Month: May 2004

Like I Said, Not ALL Brits Have Been Brainwashed

(Via Deltoid, actually.)

Peter Hitchens has written an interesting article, even though he quotes John Lott (whom both I and Tim Lambert believe to be, if not a fraud, at least untrustworthy.) It was originally published in May of last year, but it’s still good. Entitled Why I Demand the Right to Carry a Gun, I’m sure it put some panties in a bunch. Excerpts:

We in Britain believe guns are so dangerous that only criminals should be allowed to have them. If you think this sounds unhinged, you are quite right. But, crazed as it is, such is the thinking behind this country’s current law on firearms.

It is almost impossible for a law-abiding person to obtain or keep a gun, thanks to severe laws diligently enforced by a stern police force. Yet criminals, who care nothing for laws, can and do easily obtain guns and ammunition – which they use with increasing frequency.

All absolutely, demonstrably true.

Not intentional, but certainly the result of the policy.

People in this country get emotional about guns but refuse to think about them. They run, squawking, from the subject as though it were perfectly obvious that the best response to anything that goes ‘bang’ is to ban it.

Those who own or keep guns are treated as only slightly less repellent than child molesters. In a perfect example of this silly frenzy, a Doncaster college lecturer was sacked last January for allowing a student to bring a toy plastic gun into class for use in a photography project.

If we ever did think about the subject, we should realise that something very strange indeed was going on and might begin to worry that we have gone seriously wrong.

But, because of the visceral reaction trained into the public, thinking about the subject has been effectively prevented.

Take a deep breath and consider what follows: I have never owned a gun and hope I never have to, but I want to have the right to do so if I wish – and the right to use a gun in defence of myself and my home. In fact, I do not think that I am a free citizen unless I have these rights.

This is not some wild idea imported from the badlands of North America. Until very recently, these were my rights under the ancient laws of England.

(My emphasis.) If you haven’t, let me suggest that you read the (rather long) exchange I had with an Irishman living in London concerning the right to arms. It covers the history and the law dating back to England. Start here and work your way up through the archives. But do it on the weekend – it’s quite involved.

One more excerpt (though I recommend that you read the whole thing):

Once, police and courts and people all agreed about what was right and what was wrong. In those days, the authorities were more than happy for us to defend ourselves as vigorously as we liked.

Now, while they have effectively abandoned us to the non-existent mercies of anybody who cares to break into our homes, they will punish us fiercely if we lift a finger to defend ourselves.

But, but… self-defense in England is perfectly legal! How could he possibly conclude otherwise?

He’s just a “gullible gunner.”

More Taking Advantage of Fear and Ignorance

Pixy Misa of Ambient Irony exposes another example of gun control supporters folding, twisting, spindling, & mutilating ah, employing misleading statistics in their effort to frighten people into supporting more gun control, this time in Australia.

Money quote:

So how many people are killed by handguns in Australia each year? This handy article in The Age, found in about 10 seconds of Googling, tells us that the number in 2001 was 49.

This represents a drop since tough new restrictions were put in place in 1996, from a 1991 figure of 29.

No, hang on – isn’t 49 more than 29? I could’ve sworn…

(But the philosophy cannot be wrong!)

Jeff Outdoes Himself

Jeff at Alphecca has this week’s Weekly Check on the Bias up, and it starts off with a bang, almost literally.

First, Jeff reviews the a case of a Detroit woman who used her – legally permitted – concealed handgun to defend herself from a gun-wielding attacker:

I mentioned this story last week but thought it deserved mention in this post, firstly, because it is a perfect example of what the right to bear arms is all about and secondly, because — in a break with their usual bias — the Detroit Free Press actually reported this story straight-up, without an anti-gun slant. If you read the full article, I think that you will reach the exact same conclusion that I have: Holland would be dead now if she hadn’t been carrying that firearm.

Here’s the money quote from the article:

Citizens defending themselves are precisely what backers of Michigan’s controversial concealed-weapons law had in mind when they worked to pass the legislation in 2001. The law makes it easier for anyone without felony convictions or mental illnesses to obtain a permit to carry concealed weapons.

