-Caveat Lector- >From http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Research/Observations/
>>>Note: numbers refer to footnotes available @ site<<< 2. Firearm Violence 2.4 International Comparisons "...commonly compared foreign nations with strict gun controls had lower violence rates before controls were implemented,...one therefore cannot conclude from such simple cross-national comparisons that stricter gun controls reduced violence." [51] Kleck, Point Blank Firearm prohibitionists constantly repeat that the United States has the highest homicide rate in the western world. That statement is false. According to the World Health Organization, this dubious distinction belongs to countries such as Mexico and Jamaica, which have homicides rates almost twice as high as the U.S. [52]. Russia virtually prohibits gun ownership by civilians (as does Jamaica) but has a murder rate higher than either the United States or Canada [53]. The majority of the European nations, with the exception of Switzerland where firearm ownership is a citizen's obligation, exhibit homicide rates similar or higher than Canada despite much more restrictive gun control laws [54]. The states of the American midwest exhibit homicide rates substantially lower than the adjoining Canadian prairie provinces despite easier legal access to firearms and liberal handgun laws [55]. Britain prohibits centerfire semiautomatic and pump action rifles. All firearm and shotgun owners and their guns are resitered. Compliance with the firearm control bureaucracy's storage requirements are expensive and rigorously enforced [56]. Firearm prohibitionists credit these strict and often puzzling firearm laws (a shotgun for many years was not considered a firearm in Britain) for a low level of gun- related homicde and violent crime, unfortunately, this is nothing more than an illusion [57]. Great Britain had much lower levels of homicide and violent crime when their gun laws were casual compared to the existing legislation [58]. While the firearm and non-firearm robbery rates in both Canada and the United States declined during the 1980's, in Great Britain the firearm/non-firearm robbery rates grew by over 100% and increased steadily after extremely restrictive firearm control laws had substantially decreased the legal ownership of firearms [59]. While the number of legal firearm owners in Great Britain has been declining due to a hostile gun control bureaucracy, crimes involving firearms increased 196% between 1981-1992 [60]. Great Britain's harsh firearm regulations have been ineffective at controlling increasing levels of gun-related crime. As in Canada, the persons who abide by the laws and regulations concerning the acquisition and ownership of firearms are the least likely to commit any crimes with them. One of the reasons Great Britain has maintained a relatively low violent crime rate is because criminals face stiff sentences for crimes of violence. A life sentence for murder in Great Britain is taken far more seriously than in Canada. Any released murderer who violates any aspect of parole is immediately returned to custody for the rest of their natural life. Convictions for violent crimes in Great Britain typically carry an average sentence of 20 months; robbery, 48 months [61]. The British experience with firearm controls is in sharp contrast to Switzerland, one of the few countries in the world without a standing army. Virtually every adult male belongs to the citizen's militia and is required to keep an assualt rifle, ammunition, gas mask, and other military equipment readily available in their home. When the individual's term of militia service ends, usually around age 50, he keeps his issue military weapon. Obsolete military firearms are sold freely to Swiss citizens [62]. In a nation of only six million people, there are at least two milion firearms, including 600,000 automatic assault rifles and 500,000 pistols [63]. If firearms availability is directly linked to violent crime, then Switzerland should be the most violent place on earth; however, their homicide rate is identical to Britain's and similar to the majority of nations in Europe which exhibit much more restrictive gun control laws [64]. Contrary to the assertions made by firearm prohibitionists in Canada, gun control cannot be credited for low crime rates in Great Britain, Japan, or other nations. While these countries exhibit strict and by our standards, draconian, gun laws, the black market in these coutries still provides a readily available supply of illegal firearms. Gun registration has proven itself of no utility in solving or preventing crimes of violence. Gun control may reduce suicides by firearm, but available evidence suggests that other methods of equal efficiency are substituted. "...there is some evidence that under some conditions gun- related crimes can be reduced through gun control legislation, but this outcome will be neither very common nor especially pronounced." [65]. &&&&&&& >From http://www.claremont.org/projects/doctors/000918wheeler.html Home » Projects » Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership » The Unnatural Death of a Natural Right By Timothy Wheeler, M.D. Posted September 18, 2000 This article appeared in the Sunday, October 8, 2000 edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. It wasn't supposed to be this way. When Great Britain banned the sale and ownership of handguns in 1997, few expected it to be a panacea against such horrors as the Dunblane massacre, a madman's handgun rampage that killed 16 children and gave political impetus to the anti-gun