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Joyce Lee Malcolm: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

 

After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.

 

 

 

By JOYCE LEE MALCOLM

 

 

Americans are determined that massacres such as happened in Newtown, Conn., never happen again. But how? Many advocate more effective treatment of mentally-ill people or armed protection in so-called gun-free zones. Many others demand stricter control of firearms.

 

In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.

 

Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.

Since 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of "good reason" gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.

 

After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns—the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness—under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.

Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an

emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.

 

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

 

At the time, Australia's guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom's. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a "good reason," Australia required a "genuine reason." Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons—personal protection wasn't.

 

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

 

To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

 

In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

 

 

What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

 

Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," (Harvard, 2002).

All the evidence is against the effectiveness of gun bans. Yet, our liberal legislators forge ahead with their anti-gun agendas, using every tragedy as a wedge for their advances. In many ways, it's about destroying self-reliance and making us more dependent on government.

All the evidence is against the effectiveness of gun bans. Yet, our liberal legislators forge ahead with their anti-gun agendas, using every tragedy as a wedge for their advances. In many ways, it's about destroying self-reliance and making us more dependent on government.

 

I see it as an idealogical problem. For example, the people who are so vehemently against the idea of armed guards in schools, trained ones at that, would have you believe that they are only against it because it is cost prohibitive, the fact that a nationwide gun confiscation plan would cost multitudes more notwithstanding. The reason they have an aversion to the idea is because they have a deep aversion to firearms. They have been led to believe that a nation or world devoid of arms is a utopia devoid of evil. They look to Britain and Australia as examples of what we should be, completely blinding themselves to the rampant crime in either of those places despite their strict laws. I see this as one of the reasons why people who are faced with evil suddenly change their entire outlook. Their entire lives, they are kept in a bubble devoid of crime, yet they see the crime from outside of their bubble and are told what to believe and support in order to wrap the whole world in that same bubble. Once that bubble pops, whether it be via a man or woman with a knife or a gun or even merely their own hands, they are exposed to that first biting cold of the outside and are made to realize that their utopia is nothing but an illusion. Some try to scamper back in, maybe pull together another membrane of protective womb against their exposed skin, but at that point they at least know: the world is sunshine and rainbows, sure, but it's also chock full of men and women who are ready and willing to kill and commit atrocities regardless of laws, regardless of utopian ideals, and most certainly regardless of arms.

You can't argue with stupid people. We don't even need to look at Australia and the UK, just look at Chicago and DC. They don't give a sh*t, they just want us disarmed.

We're expecting the general public to use common sense and logic...something that seems to be lacking in America now. I just engage as many people as possible in thoughtful debate. You can't change everyone's mind but you can change some.