“The more the criminal element knows that Michigan residents can protect themselves and will protect themselves, the more crime goes down,” said state Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-Dewitt.

Some opponents of the law predicted a large increase in self-defense-type shootings. Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who opposed the measure when she was state attorney general, has acknowledged that has not occurred.

Not only has it “not occurred,” it never occurs. But it’s ALWAYS PREDICTED. After the fact the best argument opponents can come up with is that supporters cannot conclusively prove that CCW is responsible for crime going down.

Jeff follows this with a “Dial 911 and DIE!” story – from TEXAS. (Doesn’t everybody in Texas own a gun?)

Then he tells us that Jim Purtillo – the guy that moderates the rec.guns newsgroup, and all-around generally great and pro-gun guy, has filed suit against the State of Maryland over just what constitutes “an integrated mechanical safety device” in its badly-worded law that has severely restricted what firearms may be sold in Maryland.

There’s much more. Jeff does a helluva job. Read it weekly, even though it gives you a RCOB™ moment.

UPDATE: Reader Sarah – proving that critical reading skills still exist – points out something that I had glossed over. The quote above from the paper reads:

Some opponents of the law predicted a large increase in self-defense-type shootings.

Uh, no. That’s not what was predicted at all. What was predicted – and what is always predicted – is “blood in the streets” from shootouts over fender-benders and K-mart blue-light specials. And that NEVER happens.

However, there is a – slight – increase in bad guys getting shot.

Good catch, Sarah. And you’re right: why should it be a bad thing to have a large increase in criminals being shot?

While the blogosphere is abuzz with the news that Micah Wright actually wasn’t an Army Ranger (or even in the Army) and never was in Panama, Spoon’s significant other drops a bombshell:

I just wish I had done a cursory google search on Micah Wright a couple years ago and found out what he was up to. I could have told Kevin Parrot, WaPo, and Wright’s publishers that I knew Wright hadn’t been a Ranger during the American invasion of Panama.

Because I was dating him in Tucson, Arizona at the time.

I was a freshman at the University of Arizona, and Micah was a junior. We met my first month at school at a mutual acquaintance’s birthday party in September, 1989, and sort-of dated each other and generally hung out together that year. The Panama invasion started in December, 1989, and ended with Noriega’s surrender in January, 1990. Micah was definitely at the U of A, not Panama.I graduated from the U of A in December 1985. My best friend from North Carolina went to Panama as a Special Forces non-com.

Small world.

Mea Culpa

I owe Tim Lambert a small apology. In a previous piece I made a pretty stupid statistical error which he caught, and I have, until now, failed to correct it. I will do so now.

In I Pound My Head Against the Wall Because it Feels So Good When I Stop I stated:

To me that isn’t as important as the fact that England, according to the British crime survey, suffered 276,000 robberies in 2000, and the U.S. about 408,000. With six times England’s population, that makes the English rate four times the American rate.

Tim followed the provided links and responded:

Oh, and you blew the comparison of robbery rates. You have compared the survey measured robbery rate in England with the police reported robbery rate in the US. The police reported number in England is 78,000 (it’s right next to the 276,000 figure you reported) that’s roughly the same rate as you get with 408,000 robberies in the US once you adjust for population.

Tim was correct, I did mix crime survey and police reported levels of crime, and that was an error. My apologies. It was not intentional. However, it was my intent to use survey results for both, rather than police reported crime numbers, because there is some significant doubt as to the accuracy of the actual levels of crime as reported by police agencies in England.

To illustrate this doubt, let me preface by providing this Telegraph story from 2003:

Britain the most violent country in western Europe

By John Steele, Crime Correspondent (Filed: 25/10/2003)

Britain has the worst record in western Europe for killings, violence and burglary and its citizens face one of the highest risks in the industrialised world of becoming victims of crime, a study has shown.

