Murders Soar in the UK

[TIZReporter]

July 10, 2006
Britain -- Homicides soar by a quarter under Labour
The Telegraph reports, "Cases of murder and manslaughter have risen by almost a quarter since Labour came to power, Home Office figures have revealed. Since 1997, the number of homicide victims, including solved and unsolved cases, has averaged 737 per year. In the period from 1990 to 1996, the average was 601.

"The figures deal a further blow to Tony Blair's reputation on law and order, after he came to office pledging to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". The Government will reaffirm its commitment to try to tackle violence when it announces this week that tens of thousands of blades were handed in to police during last month's knife amnesty.

"But separate statistics, released by the Home Office under the Freedom of Information Act, show that most people caught with knives are let off with a fine or a caution. Only one in seven is jailed; and this month's crime figures will show a surge in robberies."

Britain needs more guns?
In 2003, Joyce Lee Malcolm, writing for the The BBC reported, "As gun crime leaps by 35% in a year, plans are afoot for a further crack down on firearms. Yet what we need is more guns, not fewer, says a US academic.

"If guns are outlawed," an American bumper sticker warns, "only outlaws will have guns." With gun crime in Britain soaring in the face of the strictest gun control laws of any democracy, the UK seems about to prove that warning prophetic. For 80 years the safety of the British people has been staked on the premise that fewer private guns means less crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger.

"Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is.

"The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for "very serious" offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed."

Links and images at http://www.theinfozone.net/salw-news.html

TIZ

 

[mljdeckard]

This is very interesting indeed, I spend a fair ammount of time in less civilized forums arguing with non-Americans (mostly english,) who are scared of our reckless policies allowing citizens to have guns. Of course, we always point out how crime in America has been dropping for 40 years, and how theirs has soared since they banned guns, and they usually shake their heads and leave us to our own well-deserved violent state, but lately there has been one guy in there who insists that crime in the U.K. is actually dropping. This is a bit of a surpirise, because everyone else disappeared, no one else ever even tried.

He cites reports from England's "Home Office", which has a website and some very vague stats that say crime is dropping in the U.K. I dug a little, and I founf that this office is pretty much a propoganda tool for the labour party administration. Blair is under fire for soaring crime rates, so he pulled a John Kerry, as in prior to the 2004 election, when Kerry re-defined the misery index to make it look like Bush was hurting the economy instead of helping it. When the papers and BBC are posting all kinds of stories about soaring crime rates, they use this office to try to say that everything is really ok, and that crime in the U.K. is under control.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, I suppose.

 

[LAK]

The Home Office has manipulated crime statistics for a long time. At one time they classified incidents involving airguns as firearms offenses. After much critism - and more of the firearms legislation they wanted - it was reversed making it appear that firearms offenses has decreased.

Crime started to rise rapidly in England, Scotland and Wales in the late 1960s. Right at the time of the social revolution and after some major acts of fireams legislation - much the same as in this country.

But to put this all on the labour gov is alittle misleading. While many in the conservative party have opposed firearms restrictions and legislation a significant portion, notably the party leadership, have either been onboard from the beginning, or have supported the legislation years down the road. Again similar to patterns in this country.

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http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

 

[Fosbery]

Firstly, offenses with airguns are still classified as firearms offenses. Airguns are firearms under law, they are just exempted from the restrictions of other firearms.

To say the Home Office is a propoganda machine is not quite correct. The Home Office is the body of government that makes everything happen as regards the law. However, they do have a propoganda element to them (like any other government body). Having said that, I'm not defending the Home Office.

The Conservative party banned virtually all centrefire pistols in 1996. The Labour party banned virtually all rimfire pistols in 1997. So neither seems very gun-friendly to me :banghead: Although, I suppose I'd rather have a Conservative government than a Labour one. They have talked a fair bit about a partial repealling of the pistol ban, by allowing a very select group of sportsmen and women to have pistols (this was spurred on by the Olympics). The ex-leader of the Conservative party also spoke out about how he felt the pistol ban was a bad idea and unjustified... but has assured everyone he would not re-legalise pistols. So, a man with principles and good sense...but unwilling to use them :banghead:

