Here is an article about a book on British crime and gun control you might want to check out.
Paul Craig Roberts
July 29, 2002
Guns and violence
Note: The following is the first of a two-part series
Go to the second part of the series 08/01/02
Blaming violence on guns and fanning hysteria over accidental deaths to children from firearms are staples of anti-gun propaganda. Media help gun-control zealots spread false information that gun ownership and self-defense are certain paths to injury and death. Handgun Control, Inc., gives erroneous advice that if you are attacked, the best way to avoid injury "is to put up no defense." Anti-gun zealots blame the actions of criminals on guns and argue that disarming law-abiding gun-owners is the best way to reduce the crime rate.
Scholars such as Gary Kleck, Don Kates and John Lott have demonstrated the falsity of these claims. Now comes an important new book from Harvard University Press. "Guns and Violence" by Bentley College history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm brings new evidence that guns reduce violence.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674007530/qid=1059306893/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-1526101-3394207 Malcolm's carefully researched book is a study of guns and violence in England from the Middle Ages through the present day. When the English were armed to the teeth, violent crime was rare. Now that the English are disarmed, violent crime has exploded. Indeed, crime in England is out of control.
Offering instruction for the United States, the English experience will be covered in a subsequent column. Malcolm presents many facts about guns and violence in America, and it is to these we turn first.
Did you know that water is 19 times more dangerous to a child than a firearm? In 1996, 805 children died from accidental drownings and 42 died from firearm accidents. (Gun-control zealots inflate "child" firearm deaths by including teen-age drug-gang members killed in turf battles.)
Bathtubs are twice as dangerous to children as guns. Fire is 18 times more dangerous to children than guns. Cars are 57 times more dangerous. Household cleaners and poisons are twice as dangerous.
Did you know that defensive gun use prevents far more crimes than the police? National polls of defensive gun use by private citizens indicate that as many as 3.6 million crimes annually are prevented by armed individuals.
In 98 percent of the cases, the armed citizen merely has to brandish his weapon. As many as 400,000 people each year believe they saved a life by being armed. Contrary to Handgun Control's propaganda, in less than 1 percent of confrontations do criminals succeed in taking the gun from the intended victim.
Did you know that the testimony of incarcerated felons supports the large number of defensive gun uses? Thirty-four percent of felons said they were scared off, wounded or captured by victims who turned out to be armed.
Convicted felons say that they are more deterred by armed victims than by the police. In the United States, where roughly 50 percent of households are armed, only 13 percent of burglaries occur with residents at home. In contrast, in Britain, where homeowners are disarmed, 50 percent of home burglaries take place with the residents present.
Gun-control zealots claim that the availability of guns is the primary cause of homicides. Between 1973 and 1994, the number of guns in private ownership in the United States rose by 87 million. During this period, both the homicide rate and the percent of homicides committed with firearms dropped.
Another test of the relationship between guns and violence is provided by the concealed-carry laws now in force in 33 states. Gun-control zealots predicted that traffic accidents and other altercations combined with an armed public would result in a bloodbath.
Malcolm confronts this false prediction with empirical evidence: "In all the decades of experience with concealed-carry laws in an increasing number of states, there is only one recorded incident of the use of a permitted handgun in a shooting following a traffic accident, and that was determined to be a case of self-defense."
The 17 states and the District of Columbia without concealed-carry permits enjoy an 81 percent higher rate of violent crime. Their restrictive gun laws produced 1,400 more murders, 4,200 more rapes, 12,000 more robberies and 60,000 more aggravated assaults.
Malcolm disproves the claim that family members are the main victims of gun ownership. This myth results from FBI reports that most victims are "known" to the murderer. In the category of "known to the murderer," the FBI includes members of rival drug gangs, prostitutes and their pimps and even cab drivers killed in robberies by "customers."
Far from the picture of hot-tempered spouses turning the family firearm upon one another in moments of rage, it turns out that 90 percent of adult murderers have prior criminal records involving major felonies. Three-quarters of juvenile murderers and their victims have an average of 10 prior criminal arraignments.
