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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 11:51 am
Well, this might end a few arguments:
Labour’s failure on law and order was laid bare last night as it emerged 250 more people are being killed each year in brutal acts of violence than when Tony Blair came to power.
The devastating statistic has been compiled by academics who say it is final proof Britain has become a more dangerous place to live since 1997. It demolishes the Government’s repeated claim that violent crime is falling.
The research, by the respected Crime and Society Foundation, reveals there were a shocking 954 homicides last year – more than 18 every week.
That’s an increase since 1997 of 35%. The report will be made public next week.
UPDATE. The Observer’s Mary Riddell, earlier this month:
The liberal reflex to epidemics of murder and injury is to debunk hysteria and point to falling crime. This time, though, something is going on. Almost every criminologist believes that stranger-stabbing is increasing, despite a woeful lack of data. The British Crime Survey, which recorded almost 2.5 million violent assaults last year, does not include young people, the group most likely to go armed.
UPDATE II. And from May, the Guardian’s David Rose:
Among seasoned practitioners close to the top of the criminal justice system, I found a marked uneasiness at the official state of denial, and concern that the figures truly reveal a rising incidence of personal crime.
Among the most forthright were senior police officers. ‘Of course it’s real,’ said Terry Grange, Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys in Wales and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) spokesman on ‘private crime’, which includes domestic violence and sex offences. ‘As far as wounding is concerned, there’s a much greater willingness to use weapons, and a much greater willingness to use violence all round.’
Some of the conviction statistics cited by Rose are stupefying.
UPDATE III. Ex-Labour councillor and academic Dr David Green:
The trouble with the British Crime Survey is that it only covers about half the crime recorded by the police. It misses out murder, rape, drug crime, fraud, all crimes against under-16s, and all commercial crime, including the biggest of all, shoplifting.
To sum up, we can say that crime is down from a peak in the mid-1990s and has now reached a plateau of about 10 times the rate in the 1950s, but violent crime is increasing steadily.
UPDATE IV. Barrister Rehman Chishti quits Labour:
I find it hard to respect a Government which has presided over a rise in gun crime, an increase in drug offences, and almost 600,000 more incidents of violent crime.
UPDATE V. Related claims from Gateway Pundit: “Despite the headlines yesterday, violent crime in the US remains below levels in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s and below that of Europe, Canada and Australia.”
UPDATE VI. Grim figures from Scotland:
Earlier this month, it was revealed that the number of young people in Scotland convicted of carrying knives has more than doubled in a decade.
Figures released by Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson show that in 1994-95, a total of 204 people under 18 were convicted of possessing a knife or other offensive weapon – but by 2004-05, the number had soared to 427.
- Extensive coverage of this issue in The Telegraph, which has started a Make Britain Safe campaign. It’s obvious that the standards of policing and justice in the UK have been abyssmal for decades. They should have listened to Enoch Powell instead of excoriating him.
From a Sunday Telegraph op-ed—
Police records of crime throughout Europe reveal that England and Wales had the fourth highest crime rate out of the 39 countries in the 2003 European Sourcebook of Crime, the latest figures available from the Council of Europe.
After standardisation, our figure of 9,817 crimes per 100,000 population, was more than double the average of 4,333. However, the Government wants us to use the British Crime Survey (BCS), which found about 11 million crimes in 2004/05, down from its 1995 peak of over 19 million.
But the trouble with the BCS is that it only covers about half the crime recorded by the police. It misses out murder, rape, drug crime, fraud, all crimes against under-16s, and all commercial crime, including the biggest of all, shoplifting. (Sheesh – ed)
To sum up, we can say that crime is down from a peak in the mid-1990s and has now reached a plateau of about 10 times the rate in the 1950s, but violent crime is increasing steadily. We are a high-crime society with a complacent government.
