In one way, I don't won't to be unhelpful, but I believe you are
trying to ignore the 800 pound gorilla sitting on the coffee table
in the living room.
British attitudes on guns and gun control has been a hobby of mine since
I first became aware of the subject in the 1950s. It is fascinating.
I recall the more recent Great UN Gun Debate from the Library of Kings
College London 2004 on the motion: "Should the United States Senate
Support the Proposed UN Treaty that Bans Private Ownership of Guns?"
which was moderated by British TV personality Paul Lavers and aired on
US pay TV from October 20-30.
Pro was Rebecca Peters, Director of IANSA (International Action Network
on Small Arms), and Con was Wayne LaPierre, director of the NRA ILA
(National Rifle Association of America Institute for Legislative Action).
Representatives of Gun Control Network were in the audience.
IANSA posted an edited transcript on their website. The NRA has used a
complete, unedited DVD of the debate as a very effective recruitment tool.
In the Q&A from the audience, a British sports shooter complained about
being deprived of his sport. Rebecca's answer was she was tired of people
referring to reform of regulations as bans and confiscations. Semi-autos
and pump-actions were outlawed, 640,000 were taken from owners in Australia
and destroyed and IANSA and Peters took credit for that. To Rebecca, that
wasn't a ban or confiscation: she claimed that use of the words "ban" and
"confiscation" was a gun lobby lie to misrepresent "reform of regulations."
The moderator tried to intervene diplomatically, but Rebecca Peters
illustrated the mindset of the antigunners. Ban = reform, confiscation =
regulation, 2 + 2 = 5 in Newspeak. Cut completely from the IANSA transcript
was the question and answer about the banning of lawful sporting guns.
Memoryhole in the Ministry of Truth. Very Brit, as in Orwellian.
A sportsman complained about losing his sport under the "reform" that
was not a "ban" or "confiscation": thus to the sportsman spake Rebecca:
Times change. I know that pistol shooting used to be a sport
that was allowed in the UK and it no longer is. I am sad for you.
I suppose if you miss your sport, take up another sport, take up
a sport that does not require a weapon designed for the sole specific
purpose of killing another human being.
The sportsmen in the audience frowned and the GCN people applauded.
IANSA cut this exchange, also, from their posted transcript.
I guess you Brits who miss Olympic target shooting with pistols ought
to take up another Olympic sport that does not require a weapon designed
for killing human beings: might I suggest the Olympic sports of javelin
throwing, archery or fencing? Or are they next in the reformists' sights?
At one point, the moderator asked LaPierre:
Q: It seems to me that Americans are desperate to prove that gun control
in Britain, in particular, has been a failure, but it clearly hasn't. Gun
crime is coming down now. It is coming down dramatically in Scotland and
over the last 18 months it is come down by 16 percent. It only ever
featured in six or seven hotspots, major cities.
And the figure would be even dramatically lower were it not for the
confusion introduced by replica firearms, which our government for some
strange reason refuses to ban. Why cannot you accept these statistics?
They are British statistics. In Britain gun control is working.
Some in the audience at King's College openly expressed
disagreement with the questioner's claim that UK gun contol
was bringing gun crime down. I, watching the DVD, agreed.
I recall Colin Greenwood, Firearms Control, (Routledge & Kegan
Paul, London, 1972):
"No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the
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 withoutout restriction. Half
a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a
far greater use of this class of weapon in crime than ever before."
That was Colin Greenwood, Superintendent, West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police,
writing in 1972 about the effects of half a century of UK gun control
from the 1920 British Firearms Act to the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Between 1900 and 1920, UK had few gun regulations and one of the world's
lowest crime rates. Then you had the 1920 BFA and the crime rate went up.
But you still had a lower crime rate than USA. Then you had the 1968 GCA
and crime went up. But you still had a lower crime rate than USA. Then
the 1986 and 1997 Amendments to 1968 GCA. Now crime is trending down in
USA and up in UK (although the changes in crime reporting methods make
year-to-year comparisons problematic).
In 1997, England banned private ownership of handguns and confiscated
160,000 legally owned handguns from registered owners. (Oh, I am being
doubleplusungood, those were reforms of regulation not bans or
confiscation). Dave Rodgers, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Police
Federation, said the ban on legally owned guns made little difference
to the number of guns in the hands of criminals. (I must report him to
the Thoughtpolice.)
"....the short-term impact strongly suggests that there is no direct
link between the unlawful use of handguns and their lawful ownership."'
- Illegal Firearms in the UK,
Centre for Defence Studies at King's College, London.
"This completely misses the point of what we were trying
to do. We never thought that there would be any effect on
illegal gun crime, because that is a totally separate issue....
What we were campaigning for was to make sure that a civilian
could not be legally trained to use a handgun."
- Ann Pearston, founder of the Snowdrop Campaign
to ban handguns in England.
It appears to me Target shooting is a sport that people like Anne
Pearston (Snowdrop Campaign), Rebecca Peters (IANSA), the Gun Control
Network disapprove of, on purely symbolic grounds.
You Brit target shooters open your boiled eggs from the wrong end.
That's all there is to it. A clash of symbols. That is what you are
up against.
hahahaa
