Tag: gun control

How’s that Gun Control Working Out for You?

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Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world. We recognize that only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.

— Home Office Minister Alun Michael, 11/3/97 press release.

That was right after passage of the handgun ban.

Today?

Armed officers placed on routine foot patrol for first time

And not just any guns, either!

Police officers armed with submachine guns are to be deployed on routine patrol of Britain’s streets for the first time. A hand-picked team from CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s elite firearms unit, will walk the beat in gun crime hotspots where armed gangs have turned entire estates into “no go” zones.

Local politicians and anti-gun campaigners have reacted with anger at the news that the officers will carry Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns – capable of firing up to 800 rounds-per-minute – and Glock semi-automatic pistols.

This, in a country where at least one media outlet called the full-auto Glock 18 pistol the Most Terrifying Gun in the World!

CO19 currently provides armed support in volatile situations like sieges and terrorist attacks, with its officers on constant call in vehicles around London.

But this is the first time that armed officers will be sent on permanent foot patrol anywhere in the country outside Northern Ireland.

“Historically, CO19 was only called out when someone rang up to report a gun crime,” said Inspector Derek Carroll, head of the new unit.

“But a lot of streets in London have young people in postcode gangs, aged 14 and upwards, and a lot of communities feel that they are controlling areas of estates.

“We are looking at gangs that have access to firearms and will be robust in dealing with them and disrupting and deterring them.”

Really! Gangs have access to firearms on an island nation with “the strictest control of firearms” that they were promised would “protect the public”?

Say it ain’t so!

The team of 18 constables, led by an inspector and two sergeants, will begin their patrols of Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham on Nov 9, following successful trial schemes.

The officers – some on motorbikes – will carrying out weapon “sweeps” of their neighbourhoods in an effort to deter gang members from carrying guns, and are also intended to be a reassuring presence for residents.

Residents that have been told, literally for decades, that guns are evil, and that fully-automatic weapons are only useful for mowing down large crowds indiscriminately.

You’d think someone would comment on the dichotomy there.

“My view is that just because you carry a gun, it should not affect the way you police,” Inspector Carroll added. “We chat to people and they love it.”

Unlike their counterparts in the United States, British police officers not routinely carry guns, although armed patrols are frequently deployed in the aftermath of shootings and to guard potential terrorist targets.

In October 2000 armed officers on the beat were temporarily introduced in Nottingham after a string of drug-related deaths.

Jennette Arnold, a Labour London Assembly member for northeast London constituency, said that the patrols threatened to tear up the contract between the community and the police.

Already torn, Ms. Arnold, already torn.

“No one asked us or the people I represent if this was acceptable and when they do I shall tell them it isn’t. It isn’t acceptable to throw away the principle of policing by consent,” she said.

Gill Marshall-Andrews, chairwoman of the Gun Control Network campaign group, described the routine arming of officers as a “very retrograde step” and warned that it could lead to higher levels of gun crime.

“This is likely to raise the stakes and encourage more criminals, especially young criminals, to arm themselves,” she said.

Soooo, you’re saying that having armed foot patrols in the area might “escalate the situation”? Who do you represent, Ms. Marshall-Andrews? The residents or the thugs?

“Gun crime in this country is very low by international standards and that’s largely because there aren’t many guns about. Arming police officers sends out all the wrong messages.”

The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, has long campaigned against attempts to arm a larger section of the force, but said it had no objection to the new scheme.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the national federation, said that although majority of his members did not wish be to armed, forces must be free to respond to particular threats.

“The ethos will always be that the British police are unarmed, but we need officers to be able to use firearms when appropriate,” he said. “My feeling is that the current balance is just about right.”

The Home Office declined to comment, saying that the operational use of firearms was a matter for local forces.

Officers from CO19, formerly known as SO19, have been involved in a number of high-profile incidents in the capital, including the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station in 2005.

No internal link to that one, but a second on Bing gets you this:

Police officers in Jean Charles de Menezes shooting escape punishment

No police officers involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes will be disciplined, despite an inquest finding that catastrophic failures led to his death in London.

Same paper. Imagine that. The public should feel very secure!