Turns out that friggin’ France is much safer than Britian.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 06 25 at 04:24 AM • permalink
- Well, you might look at Tim Holding, Victoria’s police minister (http://weekbyweek7.blogspot.com/2006/05/tim-holding-3-strikes.html). He might use the same statistical methodology as new Labor to counter such claims!Posted by WeekByWeek on 2006 06 25 at 04:52 AM • permalink
- No kidding, BIWOZ. I mean, how could there be shootings in a country that has outlawed guns?
The mind boggles.
- I am always amazed that the 60 or so murders a day in South Africa get so little coverage.However the numbers are going down apparently (they are no longer made public) so perhaps Tony Blair can take some lessons from Mbeki. The stats used to be 59/100,000 versus 6/100,000 in the USA. I know where I’d prefer to live.
- SB, the States has low and falling crime ratesin areas where sensible (non-PC!) policing is appled. Some old family friends (I’ll call them G&S, but no names no pack drill) just moved from Anglia to live with one of their daughters who married a US citizen. In the small town where they now live very few people lock their doors and anything above petty crime is quite rare. Most people have guns and according to G&S’s daughter, about 40% of townsfolk carry a concealed firearm when out in public. All legal and above board, people are appropriately trained by the local police and have to pass a safety and marksmanship test annually.
G&S were amazed at this, but after de-programming from the ‘guns are evil’ schtick peddled by the lefties, they are stayinmg. They will not return to the UK – it is WAY too violent a society for them.
On top of that, nearly everyone hunts in that town. REAL safe little place.
Disarm the people and make resisting criminals a crime (as the UK does) and they know they can do what they want, when they want. Why do people act surprised when they then do this? The government has empowered them to rape, rob and murder at will, nearly risk-free.
And, very strangely, the criminals don’t obey the law and hand in their illegal guns. Whoever whould have thought that, eh? Fancy criminals acting like criminals!
MarkL
Canberra
- 4 BIWOZ
Morons deserve whatever they get.
Maybe they do, or maybe they deserve whatever their demogogically-elected gummints leave them with. It’s still a problem worth fixing.
Brits’ gun-owning rights are (a) not a matter of national tradition plus worse yet (b) were recently and successfully taken away. So “restoring” them is kind of a non-starter.
But they clearly need to have some.
How to get a thing like that through a system like theirs and turn it into a law, let alone turn it into a right, I have no idea.
If you do have some ideas, they would probably be more useful than any more of your gloating about how they deserve their new higher crime rate.Posted by Huck Foley on 2006 06 25 at 07:34 AM • permalink
- Remember the woman who thought that “girls weren’t violent enough”?
Well in one state in Australia this week -in a small country town -two sixteen year old girls strangled their 15 year old “friend” after holding a cloth soaked in toxic substances over her mouth.
They then buried her under a house. It was all meticulously planned well beforehand.
Hey crazy feminist sociopath ..hope you’re happy.
Meanwhile in Scotland a six year old boy was beaten up by a (Scot) man for wearing an England soccer jersey.When the lad’s dad came to his rescue he was punched to the ground and kicked..happy Devolution Scotland.
- #10-In the small town where they now live very few people lock their doors and anything above petty crime is quite rare. Most people have guns and according to G&S’s daughter, about 40% of townsfolk carry a concealed firearm when out in public. All legal and above board, people are appropriately trained by the local police and have to pass a safety and marksmanship test annually.
So what? Plenty of nice, safe, small towns like that in Australia where no-one feels the need to carry a concealed weapon.
- Two sentences stand out in that article:
‘The crimes that matter to people most have spiralled out of control under this Government because of their failure to tackle drugs and alcohol, their failure to establish discipline in schools, and their failure to secure our borders.’
‘It is not surprising that victims do not have confidence in community sentences if they only offer a statistically better outcome.
Until the PC elements who put this miserably inadequate system of “justice” in place face up to some inconvenient realities, the crime statistics are never going to get better, and will probably get worse. It took the US a long time, and we still have a long way to go, but we’ve (mostly} finally stopped making excuses for the “socially disadvantaged” and started facing up to the fact that justice, to be justice, should be swift, harsh, and fair.
