in an abattoir, and was such a psychopath that everyone in the area was terrified of her.
Next entry: A U-Haul for Muhammad
Previous entry: El Bridgeo
Did anyone actually read the police report or just cherry pick some facts from it?
Gun crime going up? Actually carrying a gun is a gun crime, so given that that it became illegal to have guns, is it surprising that there are more gun crimes!? Even reading the executive summary might provide you a little insight instead of copying and pasting from the nationalreview. Its all very well quoting a report but then spouting of a conclusion that complete contradicts that reports - its almost Mooresk.
Given that the police don’t even think arming themselves is the solution to the little gun crime that there is in the UK, I find it unlikely they think liberalising gun ownership would help much either.
Also, there where not that many hand guns in the UK even before the ban which was almost universally supported apart from the a few that use to shot handguns in ranges.