It's a sorry state in this country, but I'd be careful about blaming rising crime on the restriction of firearms. Britain has never really had an armed citizenry. I doubt that when lisences were first introduced in 1920, there was any real drop in firearms ownership. Traditionally, ordinary people havn't really bought guns. In the US, you had the whole pioneer, Wild West thing with firearms being needed for hunting and defence. In Britain, there wern't any Native Americans or dangerous wild Animals or lawless frontiers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

People who had guns were the upper class who had guns for sport and hunting and rural inhabitants who had guns for hunting and pest control. There was a program in the late 19th century to create a 'nation of riflemen' and have 'a rifle club in every village'. This never happened, but still, many villages got rifle clubs and I don't think firearms ownership has changed much since then.

Of course, during WW2 we had the Home Guard, effectively an organised militia, so firearms ownership would have soared then, but I doubt most people thought anything of it when they gave up their firearms (despite the outspoken protest of one George Orwell).

Even if firearms were completely de-regulated tommorow, I dobut ownership would leap much. Most upstanding law abiding people either already have firearms, or don't want them. What it would do though, is allow people like myself, who do have firearms, and do have a desire to own the kinds we want and to carry those with us, to do so.

In conjuction with that de-regulation, we'd need a social program to once again make this a nation of riflemen.

 

[LAK]

Fosbery,

I am going back over 40 years of legislation, 35 of which I have followed personally. Whether airguns are at this time classified as firearms, it was switched at one point - probably during the 1970s IIRC.

I doubt that when lisences were first introduced in 1920, there was any real drop in firearms ownership.

It must be kept in mind that the first "licenses" required about the same actions as getting a TV license - only much cheaper. The Firearms Act in 1967 followed by an agressive and malicious goverment campaign, with the willing help of many chief constables, exacted the real attrition on firearms ownership in Britain.

I witnessed this personally during the 1970s and later in the 1980/90s in Wales over a total of about 15 years. Ryan, Hamilton and a complicit gov finished the job. The BBC warrants special mention; their carefully crafted audio-visual presentations both immediately after the Ryan and Hamilton shootings and in the run up over legislation rivalled anything Saatchi & Saatchi could have concocted.

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http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

 

[Fosbery]

You're right that there was a campaign against firearms, but I don't know of anyone who was actually convinced or forced to give them up. The only people it seems to have affected are those who do not own firearms. The only real exception I'd say was with the handgun ban, a few people who were pure pistol shooters did give up the sport completely, but most turned to carbines, blackpowder, or chose to travel to Switzerland.

With the above, I am talking about my lifetime. Of course, when the need for 'good reason' was introduced I'm sure many people were forced to give up their arms.

 

[Mongo the Mutterer]

In Britain, there wern't any Native Americans or dangerous wild Animals or lawless frontiers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

You also didn't have to defend yourselves against the English... ooops.

Just Kidding. Good post.

I've read that part of the Gun control issue in Britain was also the elites looking over their shoulders at Russia in 1917 and not wanting the same thing to happen in GB. Any truth at all to that?

 

[LAK]

Fosbery

You're right that there was a campaign against firearms, but I don't know of anyone who was actually convinced or forced to give them up. The only people it seems to have affected are those who do not own firearms. The only real exception I'd say was with the handgun ban, a few people who were pure pistol shooters did give up the sport completely, but most turned to carbines, blackpowder, or chose to travel to Switzerland.

With the above, I am talking about my lifetime. Of course, when the need for 'good reason' was introduced I'm sure many people were forced to give up their arms.

The campaign with the police running the front line assault forced many to give them up. This was done by the creative "interpretations" of things like the "good reason", "storage requirements" and "violations" of the Firearms Act itself which were in turn obligingly carried over by the Crown Prosecution Service. There was an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of dealers, clubs and ranges by any means "legal". Each regional constabulary - even individual constables - did not so much as make their own rules - but abused and perverted those in place. Elements of harassment, intimidations and even falsifications were thrown into many cases.

It was clear that much of this was based on an agenda underlying which was a bottom line of "anything we can get away with". This drove a great number of people out of shooting, many of whom simply did not want to put up with it all for one reason or another. I knew people personally who gave up, sold their guns and let their firearm or shotgun certificates expire for this reason alone.

