We need more guns
By
Joyce L Malcolm
As gun crime leaps by 35% in a year, plans are
afoot for a further crack down on firearms. Yet
what we need is more guns, not fewer, says a US
academic. "If guns are outlawed," an
American bumper sticker warns, "only outlaws
will have guns." With gun crime in Britain
soaring in the face of the strictest gun control
laws of any democracy, the UK seems about to
prove that warning prophetic. For 80 years the
safety of the British people has been staked on
the premise that fewer private guns means less
crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of
men and women, however law-abiding, pose a
danger.
Government assured Britons they needed no
weapons, society would protect them. If that were
so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions
were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were
forbidden to carry any article for their
protection, it no longer is. The failure of this
general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed
and violent crime could not be more blatant.
According to a recent UN study, England and Wales
have the highest crime rate and worst record for
"very serious" offences of the 18
industrial countries surveyed. But would allowing
law-abiding people to "have arms for their
defence", as the 1689 English Bill of Rights
promised, increase violence? Would Britain be
following America's bad example?
Old stereotypes die hard and the vision of
Britain as a peaceable kingdom, America as
"the wild west culture on the other side of
the Atlantic" is out of date. It is true
that in contrast to Britain's tight gun
restrictions, half of American households have
firearms, and 33 states now permit law-abiding
citizens to carry concealed weapons. But despite,
or because, of this, violent crime in America has
been plummeting for 10 consecutive years, even as
British violence has been rising. By 1995 English
rates of violent crime were already far higher
than America's for every major violent crime
except murder and rape. You are now six times
more likely to be mugged in London than New York.
Why? Because as common law appreciated, not only
does an armed individual have the ability to
protect himself or herself but criminals are less
likely to attack them. They help keep the peace.
A study found American burglars fear armed
home-owners more than the police. As a result
burglaries are much rarer and only 13% occur when
people are at home, in contrast to 53% in
England. Much is made of the higher American rate
for murder. That is true and has been for some
time. But as the Office of Health Economics in
London found, not weapons availability, but
"particular cultural factors" are to
blame.
A study comparing New York and London over 200
years found the New York homicide rate
consistently five times the London rate, although
for most of that period residents of both cities
had unrestricted access to firearms. When guns
were available in England they were seldom used
in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found
an average of one handgun homicide a year in a
population of 30 million. But murder rates for
both countries are now changing. In 1981 the
American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in
1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by
last year it was 3.5 times.
With American rates described as "in
startling free-fall" and British rates as of
October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two
are on a path to converge. The price of British
government insistence upon a monopoly of force
comes at a high social cost. First, it is
unrealistic. No police force, however large, can
protect everyone. Further, hundreds of thousands
of police hours are spent monitoring firearms
restrictions, rather than patrolling the streets.
And changes in the law of self-defence have left
ordinary people at the mercy of thugs.
According to Glanville Williams in his Textbook
of Criminal Law, self-defence is "now stated
in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on
whether it still forms part of the law".
Nearly a century before that American bumper
sticker was slapped on the first bumper, the
great English jurist, AV Dicey cautioned:
"Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects
become the slaves of ruffians." He knew
public safety is not enhanced by depriving people
of their right to personal safety.
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