Offences of violence in the UK have been running at three times the level of the next worst country in western Europe, and burglaries at nearly twice the rate.

Britain has the highest level of homicides in western Europe and the totals for robberies and thefts of motor vehicles have also been close to the highest in the European Union, outstripped only by France, the Home Office figures show.

Only Germany, which has 20 million more people, recorded more crimes overall in 2001, the most up-to-date figure in the research – International Comparisons of Criminal Justice Statistics 2001, with data collected by the Home Office and the Council of Europe.

But the “victimisation risk” – showing the risk of suffering a crime – in England and Wales is higher for overall crime than anywhere else in Europe, and higher than in America. The same is true of falling victim to “contact” – violent – crime.

England and Wales also had markedly fewer police officers per head of population than France, Germany and Italy, according to the study.

The Home Office points out that police have achieved some reductions in violence and robbery in 2003.

The study is also accompanied by warnings about the difficulties in making comparisons because of differing definitions and methods of recording crime. But the sheer scale of offending in the UK in recent years is apparent from the figures.

Britain had 1,050 homicides in 2001, three ahead of France, the next worst in western Europe.

In 2001, UK police recorded nearly 870,000 violent crimes, a figure hugely above the next highest total – 279,000 in France. Germany recorded 188,000 violent offences.

There were around 470,000 domestic burglary offences in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Spain recorded 247,000 offences, France 210,000 and Germany 133,000.

The figures for robbery, which surged in Britain around the turn of the Millennium, showed about 127,000 offences in 2001.

This was surpassed only by France, with a total of 134,000. Both countries were ahead of Spain (104,000) and substantially ahead of Germany (57,000) and Italy (66,000).

Overall, in 2001 nearly 6.1 million crimes were recorded in the UK. Only Germany had a higher total (6.3 million).

Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister for crime reduction and policing, said: “This report shows the picture in 2001.

“Since then we have cut crime further and dramatically increased the number of police on our streets.”

Those are pretty serious numbers, don’t you think?

Now in this slightly earlier piece there seems to be some question as to the accuracy of the data:

Rising crime, falling accuracy

By Philip Johnston Filed: 05/04/2003)

What has happened to crime statistics? Once they were the gold standard of the criminal justice system against which could be measured the success of the police against the villains.

We relied upon recorded crimes – those reported to the police – as a guide.

But, increasingly, the Government has come to rely upon the British Crime Survey. This used to be conducted every two years (it is now annual) among a pool of about 20,000 people who give their personal experience of crime. It has a major flaw in that it excludes under-16s.

Ministers began to notice that the BCS told a different story to the recorded crime figures: it was registering a decline. So, the survey became the new guide for the Government, talked up by ministers as the only true measurement of crime.

Furthermore, the Home Office was unhappy with the way the police recorded their statistics and so it introduced a new National Crime Recording Standard – a sort of statistical quality control.

This, then, is where we stood yesterday when the latest quarterly crime figures were produced. “Crime is down,” said Bob Ainsworth, the Home Office minister. “These figures show government measures to reduce crime are working.”

Well, do they? Let us take the claim that domestic burglary fell by 11 per cent from just over one million to 948,000 in 2002. This is not a real figure but an estimate calculated using interim population figures supplied by the Office for National Statistics. So, too, is the 17 per cent “drop” in vehicle thefts. Why is the Government relying on a survey to establish the theft of a car or a house break-in? Who does not report a stolen car or a burgled house?

When we look at the crimes recorded by the police a different picture emerges. Over the three months to December, domestic burglary fell by less than two per cent and vehicle theft by just three per cent, both of which are “statistically insignificant”.

Total recorded crime rose by more than four per cent over the quarter and by eight per cent over the year as a whole. The Government finesses this by “adjusting” the figures to account for the new recording standard. And, lo and behold, they then go down. Instead of the four per cent increase in the three months to December, we discover that it has, in fact, miraculously fallen by seven per cent.