Gun-related crime is on the increase in London with 1,736 gun crimes reported in London between April and September this year – up 17 per cent on 2008.

The problem of turf violence between drugs gangs was highlighted earlier this month with a spate of shootings in north London linked to two Turkish gangs, the Tottenham Boys and the Bombacilar.

Yup, Gun crime in the UK is very low by international standards, but it keeps going UP. It keeps going up in the face of Alun Michael’s proclamation that “only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.”

It’s a stone bitch when reality won’t conform to the theory, isn’t it? And it’s even worse when someone points it out.

(h/t: TFS Magnum)

Quote of the Day – Law Enforcement Edition

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Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn’t look around, and watch, and learn, and then say, “This is how people are, how do we deal with it?” No, he sat and thought: “This is how people ought to be, how do we change them?” And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing’s patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.

There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.

Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers—say, three per citizen.

Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.

Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford. The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that.

Admittedly, most of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens. That was Assault On A City Official, a very important and despicable crime, and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere.

It wasn’t that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn’t offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough-and-ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang.

— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

From a comment by Unix-Jedi.

I Can’t Wait to See the Brady Press Release

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I Can’t Wait to See the Brady Press Release

Gun-toting soccer mom is shot dead

Meleanie Hain, the pistol-carrying Lebanon mom who received national attention for taking a loaded gun to her daughter’s soccer game, was shot to death Wednesday night with her husband in an apparent murder-suicide, police said.

Hain, 31, and her husband, Scott, 33, were pronounced dead by Lebanon County Coroner Dr. Jeffrey Yocum shortly after 8:30 p.m. at their home at Second Avenue and East Grant Street, police said.

The couple’s three children were home at the time and were not injured, and are staying with relatives and friends, police said.

Autopsies were scheduled for Thursday, police said. No other details were available at press time.

Neighbor Mark Long said Meleanie baby-sat his 3-year-old son and that she and Scott had been having marital problems for the last week. Scott left on Tuesday and Meleanie did not know where he went, but he came back Wednesday, Long said.

Meleanie Hain was thrust into the national spotlight when she took a gun, in plain view and holstered on her hip, to a soccer game Sept. 11, 2008, at Optimist Park in Lebanon.

Her permit to carry a gun was revoked by Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo on Sept. 20, 2008. DeLeo said Hain showed poor judgment in wearing her gun to the game.

Hain’s permit was reinstated by Lebanon County Judge Robert Eby on Oct. 14, 2008, but the judge asked her to conceal it when she goes to soccer games. Hain said she would continue to carry it openly under the Second Amendment.

Hain then filed a lawsuit against DeLeo for $1 million in U.S. Middle District Court seeking reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs, emotional distress and lost wages.

“She has been stigmatized unfairly,” her attorney, Matthew Weisberg said at the time.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence then offered to defend DeLeo for free.

Daniel Vice, a senior attorney for the Brady Center, said at the time: “It is a case that calls out for common sense. … It’s ridiculous to bring a gun to a child’s soccer game.”

A hearing on Hain’s suit was postponed in May after one of the attorneys in the case was involved in an auto accident.

In an interview with The Patriot-News published Dec. 27, Hain said: “I am happy being a gun owner.”

She said she had no intention of changing her views on gun ownership and noted her critics had no intention of changing theirs.

She acknowledged the publicity had detrimentally affected her life. “I have read all sorts of slander, personal attacks, and even threats toward me, my family, and, yes, some specific to my children,” she said in the interview.

“The publicity surrounding me as a person makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. As stated previously, I am willing to talk to the press because the issue is so important, but the focus on me, personally, has been difficult because it simply is not about me,” she said.

About the decision to sue DeLeo, Hain said she did it because she was wronged

“Just the fact that he was wrong is evidenced by the fact that my license was restored to me. … I am a victim of Sheriff Michael DeLeo’s. I am a victim of those in society as a direct result of his actions as well. The way people look at me sometimes when I am out running errands, I feel as if I am wearing a scarlet letter, and really it’s a Glock 26.”

