I blame the Gummint, innit?

[bazza]

The article from the Wall Street Journal of 17^th June 2006 set out below is authored by historian Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, recently of Bentley College and about to become Professor of Legal History at George Mason University School of Law. In essence it provides a short postscript to her history of English gun laws and crime, "Guns and Violence - the English Experience" (Harvard University Press 2002).

Because the article concentrates on current English policy, it may be useful to provide a very brief background:

* pre-1903: England had essentially no gun controls whatever -- and the lowest violent crime rates in Europe. Despite the U.S. having much higher crime rates in various states, U.S. newspapers deprecated the lack of gun control in England compared to the controls in various American states -- yes, the states that had the highest crime rates.

* 1920: gripped by fear of the 1917 Russian revolution, England enacted a requirement that all handguns and rifles be registered and licensed and gave the police discretion to decide who could have a licence.

* 1970: a police official's study of the history of English gun control while a Cropwood Short Term Fellow at Cambridge University School of Criminology, summarized the gun crime situation in England as follows:

"No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this class of weapon in crime than ever before." Colin Greenwood, FIREARMS CONTROL: ARMED CRIME AND FIREARMS CONTROL IN ENGLAND AND WALES (London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1972) at p. 243.

*1997: After years of ever-greater restrictions on handguns, and ever groing violent crime, England cancelled all handgun licenses and confiscated the 166,000 lawfully owned handguns of the 60,000 police-approved licensees.

*2000: the year 2000 International Crime Victim Survey found the U.K. to have the developed world's highest violent crime rate. The rate is twice that of the U.S. Among developed nations, the highest violent crime rates are those of four nations which during the 1990s together outlawed and confiscated over a million guns: England, Scotland (for statistical purposes considered a separate nation), Australia, and Canada.

* 2002: a report of England's National Crime Intelligence Service lamented, that while /"Britain has some of the strictest gun laws in the world [i]t appears that anyone who wishes to obtain a firearm [illegally] will have little difficulty in doing so."

The Wall Street Journal
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB115049820183382878.html

Mad Dogs and Englishmen
By JOYCE LEE MALCOLM
June 17, 2006; Page A11

With Great Britain now the world's most violent developed country, the British government has hit upon a way to reduce the number of cases before the courts: Police have been instructed to let off with a caution, burglars and those who admit responsibility for some 60 other crimes ranging from assault and arson, to sex with an underage girl.

That is, no jail time, no fine, no community service, no court appearance. It's cheap, quick, saves time and money, and best of all the offenders won't tax an already overcrowded jail system.

Not everyone will be treated so leniently. A new surveillance system promises to hunt down anyone exceeding the speed limit. Using excessive force against a burglar or mugger will earn you a conviction for assault or, if you seriously harm him, a long sentence. Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer jailed for killing one burglar and wounding another during the seventh break-in at his rural home, was denied parole because he posed a threat to burglars. The career burglar whom Mr. Martin wounded got out early.

Using a cap pistol, as an elderly woman did to scare off a gang of youths, will bring you to court for putting someone in fear. Recently, police tried to stop David Collinson from entering his burning home to rescue his asthmatic wife. He refused to obey and, brandishing a toy pistol, dashed into the blaze. Minutes later he returned with his wife and dog and apologized to the police. Not good enough. In April Mr. Collinson was sentenced to a year in prison for being aggressive towards the officers and brandishing the toy pistol. Still, at least
he won't be sharing his cell with an arsonist or thief.

How did things come to a pass where law-abiding citizens are treated as criminals and criminals as victims? A giant step was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, making it illegal to carry any article for an offensive purpose; any item carried for self-defence was automatically an offensive weapon and the carrier is guilty until proven innocent.

At the time a parliamentarian protested that, /"The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy."/ The government countered that the public should be discouraged /"from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them."

The trouble is that society cannot and does not protect them. Yet successive governments have insisted protection be left to the professionals, meanwhile banning all sorts of weapons, from firearms to chemical sprays. They hope to add toy or replica guns to the list along with kitchen knives with points. Other legislation has limited self-defence to what seems reasonable to a court much later.

Although British governments insist upon sole responsibility for protecting individuals, for ideological and economic reasons they have adopted a lenient approach toward offenders. Because prisons are expensive and don't reform their residents, fewer offenders are incarcerated. Those who are get sharply reduced sentences, and serve just half of these.

Still, with crime rates rising, prisons are overcrowded and additional jail space will not be available anytime soon. The public learned in April that among convicts released early to ease overcrowding were violent or sex offenders serving mandatory life sentences who were freed after as little as 15 months.

The government's duty to protect the public has been compromised by other economies. Police forces are smaller than those of America and Europe and have been consolidated, leaving 70% of English villages without a police presence. Police are so hard-pressed that the Humberside force announced in March they no longer investigate less serious crimes unless they are racist or homophobic. Among crimes not being investigated: theft, criminal damage, common assault, harassment and non-domestic burglary.

