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Gun Registration and Confiscation in England and Wales
Gun Watch ^ | 31 October, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

Posted on 11/02/2014 6:40:18 AM PST by marktwain

Guns Hidden from the Government and Confiscated in Wales

The exemplar for restrictive firearms regulation in the United States has been England and Wales.   Some have argued that it was NAZI Germany, but though the 1968 Gun Control Act borrowed heavily from NAZI law, the country and laws that most have referred to has been England.  Wales shares the same laws and Supreme Court as England.   Interestingly, before the British passed their own restrictive firearms laws, the most restrictive law in the Anglosphere was the one passed in New York City, the infamous Sullivan law of 1911.  

The first real study of armed crime and firearms control was done by Colin  Greenwood, Chief Inspector, West Yorkshire Constabulary, in 1972, at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.   Greenwood was somewhat puzzled by the English firearms laws, because they did not appear to have any effect on crime, and very little study had gone into their creation.   Firearms restrictions had been vigorously opposed before the First World War, on the grounds that they infringed on the rights of Englishmen to be armed for their own defense.  The first significant English firearms law was passed in 1920.

From A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control in England and Wales by Colin Greenwood, page 246:
How, then, should policy on firearms controls be affected by the facts produced?  The system of registering all firearms to which Section I applies as well as licensing the individual takes up a large part of the police time involved and causes a great deal of trouble and inconvenience.  The voluminous records so produced appear to serve no useful purpose.  In none of the cases examined in this study was the existence of these records of any assistance in detecting a crime and no one questioned during the course of the study could establish the value of the system of registering weapons.
It was not until much later that Greenwood discovered the purpose of the English firearms registration laws.  They were passed to facilitate firearms confiscation in the event of civil unrest or revolution.   From Colin Greenwood, May 15, 2000.  The term "Constitutionalists" below means British Constitutionalists:
Constitutionalists might argue about whether in Britain, Statute law can over-ride the basic principles of the Common Law, but in 1920 the Government of Britain was in fear of revolution and documents such as the. Cabinet Diaries reveal debates about the number of aircraft available for use against insurgents within the British Isles. In that climate, the registration of firearms (other than shotguns) was imposed for the purpose of “ensuring that all arms are available for redistribution to friends of the government”.
Extensive research by Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm buttresses what Colin Greenwood found.    From Guns and Violence, the English Experience, page 162:
Second, the Firearms Act of 1920, which took away the traditional right of individuals to be armed, was not passed to reduce or prevent armed crime or gun accidents.  It was passed because the government was afraid of rebellion and keen to control access to guns.
Widespread door to door searches and confiscations of firearms did not happen in England and Wales for the purpose of turning those arms over to government supporters, though that was the initial purpose of the registration of firearms.   Rather, the searches and confiscations occurred incrementally, over the last hundred years, as the government kept tightening requirements for ownership and made possession of arms ever more expensive and difficult.   The decisions to impose more restrictions were often made in secret and not know to the public until long after the fact.   Malcolm does an especially good job of documenting this process.

If someone tells you that the purpose of gun registration is crime control, that was never the case in England.   Nor has gun registration ever been of any significant use as a crime control measure.  

One can say, with considerable authority, that the purpose of firearms registration in England was always confiscation, even if it occurred incrementally over generations.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch


TOPICS: Government; History; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: banglist; confiscation; england; registration
Disarmists always insist on gun registration, can never point to any real benefits, and always say that it never can lead to confiscation in the United States.

They are very good at lying to themselves and others.

1 posted on 11/02/2014 6:40:18 AM PST by marktwain
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To: marktwain
the Firearms Act of 1920, which took away the traditional right of individuals to be armed

Quickly Watson, get your service revolver!

2 posted on 11/02/2014 6:48:09 AM PST by MUDDOG
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To: marktwain

I literally laugh out loud when some libtard fool tries to tell me registration won’t lead to confiscation. There is no viable reason for gun registration other than the fascists wanting to know where they are for later confiscation. None.


3 posted on 11/02/2014 6:53:25 AM PST by ThunderSleeps (Stop obarma now! Stop the hussein - insane agenda!)
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To: MUDDOG
Modern versions of Sherlock Holmes downplay or ignore the easy availability of firearms in the era in which he was created.

Rudyard Kipling refers to the ability of schoolboys to buy and shoot cheap revolvers in his works, particularly in “Stalky & Co.”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalky_%26_Co.