- I worked in Kuwait for 4 years. I was amazed that the souk (marketplace) – the shopkeepers had millions of dollars of gold- but didn’t need a security gate or guard to keep it safe. I asked my Muslim co-worker why? He said the thief would have been caught and got his hands chopped off. Woohoo for sharia law! Next time there is lefty muslim rally- we ought to join them with a placard- Support Islam- Cut off the hands of thieves- and bash a homo.Posted by Wylie Wilde on 2006 06 25 at 09:18 AM • permalink
- #6
To a certain extent I agree; but I feel there is a certain “pressure cooker” point in regards to population density, above which the previously accepted figures just just go berserk. Maybe the UK hasn’t reached that level yet. When I saw the sheer humanity packed into NYC, in such a small place, I couldn’t understand how anyone could keep their sanity!
#11
Fuck you! (And he smiles as he says it) The Poms sat on their arses and tugged theirforeskinsforelocks as they were told what they could and couldn’t do, own and have. “Thank ‘ee, Guvnor, some more, please.” Don’t expect me to supply their answers! And yes, I’ll sit here and gloat if I want to! Happy?
So what? Plenty of nice, safe, small towns like that in Australia where no-one feels the need to carry a concealed weapon.
Which, slammer, kind of proves the point that it isn’t the guns which are the root cause of the problem.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 25 at 10:16 AM • permalink
- I hope no criminals decide to use any of those nice, safe, gunless, small Australian towns as bases for their meth operations.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 06 25 at 10:28 AM • permalink
- #15 RC Dean – no it doesn’t change the spin. It’s against the law (unless authorised) to carry a concealed weapon. So unless you are an advocate of breaking the law, that’s the end of it. If you want the law changed then form a party that advocates a change in our gun laws. And if elected, change the laws and I wont complain. We live in a democracy.
I was brought up in outback S Aust. At one stage I had a .22 Brno repeater, a .357 single shot Martini action (beautiful gun), my old man’s .303 and a 12 gauge. I moved to the city and gave them all to my cousin who is still on the land. I don’t need them now in Brisbane. I have great adjacent neighbours but there are some down the street that I would be appalled if they owned firearms even if as MarkL says they are “appropriately trained by the local police and have to pass a safety and marksmanship test annually”. They might be able to do that in the AM but when they are as pissed as a parrots and raving psychotics in the darkening hours that doesn’t count for much. And having discussed it with neighbours it would frighten the shit out of all of them.
John Howard is right, as he has been on just about everything I can think of during his lengthy and deserved tenure. Economically, on immigration, on our support for America on it’s war on on terror, on industrial relations AND on gun laws. I know some of our American commentators think differently. Their history relating to guns is different and I respect their views.
However, I agree with slammer and not with MarkL on this one, but I always enjoy his posts anyway
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 06 25 at 10:30 AM • permalink
- “But the trouble with the BCS is that it only covers about half the crime recorded by the police. It misses out murder, rape, drug crime, fraud, all crimes against under-16s, and all commercial crime, including the biggest of all, shoplifting.”
Well, hell, what crimes are covered??? Jaywalking? Mopery?
- Wasn’t there some scandal a few years back about how the UK police under-report crimes? I remember reading about it on the BBC website. And I also remember reading that countries like Britain and France don’t like to report crimes unless they solve them. And that the French police make it as hard as possible to report crimes as well, so many go unreported (that was in a Dalryple article called “Barbarians at the Gates” or something like that). I’m going to have to try to find the articles, but it was pretty big news a few years ago.
- Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!
