While I have great admiration and affection for the English people, most of them are downright daft on the issues of guns. And the politicians are the worst of the lot, having imposed draconian gun bans.
But they’ve gone way beyond run-of-the-mill gun control.
This is the nation, for instance, that arrested a man for the “crime” of turning in a gun found on his property. Yes, you read correctly. I’m not making that up.
The government is so bloody clueless on this issue that we’ve seen mind-boggling examples of anti-gun political correctness.
- Disciplining children for making gun shapes with their hands.
- Banning starting pistols at races.
- Proposing to bar children from Olympic shooting events.
- A bookstore putting shooting magazines in the porn section.
- Arresting a woman for brandishing a knife to scare away thugs.
Okay, I cheated. The last example was about a knife rather than a gun, but I think it underscores the central point that the UK government believes in a helpless and passive citizenry.
But perhaps, in a small way, we’re seeing a bit of progress. It seems that a few people realize that this culture of surrender and appeasement isn’t always a good idea.
At least when it comes to thwarting pirates. Here is an excerpt from The Economist about a big decline in attacks off the Horn of Africa.
…the fall in the number of successful hijackings since the peak of 2009-11 has been dramatic. The International Maritime Bureau, a body that fights shipping crime, counted 219 cases of pirates trying to board a vessel in 2010 and 236 in 2011. This year’s total is just 71, against 199 for the same period last year. Successful seizures are down from 49 in 2010 to 28 in 2011 and only 13 this year.
Want to take a wild guess about the reason?
Yup, you’re right. Guns.
…the biggest game changer of all is…that more than a quarter of vessels now carry armed security guards. The shipping industry used to oppose this, fearing that armed guards would escalate violence. But not a single vessel with guards has been boarded. Usually a warning shot is enough to deter the pirates. Lieut-Commander Sherrif says: “The pirates go to sea to make money, not die in a firefight.” BIMCO, the biggest international shipping organisation, has recently produced a standard contract for the industry, known as GUARDCON. Most of the security firms supplying guards are British. Admiral Rix says that his company hires mostly former Royal Marines.
Let’s emphasize part of that passage. It says that “not a single vessel with guards has been boarded.”
That’s a perfect batting average. As John Lott might say, this is an example of “more guns, less crime.” What a novel idea.
Now for the bad news. I doubt that the writers at The Economist or the politicians at Westminster will draw the right lesson from any of this.
So we still have a long way to go before we liberate the British people from the anti-gun superstitions of the political elite. Maybe we should share these very clever pro-gun images (here, here, here, here, here, and here) with our friends on the other side of the Atlantic.
How can liberals be so detached from the real world?
[…] Even British Journalists Are Beginning to Acknowledge that Guns Deter Crime […]
[…] all, gun control is a foolish policy (as even some leftists and foreigners are slowly beginning to realize). And surely cops have better things to do, after all, than arrest […]
[…] Even British Journalists Are Beginning to Acknowledge that Guns Deter Crime […]
James Murray, why mot quote them then?
Mike, might that have more to do with the war on drugs than guns? I’m not saying the UK doesn’t have the war on drugs. I’m saying the US is the epicenter for the war on drugs. Combine that with border violence (FYI, Britain doesn’t really have one) and urban ghettoization and you have your answer.
[…] all, gun control is a foolish policy (as even some leftists and foreigners are slowly beginning to realize). And surely cops have better things to do, after all, than arrest […]
Endicott:
That much quoted 2nd rating is misleading, as the discrepancy is due to the UK having 28 different violent offences on their statute books, inc crimes that wouldnt be classed in other countries as violent, but as crimes of , say, theft.
I could quote figures that make the US look much worse than the uk.
@Mike
You like quoting statistics. I’m surprised you missed this one:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri-crime-total-crimes
Guess which is the 2nd most violent nation in the world, NOT adjusted for population? Let me help you – it’s the UK – according to the UN, no less. And the study was in 2002, while the UK press continues to report increasing violent crime in England & Wales. Maybe if the Brits had more testosterone, gun homicides would be up and violent crime would be down. Just sayin’
Mike,
Just because you eliminate deaths by guns doesn’t mean you eliminate violent crimes. So, if your only objective is to eliminate deaths by guns, then eliminating guns might accomplish that goal (nearly). You give statistics comparing the US to UK, but what was the rate in the UK prior to their ban on guns? Or how about other countries that have many guns and lower rates than the US? Why is that?
Perhaps you’d like to study the increase in violent crimes in every country that has banned guns from it’s citizenry? Seriously, read a John Lott book and broaden your understanding of gun control and it’s complete implications on a society. Your singular viewpoint on gun control is blinding you to the real cause of violence. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!
Tom, regarding those sporting arms sent FREE from America at the beginning of WWII, they were buried after the war.