After the Hungerford shooting the ban on self-loading rifle etc took about 10,000 such rifles and shotguns out of private hands. Colin Greenwood, editor of Guns Review, described in one issue how he destroyed (um, with some difficulty) his Ruger Mini-14 rather than let them have it.

The Home Office was entirely complicit in this gross oppression and has not ceased to carry it forward. The following is too much to post by far but is a pretty good essay on the entire subject:

http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html

And a correction, it was the abolishing of the death penalty in 1965 in Britain, the Firearms Act was 1967.

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http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

 

[Baba Louie]

If you begin with only one homicide, then just adding one more "Doubles" the crime rate, resulting in a "Spree". Crime rates, including murder, might be "soaring" in the UK, but if it even doubles to 1500 annually (for what, 66 million+/- population?) when you compare that to, say California (2000+ homicides for a pop. of +/- 36 million) we're still talking minor league, relatively speaking.

Waaay different cultures.

All can agree that it will get worse, never better, due to a number of reasons. Arming the population... probably not a wise idea if they choose not to think about or allow themselves the concept of repelling boarders, as much as that concept remains foreign to my own mindset. Allowing that some cultures are far more agreeable to doing whatever their government(s) tell them as being for their own good, as opposed to feeling that our government should do what THEY'RE told to do (like they ever will or would), and having that rebellious nature bred into our own mindset, any nation who has less than 800 homicides annually must be a utopia in that aspect.

I suspect that in the future, when each nation has been over=populated by people from different ethnic and national backgrounds, we'll still be number one in the crime dept.

 

[CNYCacher]

Good point

If you begin with only one homicide, then just adding one more "Doubles" the crime rate, resulting in a "Spree". Crime rates, including murder, might be "soaring" in the UK, but if it even doubles to 1500 annually (for what, 66 million+/- population?) when you compare that to, say California (2000+ homicides for a pop. of +/- 36 million) we're still talking minor league, relatively speaking.

Good point.
California being one of the most gun-restricted states in the US, of course.

 

[LaEscopeta]

Since 1997, the number of homicide victims, including solved and unsolved cases, has averaged 737 per year.

UK murders are soaring but they still have a ways to go to catch up with the US murder rate. 737 murders per year in a county of 60,441,457 million, 1/5 the US population of 295,734,134. The US has over 12,000+/- murders per year, more than 16 times the UK. Source:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_mur-crime-murders&int=-1

You can find 2 US cities with a combined population of less than 6 million with more murders per year then the entire UK.

Per capita murder rates are:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita&int=-1

#24 United States 0.042802 per 1,000 people

#46 United Kingdom 0.0140633 per 1,000 people

Not saying this is caused or not caused by gun control, just reporting the statistics.

 

[Leatherneck]

Baba hit the nail squarely on the head. The whole Brit mindset of meeting force with minimum force, and pursuing people who stray over the line of legitimate self-defense even a little is not widespread in America.

Just look at the recent proliferation of "stand your ground" or "make my day" legislation and you see something not present in the UK. It's an attitude of: "If you start it, I'll finish it."

I'm not pointing fingers here--just pointing out that the UK (European?) mindset regarding self-defense is quite different from that of most U.S. citizens.

TC

 

[dmftoy1]

Fosbery, you raise some good points. I think you are not allowing for how things really were in the mid 90's wrt to the average people shooting recreationally. I can only speak for the company I work for, which is based in the UK. (Newbury) When I started coming over there regularly in the mid 90's there were quite a number of the guys in the office who competed in a rimfire pistol league. I don't know how it relates to the populate as a whole, but these guys are definately not farmers or rich guys. I'd say most were making maybe 28-30 thousand pounds per year. These guys were just your typical university graduates (computer geeks)

FWIW.

Have a good one,
Dave

 

[orangelo]

Why do we even care what happens in England? As other posters have said, it's a completely different mindset there. The common people there have a long tradition of being slaves. They're more comfortable being told what to do and think by royalty, knights, nobles and their other betters.

Let em do what they want, if they want to be peons in their own country that's their decision and problem. But if any English UN gungrabbers try that in the US, well it didn't work on April 19, 1775.

The CDC study concluded that gun laws and bans have no measurable effect on crime. It seems the thugs and hoodlums just carry on regardless of whether gun laws are liberal or draconian. I'm willing to bet the crime spree has more to do with the breakdown of society than any gun ban.