4 posted on 11/02/2014 6:53:55 AM PST by marktwain (The old media must die for the Republic to live. Long live the new media!)
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To: marktwain

Tagline


5 posted on 11/02/2014 6:59:20 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o (The rifle in the cottage is the symbol of democracy. It's our job to see that it stays there. Orwell)
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To: marktwain

Not-so-Great Britain...the Diet Coke of totalitarian states....


6 posted on 11/02/2014 6:59:25 AM PST by GenXteacher (You have chosen dishonor to avoid war; you shall have war also.)
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To: marktwain

Neu Yuk Sh*ty has always been a city of commies, second only to America’s “First City of Communism”, AKA “Chicongo”. Before Marx was even conceived, back in the
Revolutionary War Era, Neu Yuk Sh*ty had a large contingent who supported King George. Something in the water evidently makes them long for tyranny and chains.

Want more proof? Look what they recently elected?

As disarming the proles has always been a primary goal of commies, that the Sullivan act was passed in Neu Yuk Sh*ty should surprise no American who didn’t sleep through their history classes.

There are too many commie infected Americans to shoot or exile them. However, a commie who can’t vote is a less dangerous commie. To that end, I suggest removing their franchise is possible, and I also suggest adding an extra 10% to any income from any source as a further message to those who long for more government.


7 posted on 11/02/2014 7:00:08 AM PST by GladesGuru (Islam Delenda Est. Because of what Islam is - and because of what Muslims do.)
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To: marktwain

Britain also began gun control over the native population in South Africa back in the 1880s.

In the book THE WASHING OF THE SPEARS it is mentioned that blacks would work a full year and take in payment a “Birmingham Gas Pipe”, as the trade muskets were known.

These firearms were “proofed” in England by filling the barrels with water. If the seams didn’t leak the gun was good enough for the natives.

The SA government later called in all these firearms for registration and refused to give them back. The natives demanded their property back, so the government gave the muskets back, all damaged beyond repair, much like when Britian “demilled” or destroyed all privately owned rifles back in the 1980s.


8 posted on 11/02/2014 7:02:38 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: marktwain

I used to wonder about that. People carried revolvers without a second thought in the Sherlock Holmes stories.


9 posted on 11/02/2014 7:04:18 AM PST by MUDDOG
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To: marktwain

Confiscation is their long term goal, crime is just another exploitable crisis.


10 posted on 11/02/2014 7:12:50 AM PST by SWAMPSNIPER (t)
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To: MUDDOG

I used to wonder about that. People carried revolvers without a second thought in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Now you know the “rest of the story”.

England was extraordinarily peaceful in 1900. Attempts at “gun control” were met with derision.

I think it passed, with little opposition, in 1920, for four reasons. Note that it was never put forward to any real public debate:

1. The flower of British manhood had been wasted in WWI. They simply were not there to vote or lobby.

2. What was left of the British upper classes were terrified by what they saw happening in Russia.

3. Fabian socialism, with its worship of the state, had displaced Christianity in many influential British circles.

4. The British had been so successful with capitalism, and their society was so peaceful, that many assumed that the need for arms for self defense was over.


11 posted on 11/02/2014 7:23:02 AM PST by marktwain (The old media must die for the Republic to live. Long live the new media!)
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To: marktwain

We have WW1 to *thank* for a lot of stuff.


12 posted on 11/02/2014 7:35:02 AM PST by MUDDOG
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To: SWAMPSNIPER

Yep.


13 posted on 11/02/2014 7:37:43 AM PST by jospehm20
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To: marktwain

Big Tim Sullivan’s cronies used to “apply a lot of muscle” at the voting booths also. It’s deja vu once again.


14 posted on 11/02/2014 8:17:19 AM PST by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)
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To: marktwain

“Gun Control’s” Nazi Connection

Startling evidence suggests that the Gun Control Act of 1968
was lifted, almost in its entirety, from Nazi legislation.

http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/GCA_68.htm


15 posted on 11/02/2014 9:15:36 AM PST by Jack Hydrazine (Pubbies = national collectivists; Dems = international collectivists; We need a second party!)
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To: marktwain
Ask yourself, "Who will send us a gun after we surrender ours?"

16 posted on 11/02/2014 9:39:36 AM PST by B4Ranch (Name your illness, do a Google & YouTube search with "hydrogen peroxide". Do it and be surprised.)
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