Broken windows, folks, broken windows.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 06 25 at 11:52 AM • permalink
- The ASBO (anti-social behaviour order) is the most hilarious manifestation of PC stupidity I can think of. How do you shame someone who has no shame, who wears notoriety as a badge of honour?. The answer is simple, don’t bother. Just send the little Fisher-Price gangstas to an adult prison and let them meet the big boys. What’s that sound, sobbing?. But you said you’re a hard man. Enjoy your stay, homeboy.Posted by Daniel San on 2006 06 25 at 12:40 PM • permalink
- Ushie — Hate speech and crimes against Islam.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 25 at 12:44 PM • permalink
- Here you go, AnnNY: The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris
Dalrymple is one of my favorites. All his City Journal essays can be accessed here.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 06 25 at 01:20 PM • permalink
- I see that Tim Lambert has responded to this post by quoting the CSF to imply that they agree with his view of the reliability of crime data. In fact whilst they do agree that recorded crime levels anyone very much their view of the Crime Survey data is hardly in accordance with Lambert’s previous claim that the BCS is a “good survey”. This is their view.
‘The government is not being straightforward with the public about crime and its measurement.
‘The simple fact is that the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime tells us little or nothing some of the most serious crimes and harms in society. Is it any wonder that public fear of crime outstrips the government’s favoured measures?
‘By using the British Crime Survey as evidence of success in tackling crime the government risks complacency in the face of what is a far more complex and widespread range of problems.
He also tries to use the fact that the London bombings inflated the figure to imply that their has only been a small rise in the murder rates. As I point out in post #8 this means that the murder rate has increased by 27% since 1997 rather than 35%.
- Brits’ gun-owning rights are (a) not a matter of national tradition plus worse yet (b) were recently and successfully taken away. So “restoring” them is kind of a non-starter.
Not quite. Brits had a well-established tradition of gun ownership, which they semi-voluntarily gave up almost completely in less than 100 years. This is a bit of a slog, but well worth the read:
- #6 SB:
[of the UK]the US has about 6 times the population and 20 times the murder rate
Not even close on the second guess. The 2004 U.S. murder rate was 5.5/100k/yr, and the U.K. rate for the same year was *not* .275/100k/yr.
Try 1.4/100k/yr since 2000, which is closer to 4 than 20 times.
Since the 1920s, the gap between U.S. and U.K. murder rates has been slowly closing, which isn’t saying much good about the U.K.‘s handling of crime.
- The answer is simple, don’t bother. Just send the little Fisher-Price gangstas to an adult prison and let them meet the big boys. What’s that sound, sobbing?. But you said you’re a hard man. Enjoy your stay, homeboy.
Asbos are tripe, but better than nothing. In Victoria police don’t bother charging most juveniles because it’s not worth the effort of putting together a case then having it it thrown at the Childrens Court.
The police wait until these habitiual offenders turn 18 then haul them before the Magistrates Court. Boy, are these kiddies surprised. From thumbing their noses at police all of sudden they’re doing a custodial sentence.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 06 25 at 07:17 PM • permalink
- Sounds like the social-engineers are finally reaching their egalitarian goal. Rather than equal treatment before, and equal protection of, an objective judiciary, “social” justice demands that we all must be equal in reality. Of course, we aren’t all naturally endowed with equal abilities, nor do we all choose to use what abilities we have. Since you aren’t going to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, everybody must become a sow’s ear.
Justice operates in reality whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. It is reality that judges society’s beliefs, and the laws that express those beliefs. It is a law of nature that if you ignore evil, like kudzu, it will overtake you and make survival impossible. That is why it is evil.
- #13 and #20. Andrea can be forgiven for not knowing but an Australian who has spent any time in small town rural Australia would not make the claim that there are no guns. There are few “illegal” weapons but almost every household would have at least one legal gun. The reality is that on the land in Australia there are lots and lots of “varmits” most of them with more than 2 legs. If you don’t want to lose stock you need to eradicate or control. Local people even in the towns tend to be part of the effort.
- Steve H
I recall that in recent years the number of homicides in the US was about 20,000 per year. Looking at the numbers, I see that there is a big difference between homicide and murder.
