Gun Registration and Confiscation in England and Wales

Gun Watch ^ | 31 October, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Guns Hidden from the Government and Confiscated in Wales

The exemplar for restrictive firearms regulation in the United States has been England and Wales.   Some have argued that it was NAZI Germany, but though the 1968 Gun Control Act borrowed heavily from NAZI law, the country and laws that most have referred to has been England.  Wales shares the same laws and Supreme Court as England.   Before the British passed their own restrictive firearms laws, the most restrictive law in the Anglosphere was the one passed in New York City, the infamous Sullivan law of 1911.

The first real study of armed crime and firearms control was done by Colin  Greenwood, Chief Inspector, West Yorkshire Constabulary, in 1972, at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.   Greenwood was somewhat puzzled by the English firearms laws, because they did not appear to have any effect on crime, and very little study had gone into their creation.   Firearms restrictions had been vigorously opposed before the First World War, on the grounds that they infringed on the rights of Englishmen to be armed for their own defense.  The first significant English firearms law was passed in 1920.

From A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control in England and Wales by Colin Greenwood, page 246:

How, then, should policy on firearms controls be affected by the facts produced?  The system of registering all firearms to which Section I applies as well as licensing the individual takes up a large part of the police time involved and causes a great deal of trouble and inconvenience.  The voluminous records so produced appear to serve no useful purpose.  In none of the cases examined in this study was the existence of these records of any assistance in detecting a crime and no one questioned during the course of the study could establish the value of the system of registering weapons.

It was not until much later that Greenwood discovered the purpose of the English firearms registration laws.  They were passed to facilitate firearms confiscation in the event of civil unrest or revolution.   From Colin Greenwood, May 15, 2000.  The term "Constitutionalists" below means British Constitutionalists:

Constitutionalists might argue about whether in Britain, Statute law can over-ride the basic principles of the Common Law, but in 1920 the Government of Britain was in fear of revolution and documents such as the. Cabinet Diaries reveal debates about the number of aircraft available for use against insurgents within the British Isles. In that climate, the registration of firearms (other than shotguns) was imposed for the purpose of “ensuring that all arms are available for redistribution to friends of the government”.

Extensive research by Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm buttresses what Colin Greenwood found.    From Guns and Violence, the English Experience, page 162:

Second, the Firearms Act of 1920, which took away the traditional right of individuals to be armed, was not passed to reduce or prevent armed crime or gun accidents.  It was passed because the government was afraid of rebellion and keen to control access to guns.

Widespread door to door searches and confiscations of firearms did not happen in England and Wales for the purpose of turning those arms over to government supporters, though that was the initial purpose of the registration of firearms.   Rather, the searches and confiscations occurred incrementally, over the last hundred years, as the government kept tightening requirements for ownership and made possession of arms ever more expensive and difficult.   The decisions to impose more restrictions were often made in secret and not know to the public until long after the fact.   Malcolm does an especially good job of documenting this process.

If someone tells you that the purpose of gun registration is crime control, that was never the case in England.   Nor has gun registration ever been of any significant use as a crime control measure.

Colin Greenwood and Joyce Lee Malcolm are the two foremost scholars on firearms control in England and Wales.  One can say, with considerable authority, that the purpose of firearms registration in England was always confiscation, even if it occurred incrementally over generations.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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[MileHi]

Thanks

[VietVet]

“It was because the British elite feared an uprising.”

They didn't just ‘fear’ an uprising. The Irish Nationalists had already staged one insurrection in 1916. In 1920 the IRA was fighting another in Ireland (and striving to incite sympathetic revolts in places in England and Scotland). The Bolsheviks and anarchists were active in the Labour Party, and there were riots of near civil insurrection level in some industrial centers. Massive civil disorder had erupted all over Europe, and not just in the losing countries.

[VietVet]

“It was because the British elite feared an uprising.”

They didn't just ‘fear’ an uprising. The Irish Nationalists had already staged one insurrection in 1916. In 1920 the IRA was fighting another in Ireland (and striving to incite sympathetic revolts in places in England and Scotland). The Bolsheviks and anarchists were active in the Labour Party, and there were riots of near civil insurrection level in some industrial centers. Massive civil disorder had erupted all over Europe, and not just in the losing countries.

[IncPen]

ping

[Bonemaker]

I wouldn’t send them the steam off my dog’s mess.

[Bonemaker]

Right you are. They even banned bagpipes as”weapons of war”!

There’s a reason they’re on an island!

[mythenjoseph]

Think what you will...I never filled out a form in 1985 when I was handed a .45 and an M-16 while being a combat medic . I have three firearms from wherever I obtained them....not a piece of paper on any of them.......I do not ask permission for a right.

[Keyhopper]

Lost all mine in a dreaded boating accident. We should have an annual boating regatta.

[mythenjoseph]

Any person who allows another to disarm them deserves his or her fate....you can’t fix stupid....I do not enjoy killing but to rid my soil of intruders ? It is with no remorse my pleasure to rid my republic of the vermin in a very vicious manner which I would enjoy. NO FEAR

[xrmusn]

Lost all mine in a dreaded boating accident. We should have an annual boating regatta.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Since the ‘pols’ are reluctant to do it, maybe WE should ‘capture’ the phrase
‘drain the swamp’ and apply it to recovering ‘stuff’ from the lakes...So WE can show THEM(pols) how it should be done.

Peacefully-OF COURSE....walk softly and carry A BIG F’N STICK and all that crap.....

[mythenjoseph]

I have had multiple boating accidents also

[Grampa Dave]

This sums up why our second amendment is probably our most important amendment!

A few days ago, the mayor of London said that global warming was the biggest threat..

After the terror attacks this weekend: “London’s Mayor sticks with “safest global city in the world” line

Years ago, Churchill said:

Now after 7 decades of Brit PC bs and disarming the good Brits, this is the new rule!

Code Toad has created the American Version below:

[Blood of Tyrants]

The hand wring liberals are saying that their gun confiscation laws kept the terrorists from getting guns.

[snoringbear]

“After gun confiscation and Dunkirk, England prepared to throw back a German invasion with those now standard traditional English weapons, the Garden Hoe, Hay rake and scythe.
Then American citizens decided to “SEND A GUN TO DEFEND A BRITISH HOME!””

Yup, the NRA organized a gun collection drive for the UK home defense. I’ve read that about 100,000 guns were sent over.

[Nuc 1.1]

Assess

Identify

Let fly

[rarestia]

To be fair, the 2A as you know it was actually #4 in the original proposal of amendments. The first 2 articles were never ratified.

[Big Red Badger]

Badger Beware!

[eldoradude]

Good one.

The run hide tell one lol reminds me of ex-cali freepers who brag about it when they leave.

[Grampa Dave]

Our liberals want us to be like the Brits, unarmed and only able to run and hide.

Then, not be able to defuse the situation with our guns, like in Texas at the church recently. When good guys with guns took out the killer.

[ZULU]

I never understood how the Brits went from a people whose monarchs REQUIRED them to be armed and proficient with longbows to a people who had to BEG guns from the US in WW2!