MaxedOutMama
Friday, May 27, 2005
The Slippery Slope
For more about the situation in the UK on weapons control (see Right to Carry), see this Volokh post containing several good links. One of those links is to the superb essay All Way Down The Slippery Slope, which covers the entire history of gun/weapon control in the UK. It is quite long and if you don't have the time to read the whole thing, I recommend starting with this part:
Today, as a result of Parliament's 1967 abrogation of the common law rules on justifiable use of deadly force, should a person use a firearm for protection against a violent home intruder, he will be arrested, and a case will be brought against him by the Crown Prosecution Service.[173] In one notorious case, an elderly lady tried to frighten off a gang of thugs by firing a blank from her imitation firearm. She was arrested and charged with the crime of putting someone in fear with an imitation firearm.and:
Other citizens choose to protect themselves with knives, but carrying a knife for defensive protection is considered illegal possession of an offensive weapon. One American tourist learned about this Orwellian offensive weapon law the hard way. After she used a pen knife to stab some men who were attacking her, a British court convicted her of carrying an offensive weapon.and:
A man who uses a knife as a tool of his trade was jailed today after police found him carrying three of them in his car. Dean Payne, 26, is the first person to be jailed under a new law making the carrying of a knife punishable by imprisonment. Payne told ... magistrates that he had to provide his own knife for his job cutting straps around newspaper bundles at the distribution plant where he works .... Police found the three knives--a lock knife, a small printer's knife, and a Stanley knife--in a routine search of his car.... The court agreed he had no intention of using the knives for "offensive" purposes but jailed him for two weeks anyway.Here's a BBC article looking at crime trends in the UK and in the big bad weapon-loving US:
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.and:
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?
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.One of the comments:
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.
I'd rather, if my granny were to be mugged, that she had the choice to pull out her purse, or her .45 Magnum. She's a little too old to learn kung-fu, or to run away. She may well hand her purse over anyway, but at least she has the choice. Criminals carry guns anyway, so it's about time the rest of the population had the same choice.This is a little older, but it is aimed at women. You'll enjoy this page in particular:
Experts are divided over the exact causes of the current surge in violent crime - which has been mirrored across Europe. Lack of parental control is seen as one factor. Figures show that 40 per cent of street crime is committed by 10- to 16-year-olds. The crimes are often committed while they play truant from school and an amazing quarter of all 15- and 16-year-old boys admit to carrying a knife or other weapon.Soooo. Your average citizen can't have a gun and certainly can't even wave it around in self-defense. Carrying a pen-knife is illegal - if you use it to defend yourself, you will be charged of a crime. But the criminals - ah, the criminals:
Alcohol and drugs are also helping fuel the rise of violent crime, with the use of crack cocaine reaching epidemic levels, particularly among 14- to 18-year-olds. At the same time prices of guns are tumbling - changing hands for just £200.
The government is also looking at ideas of zero tolerance introduced by ex-Mayor Guiliani in New York that dramatically reduced violent crime there. A New Yorker is now six times less likely to get mugged than a Londoner.And the number of violent crimes are still rising. This article dates from April of this year. Now they are finally getting serious and imposing stiffer sentencing. That will do some good.
Critics, however, say the government has already announced 50 initiatives on crime with mixed results. And Home Secretary David Blunkett has already admitted that one of those - a £20million anti-robbery scheme - has been unimpressive.
Sending more offenders to prison may not be the answer either. We have a record number of people in prison, with 70,000 behind bars. And we already lock up more young people than any other country. Yet 75 per cent of them go on to re-offend when they get out.
