Posted on 12/15/2012 4:56:49 AM PST by Perseverando
Since NBC sportscaster Bob Costas gave us an anti-gun lecture two weeks ago during Sunday Night Football, we've heard a lot from progressives like Juan Williams, Bob Beckel and anti-gun advocacy groups about how countries in Europe with strict gun control laws don't have problems with gun crime. We've also heard the reason the United States has a "gun crime problem" is because we allow citizens to own handguns however, the numbers on violent crime committed using a gun tell a different story.
New data out from the UK, where guns are banned, shows gun crime has soared by 35 percent.
The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.
Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.
Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.
It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.
Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.
Unadjusted figures showed overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3%, but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
BTW, the “Gun crime soars by 35%” article is from a January 9, 2003 Daily Mail article.
Declaw the population so the scumedia have a story to report at nausium and the politicians can sleep soundly at night knowing thier agenda is safe. f the people f the kids its all about control.
Recommended Reading: http://theacru.org/acru/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/
Violent crime will always rise when decent citizens have no effective means of self defense.
Since the article is 9 years old, it might be interesting if you would post the statistics from this year.
Juan Williams and Bob Beckel, now there are two bubble headed mother lovers if I ever saw them.
Maybe if they banned guns...MORE...
.
That was *exactly* their “abject lack of pattern recognition” logic:
“Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said the figures must prompt “a new, tougher approach” towards people who carry guns.”
It is, however, reassuring to note that when confronted with bad statistics, the British government has never hesitated for a moment to revise the standards of the statistics so that they no longer look bad.
For example, since the 1970’s, they revised their unemployment statistics about 30 times, every which revision making it look lower than it actually was.
As far as crime statistics go, they went so far as to order the police to stop making arrests for a slew of crimes, such as burglary, and to just not report if guns were used in crimes.
Maybe liberals could ‘show us’ how great their ideas are ... they could take a city like Washington DC or Chicago and ban all guns then when crime and gun violence drops to ZERO we can consider their great wisdom... Oh wait, they’ve already done that - and it failed...nevermind.
‘Guns’ are not banned in the UK.
Most handguns are banned in England, Wales and Scotland, but legal in Northern Ireland. Assault rifles were banned in the UK in 1988.
Rifles and shotguns are perfectly legal.
What I’d like to see are statistics or, better yet, a graph showing how many “gun crimes” are committed by law abiding citizens vs. criminals. Right there is what needs to be out there right now.
bm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.