Welcome to the United Kingdom, Save Jerseyans!
Home of the 2012 Olympic Games, a nation that once ruled a quarter of the world’s population and (it’s often easy to forget) the birthplace of modern property rights.
Unfortunately for the British, those gloriously unique-in-history English property rights grounded in Magna Carta and championed by Coke and Blackstone no longer include the right to bear arms, a development that’s resulted in soaring levels of violent crime committed with… you guessed it… black market-purchased firearms!
It’s really worth taking a minute to review the failed history of gun control across the pond to see what effect it would necessarily catalyze here in the colonies (h/t Reason.com). One of New Jersey’s worst liberals would benefit from the history lesson…
The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England’s firearms restrictions “seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld.” Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.
Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London’s Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was “rocketing.” In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.
Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England’s inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world’s crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.
Pretty convincing evidence of the impotence of gun control, right?
Not for liberals. Strangely enough, liberals love looking to the Old World for ideas but consistently draw all the wrong conclusions! Frank Launtenberg and his allies on the Left are prime offenders; they’re currently exploiting last week’s Aurora, Colorado shooting in order to press for historic gun control legislation here in the United States. The Laut didn’t waste any time announcing his intent to revive legislation limiting ammunition purchases.
Why? How could Lautenberg & Co. be so blind? Especially in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence from both here in America and abroad that gun control succeeds at nothing other than disarming the citizens who you’d WANT to have guns when the worst happens?
It’s all about power, folks! Governmental power and political power. This country is facing a genuine cultural/mental health crisis which liberals would rather not confront; they can’t avoid the uncomfortable correlations between their anti-family, anti-religion, anti-community, public policy obsession with political correctness and the predictable byproduct: a culture that values relativism (an oxymoronic outcome). A much easier and politically advantageous course is to propose tokenistic legislation and demagogue Republicans. If they were being honest, they’d acknowledge that there is no Second Amendment solution to a cultural pandemic.
But since when has honesty every elected a single liberal?
Self-interested liars like Frank Lautenberg can’t be allowed to carry the day! It’s our duty to let people know the perils of a disarmed citizenry, Save Jerseyans:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkS2BRoCd2I
Well Done Matt. you should visit us on the New Jersey Second Amendment Society Facebook page for some discussion on this very matter. I am going to share your post over there http://www.facebook.com/groups/nj2as
Gun deaths in the United Kingdom for 2011 – 55. Gun deaths in the US for 2010 – 8775. Facts are funny things.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dan-ehrlich/uk-gu…
Yes they are Rick
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/T…
Thank god you want to trade all those nasty guns for clubs, knives and rapes.
then there's this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/T…
John R. Lott Jr.: D.C. Gun Ban Proponents Ignore the Facts
For gun control proponents and opponents a lot is riding on a former security guard for the Supreme Court Annex. Next Tuesday , the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and its requirement that any rifles or shotguns remain locked violates the plaintiff, Dick Heller's, constitutional rights.
Whatever the court decides, no one expects them to end gun control any more than the First Amendment's "congress shall make no laws" has prevented the passage of campaign finance regulations. The decision is likely to be limited to just whether a ban "infringed" on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."
If the D.C. ban is accepted by the court, it is hard to believe that any gun regulation will ever be struck down. If the court strikes it down, where the courts draw the line on what laws are considered "reasonable" regulations will take years to sort out .
Thus far the District of Columbia has spent a lot of time making a public policy case. Their argument in their brief to the court is pretty simple : "banning handguns saves lives."
Yet, while it may seem obvious to many people that banning guns will save lives, that has not been D.C.'s experience.
The ban went into effect in early 1977, but since it started there is only one year (1985) when D.C.'s murder rate fell below what it was in 1976. But the murder rate also rose dramatically relative to other cities. In the 29 years we have data after the ban, D.C.'s murder rate ranked first or second among the largest 50 cities for 15 years. In another four years, it ranked fourth.
For Instance, D.C.'s murder rate fell from 3.5 to 3 times more than Maryland and Virginia's during the five years before the handgun ban went into effect in 1977, but rose to 3.8 times more in the five years after it.
Was there something special about D.C. that kept the ban from working? Probably not, since bans have been causing crime to increase in other cities as well. D.C. cites the Chicago ban to support its own. Yet, before Chicago's ban in 1982, its murder rate, which was falling from 27 to 22 per 100,000 in the five years, suddenly stopped falling and rose slightly to 23 per 100,000 in the five years afterwards.
Neither have bans worked in other countries. Gun crime in England and Wales increased 340 percent in the seven years since their 1998 ban. Ireland banned handguns and center fire rifles in 1972 and murder rates soared ? the post-ban murder rate average has been 144 percent higher than pre-ban.
How could this be? D.C. officials say that the ban will disarm criminals. But who follows a ban and turns their guns in? Criminals who would be facing long prison sentences anyway if they were caught in a crime, or typically law-abiding citizens? By disarming normal people, a gun ban actually makes crime easier to commit.
Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has actually sided with D.C. in important parts of the case, and the court has granted Solicitor General Paul Clement 15 minutes to make his argument. While largely paying lip service to the Second Amendment being an "individual right," the Department of Justice brief argues that an "unquestionable threat to public safety" from unregulated guns requires a lower standard must be adopted in defending it than is used to defend the rest of the Bill of Rights. But if they really believed that their evidence showed this, just as with the classic exception for the First Amendment of "falsely shouting fire in a theater," it wouldn't be necessary to treat the Second Amendment differently .
But what has not gotten much attention is that for the first time in U.S. history an administration has provided conflicting briefs to the Supreme Court. Vice President Dick Cheney has put forward his own brief arguing that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right that is no different than freedom of speech.
The DOJ constitutional argument is similar to that of D.C. It argues that since the government bans machine guns, it should also be able to ban handguns. And they claim that D.C. residents still retain a right to self-defense because the city doesn't ban locked shotguns and rifles. Locks, they claim , "can properly be interpreted" as not interfering with using guns for self-protection.
Factual errors underlie the rest of the argument ? for in D.C., rifles and shotguns become illegal as soon as they are unlocked. That means the city can prosecute anyone who uses one in self-defense, even if it was locked before the incident. Is that a "reasonable" restriction on self-defense? Gunlock requirements are also associated with more deaths and more violent crime as they make defensive gun uses more difficult. Machine guns are also not banned .
It makes sense that the DOJ is backing the ban, given that it would lose regulatory power if it were struck down. As the DOJ lawyers note in the brief, striking down this ban could "cast doubt on the constitutionality of existing federal legislation."
The Department of Justice and D.C. politicians can talk all they want about how necessary handgun bans are to ensure public safety and the "reasonableness" of the restrictions. But hopefully the Supreme Court will see past that. At some point, hard facts must matter. This is one point where public safety and individual rights coincide.
Facts are funny, Rick. In fact, here are some FACTS I compiled by reading that article you posted and clicking a few links on it.
FACT: California has some of the strictest gun laws in of any state. An 11 day waiting period. Multiple permits. Magazine restrictions. A list of approved guns for ownership. Yet California gun murders represent 14.3% of US gun murders, despite only making up 12.1% of the US population
FACT: Despite gun crime rates going down nationwide, gun crime is up in states with strict gun control laws, like New York and New Jersey.
FACT: Washington DC, with the strictest gun laws of anywhere in the nation, has the highest murder gun per capita in the country.
So bascially, the facts show that US numbers vs UK numbers are inflated BECA– USE of the attempts to be like the UK.
Explain away Irwin…how do you account for the low gun deaths in the UK then?
2 reasons, both of which you know nothing about: aim and math.
Aim
"Gun crime in England and Wales increased 340 percent in the seven years since their 1998 ban."
Gun crime is skyrocketing, but deaths from shootings are not rising at the same rate. Just means they aren't firing as much during those crimes and/or (thankfully) missing their target when they do fire.
We saw the same thing in Philly a few years back. Officials were celebrating because the murder rate was down, until someone pointed out that shootings and gun shots wounds were WAY UP, and noted that the murder rate was down because of bad aim, not because of any government policy.
Math
The absolute number is low because their population is much lower than ours. Your fixated on the raw number. Since they didn't report it, but did report that gun crime is way up, I'm willing to bet their gunshot wound rate/numbers are abysmal.
LOL…that's too funny Irwin…the criminals here in the US are a better shot…LOL…good explanation.
Another thing no one seems to talk about. Let's suppose ownership of handguns is outlawed. How will this be enforced? By establishing a police state, with mandatory huse-to-house and property searches of the entire country & 300 million+ people. No Bill of Rights protections. Complete shutdown of borders with Canada & Mexico + coastlines & airspace. Complete ban om materials that could be used to manufacture a gun. Complete search & seizure of all incoming shipments into the U.S. Shutdown of the Internet & print publishing & broadcasting of information on how to make guns and avoid the police/military. End of posse comitatus laws, so U.S. military can provide law enforcement. End of freedom of speech & assembly, etc., to protest all of the preceding measures. And of course, success assumes 100% loyalty by all of those enforcing these laws. Sounds like somewhere I'd like to live.
Rick, you're missing the obvious. The difference isn't thanks to the gun laws. Gun deaths in the UK have *always* been exceptionally low, for whatever reason is anyone's guess. Perhaps it's cultural, or economic. Look at Switzerland, where they *require* people to have guns. They have possibly the least restrictive gun laws in the world, yet gun violence there is nonexistent.
There needs to be proof that the LAWS themselves are the direct cause of a demonstrated DECREASE in gun violence (and not just death, but violence). There's lots of studies showing that the laws have no effect, and even some which indicate that they make things worse. Where is the evidence that the laws make any difference?
And if guns were banned, yet gun violence continues or worsens, how likely is it that the ban would ever be lifted? Once a right is gone, it's very hard to get it back.
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