However, this adjusted figure is also an estimate. Needless to say, the Home Office highlights the two estimated measures of crime – the BCS and the new recording standard, which show a decline – and ignore the recorded crime figures that show an increase.

Or take violent crime, which the Home Office said “appears to have levelled off”. The recorded crime figures show a 28 per cent rise in the final quarter of 2002. Yet after “adjustment”, this declines almost to zero on the grounds that “most offences are relatively minor assaults”. Adjustments are always made to make the figures look more positive.

This statistical jiggery-pokery is making it almost impossible for observers to know what is going on. The Home Office stopped publishing monthly asylum figures because they produced bad publicity on a regular basis. Recently the Home Office issued figures claiming that the reconviction rate among young offenders was falling. Closer scrutiny showed this just was not true. An official complaint has been lodged with the Statistical Commission about the way race figures have been used.

In the short term, the Home Office’s inventive use of statistics may get favourable headlines. In the long run, it risks damaging its reputation for straight-dealing, perhaps irreparably.

It’s tough to know what to believe when the guidelines keep changing. And then there’s the declining trust in the police to do much for you when you’ve been robbed. The British Government uses the British Crime Survey numbers because – even though the numbers are massively higher than the police reported numbers, the BCS numbers are coming down while the police recorded numbers are going up. Seeing as the BCS numbers – although they exclude victims under the age of sixteen – are supposed to represent reported and unreported crime, those are the ones I intended to use. However, to be consistent, I needed to use U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey numbers in comparison, not the police recorded number.

According to this Dept. of Justice Report in 2000 there were 732,000 attempted and completed robberies in the U.S. in the year 2000. That’s 732,000 estimated under the National Crime Victimization Survey, as opposed to the 408,000 recorded robberies, a ratio of 1.79:1. And as opposed to the 276,000 estimated robberies according to the British Crime Survey compared to the 78,000 recorded robberies as reported by British police forces, a ratio of 3.54:1.

So, with one-sixth the population of the U.S. England and Wales managed to have a robbery rate not four times higher, but only 2.26 times higher than ours.

In the year 2000.

Way to go England!

Oh, and our robbery rate has continued to decline precipitously. According to this report NCVS estimates show robbery fell to 630,690 in 2001, and to 512,490 in 2002. Robbery has decreased in England and Wales over the same period, though.

Maybe.

According the British Crime Survey,

In 2002/03, the number of robbery offences in England & Wales for people aged 16 and over was 300,000.

This compares with 97,000 robberies of personal property recorded by the police in the same period.

The BCS does not measure robbery offences among victims under 16 years.
However, a study of 2,000 police files found that:

22% of recorded robbery victims were between 11 and 15 years old
23% were between 16 and 20
5% were over 60

Apparently a LOT of Brits no longer bother to report robberies. I wonder how many are missed by the BCS? At any rate, a comparison of 512,490 robberies in the U.S. and 300,000 in England & Wales means the per capita robbery ratio has increased to just over 3.5:1.

Now, if you want to talk recorded crime, take a look at this Home Office paper from January 2003:

Recorded offences of robbery have risen sharply in recent years despite the fact that recorded crime overall has fallen over the same period. Between April 2001 and March 2002 robbery offences recorded by the police increased by 28 per cent. This followed a 13 per cent increase the previous year, and a 26 per cent increase before that.

—

The British Crime Survey routinely collects information on ‘muggings’, which includes personal robberies and snatch thefts. The latest BCS estimates that there were 441,000 muggings including 362,000 robberies.

—

Offences recorded as robbery (personal and business) by the police in England and Wales have more than doubled over the last ten years. Some of the largest increases, in terms of volume, have been in recent years.

I hope to shout! Check out this graph:

Now, this next part is really interesting:

Personal robbery accounts for the bulk of recorded robbery in England and Wales. Between April 2001 and March 2002, personal robbery accounted for 89 per cent of all robbery, and almost all of the increase. Personal robbery continues to increase at a faster rate than business robbery. Business robbery increased by 6 per cent in 2001/02 compared to the previous year, while personal robbery increased by 31 per cent.

