Fingerprint Resistance
Why worry about a national ballistics database?
By Jacob Sullum
reason.com
Illusory Thinking On Gun Control
Agenda vultures smell death in the Beltway
By Cathy Young
reason.com
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Gun Control’s Twisted Outcome
Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.
By Joyce Lee Malcolm
On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips
quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder,
"theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice
Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with
fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and
violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article’s
battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification,"
"astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild
west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a
gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder
and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."
In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has
gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001,
gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting
outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men
were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And
on New Year’s Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east
London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London
police are now looking to New York City police for advice.
None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and
1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For
the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for
domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint
on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the
happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America’s
Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that
fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in
the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that
disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.
The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by
the world’s gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a
1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England’s low rates of
violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."
In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left
law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims
have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would
be a public safety disaster for the United States.
The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming
them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low
level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the
years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one
a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies
in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws
later, the BBC reported that England’s firearms restrictions "seem to have had little
impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old
slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use
them.
Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been
climbing ever since. Last December, London’s Evening Standard reported that
armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the
two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40
percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the
number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.
Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995,
crimes against the person in England’s inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the
four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your
chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York.
England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s, and
53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with
13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more
than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations
published in July, England and Wales led the Western world’s crime league, with
nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.
This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies.
Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the
proposition that people don’t need to protect themselves because society will
protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a
crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.
This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected
individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other
help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal
security was ranked first among an individual’s rights by William Blackstone, the
great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no
government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in
his moment of need. A century later Blackstone’s illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey,
cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."
But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual’s
right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession
of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for
self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in
hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."
The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although
crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption
and a Bolshevik revolution. In the circumstances, permitting the people to remain
armed must have seemed an unnecessary risk. And so the new policy of disarming
the public began. The Firearms Act required a would-be gun owner to obtain a
certificate from the local chief of police, who was charged with determining
whether the applicant had a good reason for possessing a weapon and was fit to do
so. All very sensible. Parliament was assured that the intention was to keep
weapons out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons. Yet from the
start the law’s enforcement was far more restrictive, and Home Office instructions
to police -- classified until 1989 -- periodically narrowed the criteria.
At first police were instructed that it would be a good reason to have a revolver if a
person "lives in a solitary house, where protection against thieves and burglars is
essential, or has been exposed to definite threats to life on account of his
performance of some public duty." By 1937 police were to discourage applications
to possess firearms for house or personal protection. In 1964 they were told "it
should hardly ever be necessary to anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of
his house or person" and that "this principle should hold good even in the case of
banks and firms who desire to protect valuables or large quantities of money."
In 1969 police were informed "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a
firearm for the protection of his house or person." These changes were made
without public knowledge or debate. Their enforcement has consumed hundreds of
thousands of police hours. Finally, in 1997 handguns were banned. Proposed
exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.
Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal
to carry in a public place any article "made, adapted, or intended" for an offensive
purpose "without lawful authority or excuse." Carrying something to protect
yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense
automatically became an offensive weapon. Police were given extensive power to
stop and search everyone. Individuals found with offensive items were guilty until
proven innocent.
During the debate over the Prevention of Crime Act in the House of Commons, a
member from Northern Ireland told his colleagues of a woman employed by
Parliament who had to cross a lonely heath on her route home and had armed
herself with a knitting needle. A month earlier, she had driven off a youth who tried
to snatch her handbag by jabbing him "on a tender part of his body." Was it to be an
offense to carry a knitting needle? The attorney general assured the M.P. that the
woman might be found to have a reasonable excuse but added that the public should
be discouraged "from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the
duty of society to protect them."
Another M.P. pointed out that while "society ought to undertake the defense of its
members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where
society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to
defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that
society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent
offender."
In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: "The object of a weapon was to assist
weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to
destroy. I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have
the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend
themselves." But he added: "Unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental
willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however
large, can do it."
That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in
1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what
seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As
Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now
stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still
forms part of the law."
The original common law standard was similar to what still prevails in the U.S.
Americans are free to carry articles for their protection, and in 33 states
law-abiding citizens may carry concealed guns. Americans may defend themselves
with deadly force if they believe that an attacker is about to kill or seriously injure
them, or to prevent a violent crime. Our courts are mindful that, as Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes observed, "detached reflection cannot be demanded in the
presence of an upraised knife."
But English courts have interpreted the 1953 act strictly and zealously. Among
articles found illegally carried with offensive intentions are a sandbag, a pickaxe
handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper. "Any article is capable of being an offensive
weapon," concede the authors of Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, a popular legal
text, although they add that if the article is unlikely to cause an injury the onus of
proving intent to do so would be "very heavy."
The 1967 act has not been helpful to those obliged to defend themselves either.
Granville Williams points out: "For some reason that is not clear, the courts
occasionally seem to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater
moment than the safety of the robber’s victim in respect of his person and property."
A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:
• In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and
found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He
explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he
had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he
had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and
beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the
appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and
immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to
convict.
• In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive,
in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the
door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off,
my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an
ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers,
stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding.
Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
• In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two
burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the
officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten
or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired
a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was
arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to
make imitation guns illegal.
• In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby
farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long
criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his
village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He
sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in
prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for
having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a
three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted £5,000 of legal assistance to
sue Martin.
The failure of English policy to produce a safer society is clear, but what of British
jibes about "America’s vigilante values" and our much higher murder rate?
Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a
comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which
both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen
found New York’s homicide rate consistently about five times London’s.
Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out
of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."
Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more
homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked,
whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in
self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping
with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance
before England’s more restrictive policy was established in 1967.
The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way
each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even
if the case isn’t subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the
U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down"
the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is
reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making
the English numbers as low as possible.
The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study,
found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and
manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong
correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying
determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."
Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the
English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period,
America’s has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that
the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974
and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of
sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates
are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it
was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.
Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1
percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain
cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the
release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially
lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty"
English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more
scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government plans to
combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the
prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same
crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a
suspect’s previous crimes.
This is a cautionary tale. America’s founders, like their English forebears, regarded
personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main
reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not
everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But
leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.
The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen,
confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to "have arms for their defence," insisting
upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens.
It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect
themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the
English tendency to decry America’s "vigilante values," English policy makers
would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which
stood them so well in the past.
Joyce Lee Malcolm, a professor of history at Bentley College and a senior adviser to
the MIT Security Studies Program, is the author of Guns and Violence: The English
Experience, published in May by Harvard University Press.
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