They were sent over to arm people like my father, who as member of the Home Guard, was several times a week on night watch for German parachutists on a school tower(Bilton Grange—Public School) outside of Rugby armed with a….wait for it……SLINGSHOT!!!
Well, here is another for us to think about. A 13 yr old shot and killed by a fellow student on a school bus.
“A 13-year-old girl who was shot on a Miami school bus on Tuesday morning has died”,
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/20/thirteen-year-old-girl-shot-miami-school-bus_n_2166274.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
@Mike.
So you don’t agree that banning guns can only lead to law-abiding citizens having no defense against criminals who still have guns since, by definition, they don’t care about the law.
But what’s so difficult to understand here? I really don’t understand this anti-self-defense point of view, won’t you please explain it to me.
And have you, or a woman you love, ever been attacked by a hoodlum with a gun? Please tell us about her/your experience…
England didn’t start banning guns until about the 1930’s. Their murder rate then was just as low as it is today. Point being, England is just a less violent country, guns or no guns.
In America if you break done the “murders” roughly a third of the gun deaths are police and citizens killing criminals. No tears shed here.
The next rough third of gun deaths are criminals killing other criminals. Again, I won’t be crying myself to sleep tonight over these deaths.
Then come suicides and accidents.
The number of first degree murders in America is not much larger than in England, especially if you include all first degree murders, gun, knife, beatings, etc.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
The number of deaths from firearms in the US is around 32,000 per year, about 9500 from murder, 400 or so accidental, and the rest, suicide. Ridding ourselves of thousands of drug swilling gangbangers through them murdering each other, and thousands more unwilling to cope with life through suicide seems, well, kind of a plus. Although I sometimes forget that in the UK, they put them in parliament, or make them social (ist) minders in the bureaucracy instead. And yes, those that commit suicide elicit no sympathy from me, as they have demonstrated beyond a doubt, their inability to find a way to live. I know all about prolonged, deep, painful, suffering. I’ve had you listen to the gun grabbers/banners/hoplophobes all my life. And if you socialist OCD types want all the guns gotten rid of, why do you want only the cops and the military to still have them, as long as YOU are in control of govt?
Reblogged this on nebraskaenergyobserver and commented:
I’me still on borrowed equipment here, so posting is limited but i wanted to share this with you.
Imagine that !!!!
Obviously, if you remove all of the guns, you can’t have death by firearm. It is silly to think that this is possible, however. It is interesting that Switzerland has almost one-tenth less shooting deaths than the U.S. if the numbers are correct. There are fully automatic rifles in every household there. This is something that even in the U.S. isn’t possible. So, there is must be something else going on in the U.S. than just having access to guns.
Paul T
Alleged?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Shame on you.
By the way, have a look at Japan sometime. You might learn something.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/
Mike is great at quoting alleged statistics self-servingly while ignoring the possibility that most of the Americans referred to with his little stat (4.14) were not only not advocates of the right to self-defense but also fans of the childish ideal that government should be like a surrogate parent that gives you other people’s stuff, that provides you with an big allowance in exchange for doing a few chores, and that rigs commerce on the pretext of social justice.
Now, it’s not exactly by the way that someone was stabbled last night at about 8pm on N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago. (It happened near 900 N. Michigan, i.e. on the northern part of the Magnificent Mile.) This is how we know that we need better knife control, too, in Chicago. After all, criminals would be greatly discouraged by strong knife control.
Most Americans regard the present British attitude toward firearms as a form of insanity, especially in view of English history where the use of private firearms is heavily featured. One further irony is that prior to the expected German invasion during WW 2, England begged America to send as many privately owned hunting firearms overseas as possible, because there existed a great shortage of any arms for self defense among the British citizenry. I understand that this was in fact done, many, many being sent over. Whatever ultimately happened to most of these guns I have no idea. Could it be that the British government, being composed largely of persons belonging to what they believe is the superior “upper class”, are simply frightened by the notion that firearms could be owned by people that they consider their inferiors, and are determined to prevent this ever happening.
[…] https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/even-british-journalists-are-beginning-to-acknowledg… […]
Contributors to this site, are great at quoting statistics and statistical correlations.
Here’s one you might not like. Homicides/100,000 pop:
US – 4.14
UK – 0.07
Hilarious! I actually wrote about this matter in Pacific Maritime Magazine in 2007, and when I presented the findings at a conference later that year, I received a bunch of flak when I recommended arming the vessels (I even cited Lott during the Q&A after the presentation – dumb academics couldn’t see it though).
Hi Dan, you might also be interested in this gun related story from the UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2234706/Wife-SAS-sniper-jailed-possessing-handgun-calls-David-Cameron-end-injustice-sentence.html