Still, the US is still a couple of hundered percent higher than the UK. I am not particularly anti-gun, but this dscrepancy causes concern. One possible explaination is to look at the incidence of murder by race, but I suppose that is not very PC.
The stat that interested me, and which would support Dalrymple is that in 1900 when lots of guns were available, the US homicide rate was less than 1/100,000.
The bigger issue is that even if guns were more widely available, we would need to adjust the law to allow citizens to defend their person and property, as the law has been progressively modified to take these rights away from us.
- Further to my earlier comment. Gun ownership in Australia is often misrepresented. I quote from the linked article in the Courier mail July 10, 2003: “Australians rank among the world’s most heavily armed citizens despite the Federal Governments’s efforts to tighten gun laws.
There are an estimated 2.1 million provate firearms in Australi, according to the Small Arms Survey 2003 by the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva.
Gun ownership in Australia surpassed the global ratio by more than 50 per cent.”
Most of the argument around gun ownership in Australia starts with emotion and ends with prejudice. We are a high gun owning society, we always have been. What we do not have is the right to use those guns in self defence so although we have them, only the baddies use them on other people.
In addition since “gun control laws” were introduced the drop in the number of suicides using firearms is almost exactly matched by the growth in the number of suicides by hanging.
The debate in Australia should and needs to be about our right of self defence from criminal violence.
- Personally, despite my right wing views, I’m not in favor of making guns more freely available. I’d prefer tougher sentencing on criminals- lengthy jail sentences- more police on the streets- than to see a prolification of gun ownership. When I mean tough sentencing- I really want to see criminals who rape, murder, bash, rob- placed in jail for 30 years mandatory in cold concrete cells- with no outside access.Posted by Wylie Wilde on 2006 06 25 at 10:11 PM • permalink
- allan: I didn’t say anything about people in small towns in Australia not owning guns. I was replying to slammer, who said people in “plenty” of small towns in Australia didn’t “feel the need to carry” guns. I guess he thinks people in small towns in America who own guns carry them around in holsters like in programs about the old West. Actually, most people in rural areas in the US have guns for the same reason they do in Australia; we still have “varmints” too. All the same, we don’t have an across-the-board apparent ban on self-defence via gun the way you say you have in Australia. (The laws do vary from US state to US state.)Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 06 25 at 10:29 PM • permalink
- Crime is also up in the US; however, NBC made no mention of the gang warfare that drives it, although all their video was in the inner city, or the increase caused by illegal immigration. The cause is, you guessed it, Bush!! And his cuts in funding “programs” to fund Homeland Security.
I blame George Bush.
- I once read an online news article from a British newspaper, regarding self-defense rights, gun ownership, etc., and some official was quoted as saying that “the prevailing administrative culture” could never allow a regression to previous conditions under which, essentially, people had the right to self-defense in their own homes. I wish I could find that article. The phrase is priceless: “The prevailing administrative culture.” It simply doesn’t matter what anybody thinks once the prevailing administrative culture has made up its mind. Power flows not from the people, or even from the Crown, but from the Prevailing Administrative Culture, which has decided that the law-abiding Brit is justified in existing only in order to serve as recreation, resource, rapine, and repast, for the criminal. The law-abiding Brit is just a smug, barely reconstructed racist whose rights must be subordinated to those of the excluded, the “other,” the criminal, the drug addict, the imam on welfare. So, tut tut, everything’s under control. And, frankly, the Prevailing Administrative Culture is tired of having to explain these things. Further complaints will be put on permanent records open for perusal by progressive officials agonizing over difficult decisions on housing and health care.
- # 33- Andrea can be forgiven for not knowing but an Australian who has spent any time in small town rural Australia would not make the claim that there are no guns.
No they wouldn’t, which is probably why I didn’t claim any such thing, allan. My comment was specifically about concealed firearms, and was in response to MarkL’s suggestion that the town he described was a safer place because some townspeople carry one.