For those interested, Ms. Hain was interviewed by Caleb and Breda on Gun Nuts Radio back in January.

I foresee much dancing in the blood of the slain.

Sebastian has more details. Her husband was apparently the shooter.

I WILL NOT REGISTER

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Instapundit links to a piece by Declan McCullagh at the CBS News site, Sorry, Mandatory Gun Registration Is Constitutional. Instapundit comments:

Though I disagree with that as policy, that’s probably right. I could certainly construct a chilling-effect sort of argument that would be no more unfounded than many other constitutional doctrines that are “good law” today, but I’m not sure that such is really compelled by the Constitution. On the other hand, that the 1792 Militia Act required people to prove that they owned at least one qualifying gun is not necessarily support for the notion that you must account to the government for every gun you own.

I’m forced to admit that I agree with the good professor. If the .gov wants to know if I have at least one “qualifying gun,” I’ll be more than happy to tell them. I have a CCW, so they already have reason to believe I own at least one handgun (and I write this blog, so they know I own a lot more than that, but not how many in total, and not by serial number.) But if they want a list of everything I own, not only “No,” but “HELL NO!”

And why? Because I fully concur with the sentiment expressed by Charles T. Morgan, the Director of the Washington, D.C. office of the ACLU in 1975 House testimony on a gun registration bill:

What the administation’s and Congressman McClory’s bills . . . call for is a whole new set of Federal records. . . .

I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of a record-keeping procedure is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.

That’s all it’s good for.

A while back someone (Tam, I believe) proposed an excellent illustration of the futility of registraion and licensing as a crime-control measure: Take a standard 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper. Fold it in half and tear it along the fold. With a pen, write “License” on one piece and “Registration” on the other. Hand the piece marked “Registration” to the supporter of such laws, and say:

You are the government. That’s my registration. This piece of paper in my hand is my license, and this pen is my licensed, registered firearm. Explain to me, using only these three items, how licensing and registration will prevent me from criminally misusing my firearm.

Yes, registration may very well be Constitutional, but it is useful for only one thing: eventual confiscation. There are already something on the order of 300 million firearms in private hands in this country, the vast majority of which are not registered. Canada has a two billion dollar boondoggle on its hands trying to register a tiny fraction of that number of rifles and shotguns, and it is still being plagued by massive non-compliance.

If it’s tried here in the States, I will be among the non-compliant.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

In 1920, England was the safest industrialized society on Earth. In fact, it was by far the safest society of any sort on Earth. Through a series of gun control laws, England has become by far the most violent society on Earth.

Australia’s politicians were so eager to follow England’s lead that they let a certifiably insane man loose – and gave him his guns back. When the shots stopped, 35 people were dead and 21 were wounded. Today, Oz is clearly the second most violent industrialized society on Earth.

Now, New Zealand wants to get in on the fun. Their politicians are changing the rules for firearms possession, making it harder to keep and bear arms. That will make criminals feel safer, with the inevitable increase in violent crime. Which will result in a demand for more “gun controls.” And finally New Zealand will most likely be in the same situation England and Australia were in before it.

— Extranos Alley – Defining Insanity

It’s not just the gun control laws. In the case of the Anglosphere, gun control is just one of the symptoms of a flawed philosophy that forces its people to spiral down an ever-more-dangerous path of compelled helplessness.

This philosophy was perhaps best expressed recently by James Bowman (author, I believe, of Honor: A History) in a Weekly Standard piece from April, Harm’s Way: The roads in Britain are paved with good intention, itself a review of Theodore Dalrymple’s (pen name of Anthony Daniels) latest book Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline. In it, Bowman excerpts a bit from the book, and then expands:

The many hypocrisies and deceptions on which the New Labour coalition was built are typified by the system of criminal justice with which, in his prison job, Daniels had an intimate acquaintance. Citing the work of a whistle-blowing policeman named David Fraser, he compares the British police to

a nearly defeated occupying colonial force that, while mayhem reigns everywhere else, has retreated to safe enclaves, there to shuffle paper and produce bogus information to propitiate its political masters. Their first line of defense is to refuse to record half the crime that comes to their attention, which itself is less than half the crime committed. Then they refuse to investigate recorded crime, or to arrest the culprits even when it is easy to do so and the evidence against them is overwhelming, because the prosecuting authorities will either decline to prosecute, or else the resultant sentence will be so trivial as to make the whole procedure (at least nineteen forms to fill in after a single arrest) pointless.

