Crime in Britain Part 1: Dunblane, Gun Laws and Violence

In 1996, Britain experienced the Dunblane massacre, in which a single gunman killed 16 kindergartners, a teacher, and then himself. The public was justifiably horrified and government reaction was swift and severe. Rather than blaming the man, guns became the source of evil and the isle of Britain enacted some of the toughest gun laws in the world.

Firearms registration has been a part of life in England since the 1920s, but beginning in 1997 new laws were enacted which become more and more restrictive. 95% of all handguns were banned and the remainder (.22 caliber) had to be stored at gun clubs. Several months later a total ban on handguns was passed along with a buy back, which netted more than 100,000 handguns from the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

But the government's war on guns didn't stop there. Over time abuse of power became commonplace and police presence in the home became more and more intrusive:

Under regulations implementing Britain's 1997 Firearms (Amendment) Act, gun club members must now register every time they use a range, and must record which particular gun they use. If the gun-owner does not use some of his legally-registered guns at the range often enough, his permission to own those guns will be revoked.

Having control over rifle and handgun owners through a licensing system, the police began inventing their own conditions to put on licenses. The police practice was not entirely legal, but it was generally accepted by a compliant public....

After the 1996 Dunblane shootings, some police forces began performing spot checks on persons who already held Firearms Certificates. Apparently the home searches were done to make sure that the firearms really were locked up.

Parliament never granted the police home inspection authority, nor did Parliament enact legislation saying that a hardened safe is the only acceptable storage method. However, that is what the police in many jurisdictions require anyway. In fact, many gun owners who bought safes that the police said were acceptable are now being forced to buy new safes because the local police have arbitrarily changed the standards. In many districts, an "acceptable safe" is now one that can withstand a half-hour attack by a burglar who arrives with a full set of safe-opening tools.

Sometimes the police require the purchase of two safes: the first one for the gun and the second one for separate storage of ammunition. A Briton (p.424)buying a low-powered, £5 rimfire rifle may have to spend £100 on a safe. Likewise, a person with five handguns (before the 1997 ban) might have been ordered to add a £1000 electronic security system.[109] Added to the cost of the illegal requirement for hardened safes is the escalating cost of Firearms or Shotgun Certificates. Home inspections are expensive for the police, and thus the cost of Firearms Certificates or Shotgun Certificates has been raised again and again, far above the rate of inflation, in order to cover the costs of the intrusive inspections, as well as the cost of many gross inefficiencies in police processing of applications.[110] The net effect of the heavy security costs is to reduce legal gun ownership by the less wealthy classes, as in the days of Henry VIII, Charles I, who was later beheaded during the English Civil War, and James II, who was driven out of the country by the Glorious Revolution.

That was the situation in 1999. Since then not much has changed. Laws on the books include:

• Limits on how much ammunition the citizen is permitted to have for each weapon.
• Requiring the citizen to obtain a "firearm certificate (FAC)" for the ammunition he purchases.
• Each prospective gun owner (if they can get the police to actually give him permission to have a gun) must "be a member of a firearms club approved by the Home Office, and have completed a 3-month probation."
• Police inspections can take place at any time and two separate safes for the guns and ammunition "securely fastened to the residence" are generally required.

Can you imagine this happening in the land of "from my cold dead fingers"? Never mind the restrictions on guns. You want me to fill out forms just to buy ammo? And then you want me to allow storm troopers to come into my house and see if I have my boxes cases of ammo locked up in a special safe?

But they did just that in England and Scotland and Wales. Over time the owners of antique pistols and shotguns that had been in the family for generations have been forced to give up their cherished possessions. Sports shooters gave up their handguns and have had to be happy with rifle shooting.

And for what? The result has been a sharp increase in gun crimes, particularly in the early years as the criminal element came to realize the advantage it had against a defenseless citizenry, with an explosive 35% increase in the 2001/02 year:

The dramatic rise in gun crime had to stop eventually as the crime market became increasingly saturated, and indeed we now see that the growth has slowed considerably, with less than a 1% increase from 2002/03 to 2003/04.

Yet the latest Home Office report contains some disturbing statistics (page 79):

• The number of serious crimes of violence against the person involving firearms increased by six per cent between 2002/03 and 2003/04, while other offences of violence against the person involving firearms increased by 16 per cent over the same period.
• There were 440 firearm offences that resulted in a serious injury in 2003/04 and 1,860 in slight injury. These represent a five per cent increase in firearm offences with serious injury compared with the previous year and an 11 per cent increase in firearm offences with slight injury.

In point of fact, with 10,340 gun incidents reported in the 2003/04 period, gun crime has more than doubled since the time of the massacre in spite of (if not because of) increasingly tough restrictions on gun ownership and growing government encroachment into the private lives of law abiding citizens.

Even worse, figures from the third quarter of 2004 indicate a return to the high growth rate of gun crime with a 5% higher rate than the previous year's third quarter. Furthermore, there has been a huge surge in shootings across London this year with a dramatic increase in the number of young teens carrying and using handguns, some as young as 14:

The teenage gunmen are suspected of being behind a rise of as much as 146 per cent in gun crime in some London boroughs in the months since April, during which Met Police figures show a 10 per cent rise capital-wide.

One senior detective on Operation Trident, combating armed black drug gangs, said: "The gunmen are getting younger and younger. These kids are less disciplined than older gunmen and more volatile. The terrifying thing is they are getting hold of these guns and they are more willing to use them than older criminals."

The worst boroughs report stunning increases in gun crime:

And in spite of the total prohibition on handguns, the pistol remains the criminals weapon of choice with 58% of firearm crimes in 2001/02 being committed with a handgun (figure 2.3). As one ex-cocaine dealer put it, high-calibre firearms are as easily available as toothbrushes.

The experiment in the UK is a failure in every respect. It clearly demonstrates that prohibition fails to keep guns out of the hands of anyone except the law abiding citizen. Indeed, the most restricted weapon -- the handgun -- is the weapon most used by the criminal element. Gun control has not only failed to fix the problem, it has failed to keep guns out of the hands of an entire new, younger generation of thugs.

In addition, police have abused their authority and treated the gun owner as the criminal while utterly failing to stem the tide of gun crime.

Next week, Crime in Britain Part 2: Yobs and ASBOs.

Blog post #5221 in category Britain and the UK
posted 28 June 05

 

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