Out Of Control, Still -

Out Of Control, Still - One of the left's most inviolate shibboleths is that countries like Australia, Britain and Canada - which have strict gun control - are safer places than the US.

For years, hints have been leaking out that it's just not so. British Home Secretary Jack Straw famously addressed the issue two years ago, in a speech that was alarmed about the booming crime rate in the UK.

Folsom James points us to a study by the Fraser Institute that tends to confirim this.

From the press release:

Disarming the public has not reduced criminal violence in any country examined in this study. In all these cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive, and often counter productive. In all cases, the effort meant setting up expensive bureaucracies that produce no noticeable improvement to public safety or have made the situation worse. Mauser points to these trends in the countries he examined:

And from the study:

Restrictive firearm legislation has failed to reduce violent crime in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain. The policy of confiscating guns has been an expensive failure. Criminal violence has not decreased. Instead, it continues to increase. Unfortunately, policy dictates that the current directions will continue and, more importantly, it will not be examined critically.

Only the United States has witnessed such a dramatic drop in criminal violence over the past decade. Perhaps it is time politicians in the Commonwealth reviewed their traditional antipathy to lawfully owned firearms. It is an illusion that gun bans protect the public. No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. Maybe we should crack down on criminals rather than hunters and target shooters?

Both pieces are worth a read.

Posted by Mitch at December 3, 2003 06:01 AM