movement. But nobody expected the surge of violent crime that followed. Believe it or not, Britain's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary now exceed those in the United States. Murder and rape are creeping closer to U.S. rates. The American news media have virtually ignored this amazing change, even as American politicians push more stringent, British-style gun-control schemes. In scenes evocative of A Clockwork Orange, cities across Great Britain are being increasingly terrorized by bands of young thugs who beat, rob, shoot, and rape their way to the top of the criminal food chain. But Clockwork's vicious protagonist Alex and his bullyboys were armed only with clubs and switchblades. Today's predators carry guns, in carefree contempt for the new law. Violent crime in Britain had begun to rise even before Dunblane. Still, the Guardian in London reported this month "between 1997 and 1999 there were 429 murders in the capital, the highest two-year figure for more than 10 years." Two-thirds of the crimes involved firearms. BBC News reported "a dramatic rise in violent crime" from 1998 to 1999 as revealed by the British Home Office's July crime report. Violence against persons rose by 16%, and sexual offenses rose by 4.5%. The robbery rate skyrocketed by 26%, adding to a total violent crime rate increase of 16% in a single year. It would be simplistic to attribute Britain's violent crime wave entirely to the 1997 handgun ban. But it is clear that the ban did nothing to stop crime or even slow it down. Illegal guns continue to flow into the country, supplying youthful predators ever more willing to use them. The Guardian noted that shopkeepers increasingly find themselves facing handguns or automatic weapons. How can lovely England, the wellspring of America's legal tradition and culture, have come to this helpless state? America's traditional right of gun ownership is indeed rooted in England. That "true, ancient, and indubitable right," historian Joyce Lee Malcolm writes, was born in 1689 in the English Bill of Rights. The American founders adopted it as the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights a century later. While American political tradition retained the right to gun ownership, England eventually discarded it. Legal scholars Joseph Olson and David Kopel describe in a Hamline Law Review article "All The Way Down The Slippery Slope" how gun ownership in England was hounded to extinction, one "sensible" law at a time. The stages of its death mirror the stages advocated by today's American anti-gun activists. Starting with the Pistol Act of 1903, no British subject could buy a pistol without a license. Similarly, Americans ceded power to their federal government with the Gun Control Act of 1968, which established strict controls on the sale or transfer of guns to citizens. Licensing of gun owners is currently espoused by Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, among others. Parliament passed the Firearms Act of 1920, which added the requirement of a government-sanctioned "good reason" for owning a gun. Olson and Kopel observe that gun ownership was no longer viewed as a right, but as a privilege. One can hear the echoes of this blow to English liberty as American gun-grabbers now plead that no deer hunter really needs a semi-automatic rifle. It is no coincidence that the British also gave up their right of self-defense. Parliament repealed the common law rules on justifiable use of deadly force in 1967. Since then, a British subject who uses deadly force to defend against a violent home invasion is considered the criminal, not the victim. A chilling example is the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, now serving a life sentence for shooting and killing a career criminal who broke into his home. Britain now finds itself at the bottom of the slope, bereft of the primal and decent notion that a human life is worth defending. British subjects are now forced to submit to enslavement by common thugs. So much for Britain's legacy of liberty. Will America suffer the same fate? Americans should put the brakes on our own slide down the slippery slope of gun confiscation. Otherwise we will find ourselves defenseless against the criminals who have always been a part of society. And when that happens, in the words of the villain Alex, we can brace ourselves for a bit of the old ultra-violence. &&&&&&& >From http://www.warroom.com/gunlaw.htm Gun control is global flop September 8, 2000 Sam Francis The most recent crusades for gun control seem to have fizzled, and that's just as well, not only for the sake of the freedom and safety of most Americans, but also for the public reputations of those who push the banning of firearms. There is an ever-increasing amount of evidence that gun control is a failure, not only in the United States but in other countries, too. The ancient and honorable nation of Japan has the distinction of enjoying perhaps the most rigorous gun-control laws in the world outside of communist states. With no tradition whatsoever of individual liberty and a powerful tradition of placing the integrity of the group -- family and nation -- over the individual, Japanese lawmakers have never felt the slightest hesitation in outlawing most gun ownership and punishing severely those who break the laws. In Japan, even possessing a handgun and a bullet puts you in prison for 15 years. Other laws have been tightened and toughened since 1991, and even armored car guards don't carry firearms. Only police officers and soldiers can carry guns at all, and the cops have to leave their guns in a safe