A short history of UK gun laws

[pozorvlak]

Prompted by the stimulating discussion on my recent post about the Second Amendment, I've been reading up a bit on the history of UK firearms legislation. It's surprisingly chilling stuff. This is all from Wikipedia, so take it with a pinch of salt

Comments

[mejoff]

I have to say, i personally enjoy my however marginally enhanced right not to get shot.

"if only outlaws have guns, then anyone with a gun is an outlaw, and the police can deal with them accordingly" has always been my take on the topic.

[pozorvlak]

I have to say, i personally enjoy my however marginally enhanced right not to get shot.

Sure, but there are two important factual questions here: does the deterrent effect of an armed populace outweigh the increased access criminals would have to guns? And how much, if at all, does reducing the supply of guns reduce the rate and severity of violent crime? If the answers to those questions are "yes" and "not enough", then we're actually endangering ourselves.

It's all minor stuff, really: you're far more likely to die in a car accident, or of heart disease. But it would be nice to have answers.

Sorry for the repeated posts of this comment, btw: I keep screwing up formatting stuff.

[totherme]

It's interesting to consider the swiss culture, I think.

[pozorvlak]

Yep. More generally, culture seems to be a big factor in rates of gun crime - bigger than gun ownership? I don't know how you'd even measure that.

[fanf]

Also Canada has similar levels of gun ownership to the USA but much less crime.

[totherme]

And very different laws AIUI...

[pozorvlak]

Canadians, man. They're just so incredibly nice :-)

[johnckirk]

You might find this blog post interesting:
http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/chunks.html
Written by a guy who used to be a policeman in London, but recently moved to Canada. "Once you've been given a gun, you're never going back to not having one."

(You don't need to bother reading the comments, which tend to drift towards the right wing.)

[pozorvlak]

Interesting stuff. Though I think that, given that thousands of police officers do stop-and-searches unarmed and in the manner he was taught, their training probably is adequate for the UK...

[mejoff]

In the US, there is a chance of
A. being shot by a criminal who bought a gun legally who may not have had the wherewithal to get one through shady channels.
B. being shot accidentally by a law abiding citizen attempting to prevent a crime.
C. being shot by accident due to the rank incompetence of a lisenced owner of firearms.

In addition there is a much greater chance of being shot by an armed criminal because they cannot afford to take the chance that you might also be armed.

None of these conditions exists in the UK, therefore I have less chance of being shot. I'm quite happy knowing that.

[pozorvlak]

You forgot

D. Being shot as a result of a domestic dispute or argument that was escalated by the availability of guns.

And yes, you do have much less chance of being shot in the UK than in the US. But while these are all good points, you're forgetting that there are weapons other than guns, and you'd be just as dead if someone killed you with a knife instead. And remember, the comparison isn't with the US, which is a very different society in all sorts of ways, it's with the hypothetical Britain in which gun ownership hadn't been banned.

I think you're probably right, overall, but it's not at all clear :-(

[mejoff]

I did say it was probably only a marginal improvement :P.

D. very good point, I'll add that to the list.

to continue:

To kill me with a knife, ninjas notwitstanding, the person has to come right up to me, be fully aware of my physicality and life, quite possibly overpower me and most likely stab me several times.

Shooting is point and click, physically and psychologically a lot easier.

[pozorvlak]

Actually, as regards B. you're apparently less likely to be hit (as an innocent bystander) by a civilian than by a cop. Dunno why - my conjecture is that civilians are more likely to be acquainted with the people concerned, and to know who the bystanders are. Anyway, this provides us with another scenario:

B'. being shot by a police officer attempting to prevent a crime.

While this happens in the UK too, the rate's about 2 per year, whereas it's several hundred in the US. Even allowing for greater population, that's a huge increase. Still peanuts compared to heart disease, of course...

[alexander_mikh]

this sentence assumes that outlaws have a problem to find a gun and can be influenced by laws. I think criminals never had a problem to find a gun, it's law abiding people who influenced by laws and not criminals.

[pozorvlak]

This line of argument came up elsewhere. The short answer is that the decision to break one law does not mean that you don't care about any other laws, or that you're unmoved by the penalties. Yes, there are some hardened criminals who don't care about the law at all and will do what they like, but (the theory goes) they're a minority. For most of them, the extra time they'll do if they get caught with a firearm makes it not worth the risk to carry one.

As I said above, it's hard to see how to test this theory, but very few crimes in the UK do in fact involve firearms, so it's at least plausible.

[mejoff]

Neither of these sentences assumes that in any way shape or form.