Now, why might that be?

And if you really want to compare international recorded crime instead of estimated, there’s this graph:

Anyway, I apologize for the error, Tim, and I’m glad you caught it. It’s important to get these things right.

It does that when the obvious-stick is jabbed through my eye-socket and into my skull.

Feces Flinging Monkey delivers an essay that is almost literally a ClueBat™ to the noggin – the Democrats are CONSERVATIVES.

No! Really! Some excerpts:

The Democrats Have Become The New Conservatives.

I’m serious. Take a quick look at their big domestic issues now:

Don’t weaken abortion laws.
Don’t weaken affirmative action laws.
Don’t weaken the public school system.
Don’t weaken the unions.
Don’t weaken welfare.
Don’t weaken environmental laws.
Don’t weaken gun control laws.
Don’t weaken liability laws.
Don’t weaken Medicare.
Don’t weaken Social Security.
Don’t get too far into debt.
And of course, stop taking so many chances overseas.

There is no innovation here, no new plan or new future, nothing bold or risky or daring. It’s a gigantic holding action. The only real change ever discussed is an increase in scale, an increase of quantity rather than kind. You can run the same speeches from the 1980 race and nobody would notice the difference.

—

The face of the Democratic party is, more accurately, the face of the soccer mom – risk-adverse, parentalisitc, and always concerned for the sake of the children.

—

The face of the Democratic party is not that of the hot chick you saw at the Phish concert. It’s the face of Kyle’s Mom from Southpark.

RTWT. There’s much more in there that will really make you think.

He’s absolutely right.

The problem isn’t that the Democrats are too liberal, it’s that the Republicans aren’t libertarian enough. We’ve got TWO conservative parties, and there really is only about a dime’s worth of difference between them.

Boy, Good Thing This Happened in D.C! Somebody Might’ve Had a Gun!

(Hat tip, Mostly Cajun, who I just added to my blogroll. Good stuff.)

It seems that Supreme Court Justice David Souter was attacked by a “group of young men” while out jogging. Here’s the story:

Supreme Court Justice Souter Assaulted

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice David Souter suffered minor injuries when a group of young men assaulted him as he jogged on a city street, a court spokeswoman and Metropolitan Police said Saturday.

The attack occurred about 9 p.m. Friday, and Supreme Court police took Souter, 64, to a Washington hospital, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. He was examined and released about 1 a.m. Saturday.

Neither Arberg nor police would detail the justice’s injuries except to say they were minor. Nor would they give other details about the assault, except Arberg said Souter was not robbed.

A spokeswoman for Washington Hospital Center also would not talk about the incident because of privacy rules.

Souter was running alone when he was attacked. He lives in a neighborhood not far from the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill, where the attack occurred.

Souter is among the youngest justices and is a regular jogger.

He is not the first justice to be injured while exercising. Justice Stephen Breyer was thrown from his bicycle several years ago and suffered minor injuries.

Souter was named to the bench by the first President Bush in 1990.

“Injured while exercising??” This wasn’t an oopsie, this was a criminal attack. (Unless Justice Breyer was “thrown from his bicycle” by an assailant, too, how do these two incidents rate comparison? Surely Justice O’Connor has pulled a muscle riding a horse once or twice, too.)

Let’s see: A city in which no one is allowed to have a firearm for self-protection. A 64 year-old man out jogging at 9PM. He’s assaulted by “a group of young men.” Young men who, by all evidence, would have no problem acquiring pretty much any weapon they might want (gun, knife, club, broken bottle…), have no compunction about assaulting someone, and who had nothing to fear from one old guy in jogging togs.

I’d say Justice Souter was one lucky SOB.

Unless it was someone trying to influence his vote on a case, that is.

Oh, THIS Will Help

(Via KeepAndBearArms.com)

It seems that now the Brits think that they can shame criminals into not using guns in crime.