when they leave work. According to gun-control dogmas, that should pretty much keep gun violence down. But it doesn't, in Japan anymore than in this country. The Washington Post recently carried a report on the increasing incidence of gun violence in the Land of the Rising Gun. The number of crimes committed with handguns last year was higher than in any year since records have been kept, and the rate this year threatens to be even higher. An administrator in Japan's National Police Agency told the Post, "Since 1994 or 1995 there's been a clear change; the guns are now becoming dispersed in the population. We are worried about it. Crimes are becoming more violent, more serious. And handguns are very efficient weapons for that." So much for the effectiveness of gun control. The people in Japan who do have guns are the members of the "yakuza," as the Japanese organized crime cartel is known. As the Post reports: "The yakuza are the exception. Experts believe most of the estimated 80,000 underworld members have weapons, and police have been unable or unwilling to dent that figure." Does that remind you of anything? When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Japan, however, is not the only gun-controlling society to sport rising gun violence. The same is true in Australia, where a new law last year confiscated virtually all handguns in the country and destroyed them. It doesn't matter. Now violent crimes committed by guns are on the rise Down Under. One year after the mass confiscation of handguns, homicides in Australia have increased 3.2 percent. Assaults have risen by 8.6 percent, and armed robberies have increased by a whopping 44 percent. In one state (Victoria), homicides with firearms have risen 300 percent, despite the government ban. The figures on armed robberies are especially instructive, since these crimes in particular had been falling for some 25 years. Now all of a sudden, with privately owned guns outlawed, they start increasing dramatically. Similar statistics come from Great Britain, long the gun controllers' showcase country. There, where privately owned handguns were effectively banned a few years ago after a mass shooting by a crazed homosexual, crime figures show an increase in England and Wales for the first time in six years. The number of robberies, mostly mugging, increased by 19 percent. Violent offenses increased by 5 percent, and sexual offenses rose by 2 percent. Statistics from the Home Office show that the City of London suffered the greatest increase in crime -- 22 percent. In the United States, however, violent crime continues to fall, for reasons no one seems to be able to figure out. The high rate of incarceration and the ageing of the criminal population are often cited, but the increase in conceal carry laws, which let law-abiding citizens carry concealed firearms, is not often mentioned as reasons for the drop in violent crimes in this country. University of Chicago economist John Lott is one expert who's shown there is a very real link between the decline of violent crime and the availability of firearms; his book, "More Guns, Less Crime," has been virtually ignored by the establishment media.. But the connection ought to be obvious enough. When law-abiding people have guns and criminals know they have them, it's the criminals who have reason to be afraid, and they pick on softer targets that can't shoot back. When guns are criminilized, as in most crime- ridden American cities and in countries like Japan, Australia and Great Britain, only the yakuza and its cousins around the world will have guns, and it's the law-abiding who have to live in fear. &&&&&&& >From http://www.jpfo.org/alert20001207.htm Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc. P.O. Box 270143 Hartford, WI 53027 Phone (262) 673-9745 Fax (262) 673-9746 December 7, 2000 Britain: Guns banned, crimes up, cops armed How many times do we hear it? "Britain has 'gun control', people don't have guns, and the murder rate there is lower. The people are so safe in Britain that even the police officers (bobbies) don't carry guns. That's what America should do: ban guns, and be a safer society." Here's the latest news from the Great Britain: After their notorious gun grab from private citizens, the violent crime rate is higher. And guess what? The British police are starting to carry guns. Read about it from a British newspaper, The Guardian: click to read Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4099970,00.html Policing experts in Britain, according to the article, say that arming police officers with guns is a trend that is increasing all over the country. But why, we ask? We've been told that "gun control" -- gun bans especially -- decrease crime and make a safer society. So why do British police officers need more guns now that guns are supposedly out of the hands of private citizens? We doubt that Handgun Control Inc. and the rest of the civilian disarmament lobby will utter even a peep of protest against the British arming their cops. HCI and the rest favor allowing only government agents to be armed legally, and nobody else. Ask yourself: When has HCI ever spoken out to criticize government agents using force against citizens? When has HCI ever complained about death by government? The big lie -- "Britain is safer because of gun prohibition" -- is now totally exposed. Use this fact -- help stop, and then help reverse, civilian disarmament in the U.S. Unless, of course, your vision of the good society is one populated by armed government agents and unarmed citizens. 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