- Jeez..
The idea of allowing concealed weapons in Australia scares the crap out of me.. Coupled with the psycopaffs we all meet every day on the roads, can you imagine the carnage??.. Why only today a fellow traveller on lifes path favoured me with a cheery (one Fingered) wave and an energetic “.. go forth and etc etc..” and all because I bipped the horn as he crossed the road in front of me (against the red man of course).. Can you imagine if he had a concealed Glock or something??
Hey, I could have one too…However, the view that armed citizens are the only real way to prevent tyranny of government has a great deal of sense.. Think I could actually go along with that..
- The beauty of a concealed weapon law is that not everybody needs to carry one. The fact that some do and some don’t leaves the criminal with the dilemma of figuring out which person can blow you away if you pester them about their wallet, etc.
I remember back in the early 70’s, there was a bold serial rapist attacking women in broad daylight in downtown Miami. This affected me directly because I had to change buses downtown on the route to and from Jackson Memorial Hospital and Little Havana. The police announce that they were going to allow a certain number of women to carry a concealed weapon for protection, and that they would train the women how to use the weapon. The rapes ceased. It was a stunning lesson I’ve never forgotten.
- Slammer #41, that is the claim made by my friends there. The people there have made their choice and it works for them in their circumstances. Beyond that I did not go, and will not, and I certainly made no linkage to Australia in that comment. That works for them.
‘John Howard is right, as he has been on just about everything I can think of during his lengthy and deserved tenure. Economically, on immigration, on our support for America on it’s war on on terror, on industrial relations AND on gun laws. I know some of our American commentators think differently. Their history relating to guns is different and I respect their views. ‘
This is true, the bit about the US having a different appraoch and view. That is the point I was making.
Whale Spinor made a similar comment, but again, I only referred to ONE place in the US.
Our small towns are quite heavily armed for obvious reasons (critters). We have a relatively low crime rate in some palces, but you check out the stats for places like Nhulunbuy, Gove and the towns in the channel country.
THe issue here is a bit deeper than these superficialities. While I like a lot of what Howard has done, I disagree vehemently on the bulk of his ‘gun control’ policies. The last one spent $180 million in a buyback and did absolutely nothing, it changed the legality of barrel lengths and calibres about a bit, a lot of folks in my club handed their pistols in, took the cash, and bought new ones to continue their sport.
I have not noticed any crims handing their weapons in – that is why they are crims!
The ONLY part of Howards ‘gun control’ nonsense I concur with was restrictions on automatic and semi-automatic military rifles. Only professional pig shooters need ‘em. Urban types do not.
SO we are an armed society, which is all to the good in my view. I do not agree with the way my sport is being made incrementally harder to conduct by addition of rules designed purely for imbuggerance and to allow trendy lefty latte sipping arseholes to preen about their moral superiority becuase they think ‘guns are eeeevil’. They are merely elegant tools to perform a specific function. I happen to enjoy going to the range and improving my marksmanship. WHy should this be regarded as improper by anyone?
Now please excuse me, I have to convince one of my sons that while the new Barrett .416 is a stunningly good and beautiful piece of kit, I really can’t afford one for his birthday even though they are perfectly legal here in Canberra.
<but I’d love to own one of those, ah well, I can dream…>MarkL
canberra
- I think you will find that in Australia at least, a licenced shooter is far less likely to commit a violent act or indeed, murder anyone by any method than in comparison with the rest of our non-shooting citizens.
Considering one of the main arguments of those who would curtail others freedoms is that guns supposedly beget violence, & that it is violence we are seeking to halt – you would think they’d legislate that everyone own a gun?
Posted by stahlblume on 2006 06 26 at 09:07 AM • permalink
- C’mon, slammer, can’t you see the difference between “nobody wants to”, and “you’ll go to jail if you do”?
Besides, I know for a fact that anyone carrying concealed in Australia will go to jail; as you so helpfully confirmed, its against the law.