GUN CRIME CONVICTS UNVEILED ON POLICE POSTERS

Reporter: Natalie Jackson

A poster campaign featuring the faces of people who’ve been convicted of gun crime has been unveiled today. The policy has been criticised by a civil liberties group. But senior police officers hope their naming and shaming policy will deter youngsters from getting involved with guns. Natalie Jackson reports.

The Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police launching his campaign today. He’s promoting this poster which names and shames four convicted gun criminals.

The Chief Constable for Nottinghamshire Police Steve Green says ‘It isn’t cool to carry a gun, there are consequences if you shoot someone you will be sent to prison for a very long time, and this campaign gets that message home’.

Only if you get caught. They don’t seem able to do much of that.

But civil liberty groups are against the move, claiming it infringes the human rights of the men and their families.

Steve says ‘I’m going to do everything in my power to tackle gun crime, I’m going to do everything in my power to protect the people of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and if this is what I have to do. What I am doing is proportionate to the threat to the safety of people in this city’.

Everything, that is, except allow the people in your city to defend themselves effectively without fear of prosecution or persecution.

But, realistically, the brainwashing has gone on for so long and has been so effective that I don’t think enough Brits would be able to defend themselves effectively. It’s been bred and trained right out of too many of them.

And the figures speak for themselves. In the last fourteen months in Nottingham ninety three weapons have been discharged, forty six people shot and five of those were fatal.

Really? In the gun control utopia of England? How is that possible?

Oh, right. The “loopholes” of “imitation” firearms, Eastern Europe and the internet. Silly me.

Police say the message to gun criminals is that they’re not untouchable.

Just mostly.

The poster carries four photos.

Let’s see, ninety-three weapons discharges, forty-six hits, five fatal. That’s a hit to miss ratio of (mmm…carry the one…) 49.5%! Damn, for a culture where most guns are banned, that’s pretty high!

Here’s the BBC’s take on it. Money quote:

But the move is not backed by everyone.

Reverend George Benson, Pastor at a church in Nottingham is concerned about the message it gives out to people and fears a similar reaction to that which occurred surrounding the controversial idea of naming and shaming paedophiles.

Rev Benson said: How many people got injured because of neighbourhood watch and vigilantes actually took the law into their own hands?”

Figures for Nottinghamshire show 46 people have been shot – five of them fatally, in the last 16 months.

Residents in some parts of Nottingham say the use of guns has become a common way of sorting out so-called turf wars between rival gangs.

Yeah, those neighborhood watch vigilantes really are a problem, aren’t they? But self-defense is perfectly legal and acceptable in jolly old England. Really.

And note that “the use of guns has become a common way of sorting out… turf wars”. The handgun ban and confiscation was in 1996. That was over eight years ago.

But “gun control” (licensing, registration, “needs” testing, and “safe storage,” followed by bans and confiscation) makes you safer, don’tcha know?

Here’s a bit more:

The move is welcomed by community leaders.

Milton Crossdale director Racial Equality Council in Nottingham said: “We are not to give young people the idea that people who use guns are the big bosses and they should be emulated.

“If we can discourage young people from seeing these kind of people as role models then this kind of campaign should be encouraged.”

Mothers of victims have held street campaigns in the past against guns.

Police have said with support from residents they will beat the problems.

Not when the problem is defined as “GUNS!!”

The chant at the first (not even close to a) “Million Moms March” was “England can do it! Australia can do it! WE CAN TOO!“

I sure as hell hope not, and I’ll do everything in my power to prevent it.

Well, in their quixotic effort to reduce halt the increase in violent crime involving guns in England through gun banning regulation, they’ve now made “the manufacture, sale and purchase of hi-tech air weapons using a self-contained gas cartridge” illegal and “owners without a licence will be prosecuted.” The sentence is five years.

But of course the gun-grabbers still aren’t happy. There’s still “loopholes” that “need to be tightened”:

Lucy Cope launched Mothers Against Guns after her 22-year-old son Damian was killed by a converted replica in 2002 (Yes, the gun magically converted itself, loaded itself, and levitated itself until it found her son, then it pulled its own trigger and killed him.) and is calling for a total ban on the sale of replica weapons – whether or not they can be modified to fire bullets.