Nothing changed here in Houston, but homicides shot up 25% last year. Certainly no gun laws were relaxed and nothing was banned. Probably had to do with the riffraff donated by Chocolate City rather than gun laws.

 

[mljdeckard]

Going back to Fosbery's first post, that high crime in England has little to do with the gun ban, I quite agree. The number of guns in society has no casual effect on crime.

BUT, If this is true, then one cannot use England as a justification model for what America should do either. A ban in England didn't make crime go up there, but a ban in America can hardly be expected to make crime go down here. It works both ways.

I cna't lie, I have to make myself calm down when I see a post from someone who is in England, and not associate it with the idiots I argue with in the other board. (I believe you're one of us. Mostly. Kind of. Well, close enough. Come on over and do some hunting with us.)

 

[Boom-stick]

I cna't lie, I have to make myself calm down when I see a post from someone who is in England, and not associate it with the idiots I argue with in the other board.

What other board?

If english folk are being rude to you about your guns, come and tell me....I'll see em off

They're probably just jealous, I know I am

No semi-auto centre fire rifles
No Hand guns (under 24")
No Public hunting grounds
No Pistol hunting
No Bow hunting
No Class III

NO FUN!!!:banghead:

I'd move countries if they'd let me in, but they won't.

 

[orangelo]

Change your name to something mexican sounding and you can just swim over to the states and get all kinds of benefits off limits to US citizens as a bonus.

 

[AJ Dual]

Crime is foremost a Cultural phenomena, and secondly, an economic one. The lack of distinct underclasses within nations with a high degree of ethnic and racial homogeneity may also play a role, and vice-versa. For instance, the Japanese have such a low crime rate, not because of their laws, but simply because that's the way the Japanese are.

There are many countries with crime/murder rates that are sky-high as compared to the US, (Mexico, much of South America, for instance) and the gun laws are much more restrictive, and gun ownership (legal, anyway) is much less prevalent. You really can't draw any meaningful conclusions about gun ownership and crime rates on a national basis.

Despite how much the pro-gun community loves John Lott, and Gary Kleck, I don't think they've truly proven "More Guns, Less Crime". Some of the statistical and logical critiques of their methods and the data can't be ignored on that front. (The double-whammy of the baby boomer generation aging out of the prime crime demographic 15-27 years old, plus the economic upswing of the 90's were probably the largest factors causing the dramatic drop in the U.S. crime rates...)

However, what they, and even the CDC have definitively proven is: Statistically, more guns do NOT mean more crime, NOR does less guns mean less crime, either. That has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by several independant studies. Just comparing the crime rate aganst the number of guns in circulation in the U.S. alone can prove that easily.

And that means there is no reason from a policy standpoint to deprive law abiding people of arms in the guise of "fighting crime", simply because it doesn't work. The surge in concealed carry states in the past decade was largely sold on "fighting crime", and statistically speaking, I think that argument is on shaky ground. However, it's been proven beyond any reasonable doubts that it doesn't increase crime, and concealed carry makes plenty of sense on it's own merits as a self-defense and a personal rights issue alone.

 

[Fosbery]

When I talked about farmers and upper class people with guns, I meant traditionally. Obviously with the number of agricultural workers and upper class people (in the traditional sense) falling and the number of middle class people who can afford to become target shooters rising, the balance is now changing. What I was getting at was that we don't have a tradition of ordinary working and middle class people being armed, it's only come about in recent years, except they're not 'armed' they just have certain types of firearm, deemed suitable by our all-knowing, all-caring government, for target shooting.

I don't believe the gun bans themselves caused a rise in crime. But the abolishion of those laws combined with a social program to promote responsible and proficient firearms ownership would reduce crime. That's not the only answer to crime, but one of many solutions which need to be implemented together.