As for more serious crime, the unarmed police are wary of responding to an emergency where the offender is armed. The Thames Valley Police waited nearly seven hours to enter Julia Pemberton's home after she telephoned from the closet where she was hiding from her estranged and armed husband.

They entered once the danger to them had passed, but after those who had pleaded for their help were past all help.

To be fair, under the Blair government a host of actions have been initiated to bring about more convictions. At the end of its 2003 session Parliament repealed the 800-year-old guarantee against double jeopardy. Now anyone acquitted of a serious crime can be retried if "new and compelling evidence" is brought forward. Parliament tinkered with the definition of "new" to make that burden easier to meet. The test for "new" in these criminal cases, Lord Neill pointed out, will be lower than "/is used habitually in civil cases. In a civil case,
one would have to show that the new evidence was not reasonably available on the previous occasion. There is no such requirement here."

Parliament was so excited by the benefits of chucking the ancient prohibition that it extended the repeal of double jeopardy from murder to cases of rape, manslaughter, kidnapping, drug-trafficking and some 20 other serious crimes. For good measure it made the new act retroactive. Henceforth, no one who has been, or will be, tried and acquitted of a serious crime can feel confident he will not be tried again, and again.

To make the prosecutor's task still easier, he is now permitted to use hearsay evidence -- goodbye to confronting witnesses -- to introduce a defendant's prior record, and the number of jury trials is to be reduced. Still, the government has helped the homeowner by sponsoring a law "to prevent homeowners being sued by intruders who injure themselves while breaking in."

It may be crass to point out that the British people, stripped of their ability to protect themselves and of other ancient rights and left to the mercy of criminals, have gotten the worst of both worlds. Still, as one citizen, referring to the new policy of letting criminals off with a caution, suggested: "Perhaps it would be easier and safer for the honest citizens of the U.K. to move into the prisons
and the criminals to be let out."


"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
--Sun Tzu (or Siggi - I always get them confused...)
____________________
"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
'98 Ducati 750SS, '08 Suzuki GSX650F ©2004-2014, Bazza's Harmless Banter

[Itchy]

article raises some points , but my suggestion is this:

stop making prisons luxury 5* hotels , instead of spending 40K per prisoner per year spend £40 ,

ie a concrete 8x8x8 box in a 800,000x800,000x400,000 box , where prisoners are kept in 166 hours a week , and given the worst quality food.

Rooms basic , like singapore prisoners sleep on the floor and clean up themselves , toilet is a hole in the floor.

Mister James won't be happy though , he'd get shanked almost everyday.
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[killa]

All that effort writing it and wont make a blind bit of difference….

Someone who knows how the law game works could have spent the time doing something more constructive.
Sat in a 3 million pound age old cottage going to a snobby Uni everyday doesn’t give them the right to sprout this sort of straight down the middle law guff.
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Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
Bike:- Yamaha TRX850 | Killas Biking History | Killas Gaming History | Killas autmotive history

[innominate]

Just sounds like more generic scaremongering to me...
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I, as a responsible adult human being, will never concede the power to anyone to regulate my choice of what I put into my body, or where I go with my mind. From the skin inwards is my jurisdiction, is it not? I choose what may or may not cross that border. Here I am the customs agent. I am the coast-guard. I am the sole legal and spiritual government of this territory, and only the laws I choose to enact within myself are applicable.

[Mister James]

[colin1]

interesting article

a few obviously ill-thought out ideas tho

the bit about there being less gun crime in england when there were no controls for example

not many people could afford guns so they werent a problem in 1900

controlling guns does not prevent criminals getting them, but it does reduce generally law-abiding citizens reaching for a gun and doing something silly

I dont believe that the uk has more violent crime than america. If the figures suggest it, its differences in ways figures are collected in different countries.

Certainly if you compare murder rates, America is way ahead per head of population.
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colin1 is officially faster than god

[Mister James]

I agree with Colin that some of the figures are linked in a rather suspect way. It's madness to compare crime figures with society at the start of the century, as our Britain would be totally unrecognisable to them.
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>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
>Bazza Wow. Eyes like a shithouse rat, you...

[Itchy]

[Harold_Shand]

[quote="colin1"]

the bit about there being less gun crime in england when there were no controls for example
quote]

We were all white folks living white folks lives in those days, though...
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BCF's 6th favourite poster 2009-2010

Harold_Shand's theory might be the best explanation.

[Tarmacsurfer]

The '97 ban was ridiculous. Political grandstanding and media driven hyperbole at it's worst. Even so, bitter as I am over that incident, I still find :

[bazza]

Gotta love their timing - did they see this thread or what?

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5110600.stm

I mean there's feck knows how many known drug dealers wandering round with guns and yet they can't manage to bust their doors down, but on the word of some "I was in the war, you know!" nosey arsebubble of a neighbour, then go in team-handed on some teenager's family.
____________________
"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
'98 Ducati 750SS, '08 Suzuki GSX650F ©2004-2014, Bazza's Harmless Banter