“Replica weapons are toys that kill, they are weapons of mass destruction,” she said. “Anything that resembles a gun should be banned.

“Even cap guns can cause problems – police units have to make difficult snap judgements about whether they’re real or fake.”

Got that? CAP GUNS need to be banned. Replica guns are “WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.’

Let’s look at some more idiocy:

Paul Kelly, chairman of the Police Federation in Greater Manchester, remains unconvinced by the new legislation.

“The Home Office is making the right noises,” he said, “but we think it’s time to see some real substance.

“Anything designed to be an absolute replica should need a licence in exactly the same way as a real firearm.

Um, that would be the real firearms that were licensed, registered, and stored safely under the previous law. The law that was found to be ineffective at stopping firearm crime. The law that permitted the government to know where every single legally owned firearm was kept and who owned it. The law that allowed the government to tell those legal owners to hand in all semi-automatic long guns in 1988 (which didn’t slow the increase in violent crime) and all handguns in 1996 (which didn’t even slow down the increase in violent crime involving HANDGUNS.) You mean that kind of license?

Just because the horse is beaten bloody dead doesn’t mean we shouldn’t beat it some more! The philosophy CANNOT BE WRONG! The policy just wasn’t implemented correctly! LET’S TURN UP THE POWER!

But look! Down here at paragraph 28!

Mr Kelly feels the law will change little for the bobby on the street and added: “Officers will still be expected to spot the real guns and the replicas – even when it’s a dark, wet night and late on in their shift.

It will change nothing at all for either the bobby nor the general English subject. And here’s a bit of (typical) wishful thinking:

“If we take the things off the market, the problem will be solved.”

Uh, no. You keep neglecting the first law of economics: Demand WILL BE MET by supply. As illustrated in the very next paragraph:

Increasingly, criminals are sourcing weapons abroad, as modern technology helps them avoid government and police safeguards.

The mantra from many gun controllers regarding why Chicago and Washington D.C. have such high homicide rates despite their draconian gun control laws is that guns are brought into the cities from areas with “lax gun laws,” and if the gun laws were uniform across the nation, this wouldn’t happen. Yet the UK has uniform gun laws, IT’S A FREAKING ISLAND and guns still flow across its borders.

No, now the Internet is at fault (if one scapegoat dies, find another):

Police are working to stop the flow of convertible guns into Britain, but growing sales on uncontrolled internet sites are worrying.

It took me just 10 minutes to access one selling all manner of firearms from central Europe, boasting delivery anywhere in the world.

Demand will generate a supply, baby. That’s economics 101.

And efforts like this:

The new legislation makes it illegal to manufacture, sell, purchase, transfer or acquire any air weapon that uses a self-contained gas cartridge system.

Anyone who already owns one will be able to keep it only by obtaining a £50 firearm certificate from the police.

are destined to abject failure.

But the philosophy cannot be WRONG! And the indoctrination of the populace has had decades to do its job, and do it well:

It’s about time firearms of all types were banned in this country. Airguns can seriously injure or even kill. Do we really want to become like the US and have over 40 shootings a day in each state? All guns shout (sic) be banned.
T. Hawkins, Swinton, Gtr. Manchester

You’ve pretty much tried that, T. Hawkins. Hasn’t worked, or haven’t you noticed?

And I’d bet you’d love to have our levels of burglary, robbery, assault, home invasion, and general thuggery.

Nightline

Robert Arial of South Carolina’s The State:

In case you weren’t aware, I get my cartoons from Slate’s Political Cartoons page. Go read through it some time and see the “liberal slant” of the media. For every “right-wing” or “moderate” cartoonist, there must be ten leftists, and some of them are foul.

(Since this site is non-profit – no tipjar, no blogads – and I do political commentary, I hold that use of these cartoons falls under “fair use” standards.)