When I spoke of people not giving up firearms completely, I was speaking from personal experience. I'm sure people did give up the sport, I just don't know many (I only know one person who gave up in 1997). I don't know anyone who has been unable to get an SGC or FAC with a bit of trying. But I do fall under Thames Valley police, and they're very easy going in my experience (i.e. push overs: "What do you need this Uzi for, it looks pretty dangerous?" "It's of great historic importance because it....was used by Churchill in WW2." "Good enough for me.") Or maybe I just have a very small circle of friends

Firearms ownership is now back up to the levels of 1997 and it looks like it will continue to grow. A lot of work is being done to get young people into the sport and I think that's great. The only problem is, these new people may not be afraid of guns and want them banned because they're evil (like Daily Mail readers) but are often of the opinion that 'I like guns for shooting clays, but I'd never trust myself to carry one for defence'.

Shooting in Britain is boring compared to other conutries. As you say, most of the fun stuff has been taken away. Although I am saving up for a Beretta Xtrema2, that looks very very fun

 

[Vern Humphrey]

I recently had a debate with one of Her Majesty's subjects who claimed Britain has a 99% literacy rate (US literacy is about 75-80%.)

So I checked on the statistics. In the US, to be "literate" an adult has to be able to read at the 5th grade level. In Britain, one has to be over 15 and have completed five or more years of schooling.

In othe words, to the British you can be "literate" without actually being able to read.

 

[BigG]

AJ Dual said:

... there is no reason from a policy standpoint to deprive law abiding people of arms in the guise of "fighting crime", simply because it doesn't work.

I agree with your post, but just want to fasten on the quote; the criminals that want to deprive us of our weapons are elected and appointed criminals.

 

[AJ Dual]

I recently had a debate with one of Her Majesty's subjects who claimed Britain has a 99% literacy rate (US literacy is about 75-80%.)

So I checked on the statistics. In the US, to be "literate" an adult has to be able to read at the 5th grade level. In Britain, one has to be over 15 and have completed five or more years of schooling.

In othe words, to the British you can be "literate" without actually being able to read

In the same vein, does anyone know how the Home Office is recording crime?

I recalled that people used to complain that in the UK, crime stats were based on convictions, and not the actual instances. A "murder" was only on the stats if the person who did the killing was convicted of murder. A "rape" was only on the books if someone got convicted of "rape". If a rapist made a plea deal to a more minor sexual assult, it didn't count as a "rape" in the national stats.

Is that still the case? I recall someone on some board, somewhere... (Helpful, I know...) claimed the Home Office started performing more honest crime reporting. However, do any of the UK posters know if the numbers are still being "massaged" in any way?

In the US, crime reporting rapes, murder, robbery, assult, etc. are recorded as they are reported, independantly of the convictions, regardless if a suspect is even caught or not.

(I hear/read Japan being accused of this practice as well on occasion. Murder-suicides listed as double-suicide etc...)

 

[Fosbery]

What annoys me is that most people don't think about it. We get told by our politicians and newspapers that guns are evil and make you kill people. They believe that. 90% of the people I talk to who hold this view agree with me completely once I explain how wrong this is. There are some hard core gun grabbers, but most people actually do have some common sense, they just havn't heard the other side of the story because the media is so unbelievably biased. If only I could talk to every person in the UK...

There are several different sets of figures for crime in the UK. One is, as you say, for convictions, another is for crimes reported to the police (probably the most accurate and the one that gets the most attention), and one is based on a survey of people, asking them what crime they have experienced (this is supposed to see if crimes are going unreported). There are probably others, but those are the ones I remember.

 

[James T Thomas]

taming of the shrew

"Something's rotten in the former state of 'Daneland.''
Newly enacted Draconian knife and blade laws, followed on the heels, by an admission of a floundering political party and their politician, that they have been lax' and have not enforced the laws strictly enough.
Are those bells ringing from Big Ben, or is it an alarm going off in the land of Shakespeare?

Reminds me of trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.

 

[LaEscopeta]

that high crime in England has little to do with the gun ban, I quite agree. The number of guns in society has no casual effect on crime. BUT, If this is true, then one cannot use England as a justification model for what America should do either. A ban in England didn't make crime go up there, but a ban in America can hardly be expected to make crime go down here. It works both ways.

Despite how much the pro-gun community loves John Lott, and Gary Kleck, I don't think they've truly proven "More Guns, Less Crime"…. However, what they, and even the CDC have definitively proven is: Statistically, more guns do NOT mean more crime, NOR does less guns mean less crime, either.

+1. Although I’m expecting an avalanche of post saying guns prevent crime.