Whereas you don’t have any idea if the residents of those small towns might like to go armed, do you?
- Whale Spinor, I have to agree with you. I’ve never been to Australia and can only imagine what it is like there. I have no basis for assessing what appropriate gun legislation is for Oz. In Texas, we’ve always had guns. Forever. We’ve had guns in my house since before I was born. We were taught gun safety and proper etiquette at a young age and it was all a normal part of life. I looked forward to getting my own rifle similar to the way I looked forward to getting my first car. Having a firearm was never used as an excuse for poor decision making. When someone would cut me off on the road, they got the horn and maybe the finger. I never even dreamed of pointing a weapon at them simply because I had one available. If I decided to go berserk, couldn’t I just ram them with my car?
My wife used to conduct her army reserve training at Fort Gillam in Atlanta. She’d drive in very early in the morning and kept her 9mm in the seat of her car. The place is in a really crummy side of town and one morning she’d stopped at a quick stop to fuel her car along the way. While she was getting back into her car two large black guys were moving toward her swiftly. Seeing a 5 foot tall pretty little blonde girl, she probably looked like an easy mark. She saw them, grabbed her pistol, swung around and charged it. They did an about-face and moved off at a trot. I’m very, very glad she had her weapon with her that day.
- 18 Goodness! I wasn’t before, but now I kind of am happy, yes.
29 jic
Brits had a well-established tradition of gun ownership, which they semi-voluntarily gave up almost completely in less than 100 years.
Bah! Accursed interloper, fie on your inconvenient facts! Fie!
But still, even with me being wrong about that, I think it would be a big, long, difficult, and quite-probably un-do-able project, to persuade the Brits that they’re entitled to private firearm ownership. Hunnert years is a long-ass slide to try to reverse.
Seems like they’ve already got out of the habit of thinking of it as a right, and that’s wrong.
WILL they learn anything from this inconvenient new statistic?
Bummer if they don’t.Posted by Huck Foley on 2006 06 26 at 08:01 PM • permalink
But still, even with me being wrong about that, I think it would be a big, long, difficult, and quite-probably un-do-able project, to persuade the Brits that they’re entitled to private firearm ownership.
Oh, you are spot-on about that. My point was more about how quickly and completely that tradition was erased, to the extent where most Brits don’t even know it existed in the first place. It’s hard to believe that you could buy a shotgun without any form of license in the UK until 1967!
how quickly and completely that tradition was erased, to the extent where most Brits don’t even know it existed in the first place.
It still sounds like the kind of problem that should be fixable, even if it probably isn’t. It’s just a very-large-scale marketing problem, is all.
Posted by Huck Foley on 2006 06 27 at 09:20 PM • permalink
- Here’s my main six blythe assumptions about this:
1 The Brit rate of shoot-em-up-type crime is approaching the U.S. rate, from below.
2 Simultaneously, Brits changed their gun-ownership laws, in a more restrictive direction, on a certain date.
3 Simultaneously, the U.S. s-e-u-t crime rate (or possibly just regional s-e-u-t crime) is approaching the Brit rate, from above.
4 Simultaneously simultaneously, !!, some regional U.S. gun-ownership laws have changed, in a less restrictive direction, on certain recorded dates.
5 Correlations amongst those trends are out there and have been noticed and probably even complied in some literature somewhere.
6 But no apparent job has been done of calling these correlations to the public’s attention, in Brit land or in Murka. None sufficient to penetrate my habitual inattention and incomprehension, anywaze. This is the rare time when I’d bet that me not noticing it DOES mean it ain’t happening. It should be happening, and now is the time.Posted by Huck Foley on 2006 06 27 at 09:39 PM • permalink
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There is also the decline of middle class morale and morals, charted by Theodore Dalrymple, so that people who according to their background and education should know better are taking on the attitudes and behaviour that used to be more characteristic of bogans.