The English Bill of Rights guarantees English citizens "arms for their defense." Politicians and bureaucrats stole this right from the people by subterfuge. In England today, only outlaws have guns. Sens. Lieberman, McCain and Schumer are working to duplicate the English calamity by stealing gun rights from the American people. Do these three senators represent the criminal lobby? Are they trying to create a black market in guns?
Paul Craig Roberts
August 1, 2002
How the British maximize crime
Note: The following is the second of a two-part series
Go to the first part of the series 07/29/02
Did you know that a person's chances of being mugged in London are six times higher than in New York City?
Did you know that assault, robbery and burglary rates are far higher in England than in the United States?
Did you know that in England self-defense of person or property is regarded as an anti-social act, and that a victim who injures or kills an assailant is likely to be treated with more severity than the assailant?
Joyce Lee Malcolm blames the rocketing rates of violent and armed crimes in England on "government policies that have gone badly wrong." Her careful research in "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," just released by Harvard University Press, leads to this conclusion: "Government created a hapless, passive citizenry, then took upon itself the impossible task of protecting it. Its failure could not be more flagrant."
Malcolm begins her study of English crime rates, weapons ownership and attitudes toward self-defense in the Middle Ages. She continues the story through the Tudor-Stuart centuries, the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. She finds that five centuries of growing civility, low crime rates and declining firearm homicide rates ended in the 20th century.
Malcolm shows that an unprotected public at the mercy of criminals is the result of (1) the 1967 revision of criminal law, which altered the common-law standard for self-defense and began the process of criminalizing self-defense, and (2) increasing restrictions on handguns and other firearms, culminating in the 1997 ban of handgun ownership (and most other firearms).
In England, the penalty for possessing a handgun is 10 years in prison. The result is the one predicted by the National Rifle Association: "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns." During the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent. During seven months of 2001, armed robberies in London rose by 53 percent.
These shocking crime rates are understatements, because "the English police still grossly underreport crimes. ... The 1998 British Crime Survey found four times as many crimes occurred as police records indicated."
A disarmed public now faces outlaws armed with machine-guns. People in London residential neighborhoods have been machine-gunned to death. Gunmen have even burst into court and freed defendants.
The British government forbids citizens to carry any article that might be used for self-defense. Even knitting needles and walking sticks have been judged to be "offensive weapons." In 1994, an English homeowner used a toy gun to detain two burglars who had broken into his home. The police arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten and intimidate.
A British Petroleum executive was wounded in an assault on his life in a London Underground train carriage. In desperation, he fought off his attackers by using an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick. He was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
A youth fearful of being attacked by a gang was arrested for carrying a cycle chain. After police disarmed him, he was set upon and hospitalized as a result of a brutal beating. The prosecutor nevertheless insisted on prosecuting the victim for "carrying a weapon."
Seventy percent of rural villages in Britain entirely lack police presence. But self-defense must be "reasonable," as determined after the fact by a prosecutor. What is reasonable to a victim being attacked or confronted with home intruders at night can be quite different from how a prosecutor sees it. A woman who uses a weapon to fight off an unarmed rapist could be convicted of using unreasonable force.
In 1999, Tony Martin, a farmer, turned his shotgun on two professional thieves when they broke into his home at night to rob him a seventh time. Martin received a life sentence for killing one criminal, 10 years for wounding the second and 12 months for having an illegal shotgun. The wounded burglar has already been released from prison.
American prosecutors now follow British ones in restricting self-defense to reasonable force as defined by prosecutors. Be forewarned that Americans can no longer use deadly force against home intruders unless the intruder is also armed and the homeowner can establish that he could not hide from the intruder and had reason to believe his life was in danger.
The assault on England's version of the Second Amendment was conducted by unsavory characters in the British Home Office. Long before guns were banned, the Home Office secretly instructed the police not to issue licenses for weapons intended to protect home and property.
In the British welfare state, crimes against property are not taken seriously. Malcolm reports that criminals face minimal chances of arrest and punishment, but a person who uses force to defend himself or his property is in serious trouble with the law. A recent British law textbook says that the right to self-defense is so mitigated "as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law."
An Englishman's home is no longer his castle. Thanks to gun-control zealots, England has become the land of choice for criminals. |
