Posted on 08/26/2007 3:15:51 PM PDT by Bob Leibowitz
In the largest, best controlled and least watched social experiment of our time, it's been ten years since this densely populated island nation, fearful of increasing crime, banned private ownership of guns.
England, which once bragged a violent crime rate substantially below that of the U. S., has seen violent crimes skyrocket and finds itself now leading both the U. S. and Europe in nearly all categories.
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Has a century of increasingly strict laws and a decade-long outright ban removed guns from English society? Yes and no. While more than 160,000 legally registered guns were turned in during a voluntary amnesty following enactment of the law… police estimated 300,000 illegal guns were still on the street, dwarfing the number of American guns used criminally.
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England's initial gun registration scheme was put in place not for crime control but as a political bulwark, to prevent early communists and labor firebrands from taking up arms against the government in the social unrest of the time. Only those responsible citizens who could "prove" both their character and their need were allowed to own a handgun.
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Prior to the 1920 Firearms Act, English laws on guns matched those of the U. S. There were none. London, the largest city in the world at the time, had no crime, in an average year there were fewer than four robberies in all the city.
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While many scholars look at criminal usage of illegal guns as a primary issue, the larger story lies with the gun that isn't there, the gun that isn't available for use by a potential victim. When criminals know with absolute certainty that the risks of criminal behavior have declined, the amounts of criminal activity are certain to increase. England's experience proves the point.
(Excerpt) Read more at Canticle4Leibowitz.com ...
Well DUH!!!
When lutefisk is outlawed, all who eat lutefisk will be outlaws.
Same goes for preference in self defense.
Samuel Colt made them equal.
BMFLR
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