The real question is, why isn’t this clearly appalling state of affairs a scandal in Britain? I think the answer is that the media consensus there–and to a large extent here–includes certain core principles, such as that crime is caused by something other than criminals and that imprisonment is society’s shame, rather than that of the incarcerated, which can only be protected by maintaining these hypocrisies and deceptions, and with them, the illusion that nothing can be done about most crime. Therefore, the media are complicit in pretending that these problems don’t exist–because they shouldn’t exist.

(My emphasis.) And along with that comes the inability to differentiate between “violent and predatory” and “violent but protective.”

And that’s insanity.

How Can People Still Believe This

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How Can People Still Believe This?

The levels of delusion that people are able to achieve still astound me. The piece I wrote a bit back, How’s that Gun Control Working Out for You? got linked at an online gamer’s forum. Apparently one member there is virulently anti-gun. Well, someone found another thread at the site, and linked to the piece again – but here’s the part of that thread – written by said anti-gunner – that inspired this post:

The UK has strict gun control and our last schoolyard shooting was Dunblane in 1996.
Australia has strict gun control and their last spree shooting was Port Arthur – also in 1996. Both of those incidents were followed by the introduction of draconian legislation to stop such incidents completely. It would be absurd to claim that there will never be another such incident. But 23 years without a repeat indicates quite a high barrier to the aspirations of would-be spree killers.

I think it works like this:

(1) Make it very hard to buy unnecessary firearms.
(2) Offer amnesties to get the existing toxic pool of unnecessary firearms out of drawers and cupboards throughout the nation
(3) Now it is very hard for low-level housebreakers to pick up an untraceable gun
(4) Now there are very few gun-dealers, so the police can take time to investigate ‘break-ins’ by which their guns are passed to criminals.
(5) Now, there is a very restricted market for bullets – it’s possible to trace the bullets used in a crime back to the shop and back to the purchaser. Arms dealers get more cautious about who they sell bullets to.
(6) Now its hard to shoot someone dead on impulse – so your murder rate is dropping
(7) and the chaotic, unstable criminals at the bottom of your society can’t get a gun at all.
(8) You drop the insane, vindictive multi-lifetime jail sentences for crimes against property – so it makes logical sense for a thief to surrender instead of trying to kill all witnesses or die attempting to get away.
(9) So the more ‘professional’ criminals don’t need guns for self-defense. And they don’t want the extra jail time they get for carrying a lethal weapon.

Result: A low level of guns in your society and a low level of gun crime. It’s not a zero crime rate. But about 8,000 fewer Americans will be shot dead each year.

Why do I think this would work ? Because, if you look at the top 25 developed nations, you’ll see that it is the US of A which has an unhealthy love affair with hand guns. And a demonization of ‘the criminals’ who are given 99 year sentences which they don’t have the life-span to serve.

And the US of A has three times the murder rate of those other developed nations. Doesn’t look that mysterious an issue to me.

So . . . draconian gun control has prevented another Dunblane or Port Arthur. OK, I can understand that reasoning, even if I disagree with it. It’s the same logic that says the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have prevented any more 9/11-like suicide attacks on U.S. soil.

Correlation ≠ Causation, but I understand the idea.

Now, let’s look at the rest of “Grungekitty’s” assertions.

(1) Make it very hard to buy unnecessary firearms.
Hard for whom? For the law-abiding, obviously, since pretty much anything you want is available on the streets in the UK for the right price.

(2) Offer amnesties to get the existing toxic pool of unnecessary firearms out of drawers and cupboards throughout the nation
Yes, they’ve been doing that for quite a while now in the UK – a place where all legally possessed firearms have been registered with the government. However, a 2003 amnesty brought in a lot of weapons, but most everyone asked said that “it appears to have had little effect in the communities where it really matters.” Another in 2004 brought in few firearms. In 2007 after a boy died after being shot with an air rifle, an amnesty in Wales brought in:

10 air rifles
4 air pistols
2 BB guns
1 blanks firing pistol and ammunition
1 hunting knife
1 imitation handgun
3 boxes of air gun pellets
1 crossbow

Wow.

