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4.5
For anyone who is interested in the subject of gun control I heartily recommend "Guns and Violence: The English Experience" by Joyce Lee Malcolm. It is a scholarly and, to my American ears, dispassionate and comprehensive examination of the history and effects of English gun control efforts throughout the the centuries. In so doing, the authoress is not afraid to puncture many myths.English police historically didn't need to carry guns because England was so peaceful? Well, not exactly... Actually, the reason English police were originally unarmed was because the idea of the government having a civilian police force at all was, literally, a revolutionary idea. There was, at that time, a real fear that the people would rise up in armed rebellion at the very thought of the government having a uniformed force that could be used against them. It was to relieve these fears that the police were expressly forbidden to carry firearms. But everybody else had guns! Don't believe me? Read Sherlock Holmes. The bad guys had guns. Dr. Watson had his old (privately purchased) service revolver. Holmes, who had no official standing whatsoever, had a revolver. The only ones who didn't have guns were the Metropolitan Police (although Inspector Lestrade was often known to illegally carry a pistol).England is remarkably free of violent crime? It was indeed . . . at the end of the Nineteenth century! However, at that time, guns were widely available and commonly carried by the population at large. So much so that, when a gang committed the unheard of crime of armed robbery in London, the unarmed Police were able to borrow four pistols from passersby in order to give chase to the bandits. Since this period was the most peaceful and crime free era in English history I suppose we should, by typical anti-gun logic, immediately disarm all police forces in the United States.Going back to the Middle Ages, England had higher levels of violence before firearms were invented. At the same time that firearms were slowly introduced, levels of violent crime gradually fell to an all time low. The authoress doesn't propose a one to one correlation here, as there are too many other possible factors to make this claim (although I suspect there is more of a connection here than the book is willing to state). But clearly, the increasing proliferation of firearms cannot be said to have created a corresponding increase in violence.The beginning of the 20th century saw both gradual increases of restrictions on firearms ownership, and increases in violent crime. The end of the last century saw a complete ban on private possession of firearms, and a virtual explosion in the rate of violent crime immediately following that ban. Today England, Wales and Australia have the tightest restrictions on firearms of any Western Democracies. Guess which three Western Democracies have the highest violent crime rates? Go on, you'll never guess (hint: today you are eight times more likely to be a victim of violent crime in London than you are in Detroit or Chicago).But what I found most appalling is that England today has everything that the anti-gun crowd has ever asked for (and is still trying to get here in the USA). Complete registration of all firearms, followed not long after by the complete confiscation of all firearms (the latter effort being remarkably unsuccessful, as most firearms were never turned in, and the supply of illegal guns has never shown even the slightest indication of drying up). When all privately held firearms were finally banned, the rate of gun crimes jumped up immediately and is still climbing. English private citizens are currently forbidden to carry not just firearms, but literally anything that could be used as a weapon for self-defense (after all, if we don't do anything to make the nice criminals mad, they won't hurt us. Alas, the criminals have not shown any tendency to co-operate in this non-aggression pact). People who have defended themselves have been more severely prosecuted than those who attacked them.England today is a an anti-gunner's dream come true. But it is increasingly becoming a nightmare for those living in that gun-free Utopia. In spite of official efforts to downplay the statistics and under report the "official" numbers of crimes, the truth is becoming so obvious that it cannot be denied. If you're arguing with somebody about gun control, then you don't need to make any claims about what you think might happen if the people are disarmed. England has provided us with living proof of what does happen when law-abiding people are unable to defend themselves. And also what happens when uninformed voters rely on the government to protect them instead of standing up for the right to protect themselves.
