News comes this week that Gun crimes in England have doubled over the last decade.
In Lancashire alone, the rate has risen by nearly 600%. London police are breaking with age-old tradition by sending out routine armed patrols, armed with Glock 17’s and H&K MP-5’s. Previously, the only armed officers in the Metropolitan area were the CO19 tactics units.
By all accounts, the United Kingdom should be relatively unscathed by gun violence. The English government has been abridging its citizens’ rights to firearms ownership by increasing degrees since the 1903 Pistols Act.
Following the 1996 Dunblane Massacre, English gun control efforts came to their peak. The Firearms Act of 1997 outlawed nearly all functional firearms in civilian hands, and English citizens were left with no choice but to turn in their guns. The result was the largest peacetime confiscation of firearms I can recall, and it resulted in the complete annihilation of what was once a thriving gun culture.
The ostensible aim was to reduce violent crime. As shown this week, the measurable result was failure.
So, what went wrong?
The answer is simple, if a bit counter-intuitive at first. Confiscating firearms doesn’t lead to a decline in violence–it simply changes the balance and means.
When guns were banned, criminals began improvising firearms. Pellet guns were added to the registry of unlawful arms in 2003.
Then London saw a rash of stabbing deaths. In 2006, there were proposals to limit the sale of all knives to those over the age of 18 (the prior limit was 16). That doesn’t just mean combat knives. Cutlery of all stripes evidently poses a grave risk to the life of the ordinary English citizen.
Recently, there was a call issued to ban glass pint containers, lest drunken ladettes maim each other in a fit of rage.
My point? The violence is still there, despite the fact that one means of inflicting it has been (theoretically) removed. Banning things doesn’t change people.
Human nature is, at its root, primal and selfish. Our primate ancestors routinely resorted to violence as a means of filling wants, and those impulses are still hardwired into our brains today.
A civilized person rejects such notions, but there are those who ignore the rules of society. Such people will adopt whatever means they can find to inflict violence upon others. If they can’t get guns, they resort to knives
Against such people, the civilized man has no recourse. Depriving civlized people of the tools with which to defend themselves leaves them at the mercy of predators.
And that is something no sane government can justify. Gun control as an experiment in social engineering is a disaster, one that is vividly illustrated by the English situation.