And after each amnesty, gun crime increased.

(3) Now it is very hard for low-level housebreakers to pick up an untraceable gun
Too right. Now they have to fence the stuff they steal and buy an untraceable gun! Or just rent one. There’s apparently an active rent-a-gun business in the UK these days, for the down-on-his-luck criminal who can’t afford the fifty quid necessary to purchase one.

No one knows how many guns are in circulation across Britain. Senior police sources confirm that they are ‘easy and quick’ to obtain. Whether they rent, borrow or buy, young men have no difficulty getting ‘tooled up’. Semi-automatic pistols remain the weapon of choice, although Trident officers admit ‘military hardware’ has found its way onto the streets.

That quote comes from a September, 2006 piece.

(4) Now there are very few gun-dealers, so the police can take time to investigate ‘break-ins’ by which their guns are passed to criminals.
Oooh! “Break-ins” with scare quotes! From that same September report:

Elsewhere, thousands of AK-47s from east Europe are reported to have ‘gone missing’ in Britain. One senior police source admits halting the supply of weaponry into Britain remains a thankless task: ‘We suspect a number enter the UK via lorry drivers using secret compartments. The issue is that we’re concentrating on drug and human imports and yet bringing in a handful of guns is, relatively, dead easy.

Who needs to break in to a gun shop? It’s easier to smuggle in the stuff that legal gun dealers can’t even handle – handguns, submachine guns, hand grenades, and assault rifles. The kind that actually have select-fire switches.

(5) Now, there is a very restricted market for bullets – it’s possible to trace the bullets used in a crime back to the shop and back to the purchaser. Arms dealers get more cautious about who they sell bullets to.
Really? And where do you get that idea? If it’s easy to smuggle in weapons, ammunition is a snap. Your ignorance is showing, grungekitty!

(6) Now its hard to shoot someone dead on impulse – so your murder rate is dropping
And THIS is the one that leaves my jaw on the ground. The UK has done everything on this list, and their murder rate continues to INCREASE. I’ve done this comparison before, but here it is again – the ratio of homicide rates between the U.S. and Scotland, and the U.S. and England & Wales since 1946:


So the U.S. without all that “draconian gun control” has been experiencing a decline in homicide rates, while Scotland and England & Wales have had a slow but steady increase in their rates. If you project the slopes on out, you’re looking at a 1:1 ratio about what, 2012?

But we’re not done yet!

(7) and the chaotic, unstable criminals at the bottom of your society can’t get a gun at all.
Riiiiight! Just like in the UK, WHICH IS AN ISLAND. I believe I’ve already addressed this bit of cranial flatulence.

(8) You drop the insane, vindictive multi-lifetime jail sentences for crimes against property – so it makes logical sense for a thief to surrender instead of trying to kill all witnesses or die attempting to get away.
Words fail me.

(9) So the more ‘professional’ criminals don’t need guns for self-defense. And they don’t want the extra jail time they get for carrying a lethal weapon.
Words fail me still.

Result: A low level of guns in your society and a low level of gun crime. It’s not a zero crime rate. But about 8,000 fewer Americans will be shot dead each year.
Give her credit, she’s wrong about everything, and she finishes BIG!

Sorry, grungekitty, but we’ve seen the petri dish of the UK. We know what actually happens. The government succeeds in disarming the victim pool, and the criminals are emboldened. So not only does the homicide rate increase, but all other forms of violent crime go up too. After all, they’re not afraid of the police, who – as crime victim Nikki Goeser explained, can’t be everywhere all the time. No, the cops show up just in time to put out the crime scene tape and take photos of your loved ones. Not their fault. Protecting you and yours isn’t really their job.

It’s yours.

Sweet bleeding Shiva, the things people can convince themselves of in the face of all the evidence.