01-27-2006, 09:08 AM
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#14 (permalink)
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Cunning Runt
Location: Taking a mulligan
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by kutulu
It's ironic but because it was in England the mugger didn't have a gun. Interesting, isn't it?
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I take it you haven't seen the figures on increases in gun crime in England and Australia.
Link
Quote:
Published Monday, December 19, 2005, in New York Post
SILVER'S 'CONTROLS' DON'T WORK
By John R. Lott, Jr.*
HOW do you stop criminals from getting guns? With the murders of two New York City police officers this year and two each of the two previous years, all from guns, New York politicians feel pressure to do something, splitting the two political parties in very predictable ways. The state Senate and Gov. Pataki want to punish gun smugglers with longer prison terms; the state Assembly and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer call for more gun-control laws. Despite Pataki's efforts, the most direct approach to stop criminals killing police officers seems off the table — because Democrats won't pass legislation to let the death penalty be imposed.
Democrats worry that law-abiding citizens who get through the extensive licensing and registration system in New York City are responsible for criminals getting guns. The question is whether the Democrats' proposals — which cover everything from more training for New York gun store employees to providing more security at gun stores to banning some types of guns and bullets — will disarm criminals, or mainly just discourage law-abiding citizens getting guns or.
If law-abiding New York gun-owners — who already pass all the local, state, and federal gun control regulations — are the only real way criminals obtain guns, wouldn't the logical conclusion simply be that a complete ban would dry up guns for criminals?
Yet gun control doesn't work that way. The experiences of the United Kingdom and Australia — two island nations whose borders are much easier to control and monitor — should give New York gun controllers some pause.
The British government banned handguns in January 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the seven years from 1996 to 2003. Since '96, the rate of serious violent crime has soared by 88 percent: armed robberies by 101 percent, rapes by 105 percent and homicide by 24 percent.
Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50 percent from 1993 to 1997 — but as soon as handguns were banned, the robbery rate shot back up, almost back to 1993 levels. The crooks still had guns, but not their victims.
Australia's 1996 gun-control regulations banned many types of guns and the immediate aftermath was similar. Crime rates averaged 32 percent higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than in 1995. The same comparisons for armed robbery rates showed an increase of 74 percent, reversing a previous decline.
Both recent police officer murders in New York City had something in common: They involved drugs. Few Americans appreciate that over 70 percent of American murders take place in just 3.5 percent of counties — these being the inner-city areas where drug dealers are concentrated...
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Of course, there are people who will say that the increase is "due to a new way of reporting crime" in England. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this new method was instituted at the time of the ban.
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"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher
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