Gee, crime went UP after all the victims were disarmed?? Who woulda thunk it...
Posted on 01/02/2003 10:38:14 AM PST by aculeus
One of the earliest insights into Tony Blair's political personality was provided by his response to the appalling massacre of children at Dunblane in 1996, and one of the Blair government's first pieces of legislation when it was elected the following year was a "total ban on handguns".
That phrase must now have a very hollow ring to the victims of increased gun crime since then - and to the families of those, whose numbers are also ever-increasing, shot by the police.
A report from the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College, London, has just shown that in the two years after the law was passed handgun crime increased by 40%. More than 160,000 pistols were surrendered to the police. And over the next two years, crimes where guns were used rose from 2,648 to 3,685.
Although they took receipt of those guns from those who were by definition law abiding citizens (otherwise they wouldn't have handed them in), the police are scarcely short of their own weapons. A spate of police shootings has left two more dead this week.
In Liverpool, the boys in blue shot an obviously deranged man wearing pyjamas and brandishing a sword, and in Brixton they shot a man who was holding a cigarette lighter which looked like a gun. We have seen a naked, unarmed man shot in bed, a man shot by police when he was holding an air rifle and another flourishing a chair leg.
Total ban or not, this is not a country where it is wise to wave a water pistol in the street. And there is little chance of redress. Out of 22 cases of people shot dead by the police from 1990 to 2000, there were only two prosecutions.
All of this casts a bleak light on the 1997 law, and on the mentality of the Blair government. After the school murders, John Major asked Tony Blair as leader of the opposition to accompany him to Dunblane specifically to make the point that such a tragedy was far above politics. Poor Major did not know his man.
First Blair said unctuously that he would never make party-political capital out of the massacre, and then he proceeded to do just that, thumping his tub and rousing his rabble with a demagogic speech at the Labour conference which all but blaming the killings on the Tories.
Next year, his government passed the "total ban", that phrase which so thrills politicians, giving them the feeling of omnipotence.
It does not give the reality. In the 1880s, parliament passed a total ban on homosexual acts among consenting adult men. For 80 years it lead to blackmail and ruined lives, but it did not stop men from fulfilling their desires with other men. In the 1920s, the United States' congress passed a total ban on alcohol. It led to speakeasies on every street and made Al Capone the king of Chicago, but it did not stop Americans drinking.
Four years ago, when British gun control laws were already the most stringent on earth, a "total ban" was more than usually absurd. The government could forbid dutiful citizens from pursuing a pastime which they happened harmlessly to enjoy.
But it was perfectly obvious that no new law, however draconian, could prevent a murderous madman from getting his hands on guns if he wanted them. And not just madmen: before the 1997 law, there were pubs in the East End and Manchester where you could buy spanking new Smith & Wesson 38s with as many rounds as you liked, if you had the cash.
As the figures confirm, you still can. The law did not stop the use of guns, it prevented their use by honest citizens - and created a monopoly, with the ownership and use of guns confined to two classes: professional criminals and the police. Both of whom in their different ways have been more trigger happy than ever.
New Labour MPs were far too cringing to take up the libertarian arguments against the gun law, and the opposition parties were nervous about criticising it. That was left to the late Nicholas Budgen, a Tory backbencher, in what Simon Hoggart described as one of the last great speeches made in parliament.
The opposition could still make the case against a law which is both absurdly authoritarian and, as it proves, futile. To do that convincingly they should be prepared to take on those who are firing guns on our streets, not sportsmen but criminals - and policemen.
Candidates for the Tory leadership have been looking around for worthy issues. Here is one staring Kenneth Clarke and Iain Duncan Smith in the face. They are the heirs to a Conservative party which was created, or at any rate named, by Sir Robert Peel. He also left a far more priceless heritage than any political party, one on which we used to pride ourselves and which distinguished us from almost every other country in Europe: an unarmed police force under civilian control.
Today we have an unarmed police force which often appears to be under no control at all and which, while armed crime continually increases, shoots more and more unarmed people. Is any one prepared to ban the guns that are actually taking lives?
Gee, crime went UP after all the victims were disarmed?? Who woulda thunk it...
It would seem that this should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer.
For the subversive socialist types that infect our media and democRAT party, however, this sort of law is a major coup.
Let's see...is the Guardian a conservative paper....No?.....
As have been all government attempts to ban murder, rape, theft, drunk driving and child molestation.
Does that mean they should not be banned?
You have to come up with a better rationale for not making something illegal than the fact that the illegality does not completely stop people from doing it. Otherwise, you could never make anything illegal.
Who woulda thunk it... "
Good thing ass jaws weren't outlawed when Samson got pissed off.
....proper use of guns, liquor, cigarettes, drugs etc, is a personal choice and hurts no one else......see.
Maybe I should have left out (fill in the blank)...perhaps that would suit you better.
That's not what you said. Your argument was that these laws should be repealed because they are ineffective.
You are now using a completely different argument, which I partially agree with. But the argument you are now proposing has nothing at all to do with whether the laws can be effectively enforced.
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