Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.law-enforcement,alt.politics.british,uk.politics,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns
From: [r--s--l] at [eternity.demon.co.uk] (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: Part 3 of 3: The Case Against Gun Control
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 00:51:31 +0000
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crime is negligible: firearms homicides have not increased since records
began in 1931, and armed robberies are so few that they are not even
recorded separately.
Denmark is second only to Switzerland in its level of private firearms
ownership, and considerably ahead of the USA. It has a Home Guard
of 75,200 the members of which store semi-automatic rifles and sub-machine
guns at home and can be mobilised in one hour. In 25 years, only
13 homicides have been attributed to the 60,000 of these Home Guard
weapons. Norway and Sweden also have Home Guards which store military
weapons and ammunition at home: the misuse of these weapons is almost
non-existent. The US government's Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship
has sponsored civilian military arms to rifle clubs and semi-automatic
rifles to individuals. In 1965, the Little Report, sponsored by the
US Department of the Army, "failed to uncover a single incident
where DCM arms have been used in crimes of violence".49
Before its present official attitudes to civilian firearms use developed,
Britain used to have a similar system. From 1859 until the end of
the First World War the government kept a quarter of a million Rifle
Volunteers under arms; in 1900 Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister,
said that he would laud the day when there was a rifle in every cottage
in England.50 Our present system, in which nearly all peaceful
citizens are both disarmed and ignorant about firearms as a result
of government policy, would lead to a disastrous situation if Britain
should ever be faced with invasion. The people would be virtually
incapable of organising effective guerrilla resistance to an invader,
or of providing auxiliary forces to the regular army, because of the
resources and time needed to train people in the use of weapons, quite
apart from the availability of these weapons themselves. Should the
regular military forces be defeated, the people would be completely
at the mercy of an invader.
(One of the most fraudulent aspects of the position of the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament is their claim that they support the possibility
of guerrilla warfare as a major aspect of Britain's defence after
the unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from NATO which
they propose. I have often discussed the issue with CND supporters,
and when I press for details of how this guerrilla force is to be
organised, these are either vague or non-existent. When I ask whether
they would encourage the widespread civilian ownership and use of
military firearms, and the training of individuals in guerrilla warfare
by official and private sponsorship, they react in a hostile manner
to the very proposals they were arguing for - in a vague and offhand
way - only minutes before!)
The private ownership of firearms by civilians can be remarkably effective
in resisting even a modern technological invader. For centuries the
Afghans and Pakistanis have been skilled both with using firearms
and making copies of standard models in primitive workshops with simple
tools and materials. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in
1979, the Afghans, despite their enormous technological inferiority,
were able to offer immediate effective resistance and quickly developed
rifles that could fire the same ammunition as the Soviet AK47. While
their eventual success in forcing the Soviet forces to withdraw was
due to the later availability of sophisticated modern weapons such
as the Stinger missile, this would have been impossible without the
early stages of military resistance made possible by the widespread
knowledge and ownership of firearms.
WOMEN AND GUNS
"Be not afraid of man,
No matter what his size;
When danger threatens, call on me
And I will equalise."
(motto engraved on a 19th century Winchester rifle)51
Although capitalism has succeeded in giving women throughout society
a wide degree of independence, for example through labour-saving devices,
it cannot alter the biological fact that the average man is some 50%
physically stronger than the average woman, nor that the average attacker,
burglar or rapist is probably rather stronger than this average. And
there is no doubt that the threat of attack is very real in Britain
today, and poses a major restriction on the effective freedom which
women enjoy.
But women are not permitted to take any measures for their own protection.
In 1981 in Yorkshire, at the height of the murderous rampage of Peter
Sutcliffe through the county (that is, before he had been caught),
one woman who carried a small clasp knife in her handbag as a protection
against the "Yorkshire Ripper" was convicted and fined for
carrying an offensive weapon!
This situation could be transformed by the introduction of the legal
right to own and use firearms and other weapons for self-defence. The
possession of firearms by women would provide a virtual revolution
in introducing real equality between the sexes in this area. In 1966,
following a major increase in rapes in Orlando, Florida, USA, the
local police began a well-publicised training course for 2,500 women
in firearms. The next year rape fell by 88% in Orlando (the only
large American city to experience a decrease that year) and burglary
fell by 25%, although none of the trained women actually fired their
weapons: the deterrent effect was enough. Five years later Orlando's
rape rate was still 13% lower than it had been before the training,
while the surrounding standard metropolitan area had undergone a 308%
increase.52
If the authorities here are unlikely to take such an enlightened attitude,
at least they can remove the legal impediments for groups of women,
private entrepreneurs, or others to organise such training, and for
the purchase of weapons to supplement it. If they refuse to do so,
at least victims of assault, robbery and rape will know who is partly
to blame through the denial of the legal means of self-defence.
Indeed, if the authorities would hesitate immediately to abolish all
laws restricting the ownership of weapons, a more "Fabian"
approach suggests itself. On a provisional basis, the legal right
to possess firearms and other weapons could be given to one group
which even the authorities must agree is both particularly vulnerable
and particularly unlikely to use weapons for criminal purposes: old
age pensioners. If after, say, two years, this resulted (as the reader
will agree it doubtless would) in a decrease in the number of attacks
on pensioners, the same right could then be extended to all women. Again,
if after a two year experimental period attacks on women were reduced,
the political atmosphere would surely be improved for the restoration
of everyone's right to provide for their own defence.
THE GUN CONTROL DEBATE NOW
British firearms legislation, then, has not been based on either reason
or evidence. So how have such strict controls, which have effectively
removed what was once regarded as a fundamental right of every individual,
achieved the status of law with the almost unanimous approval of all
major political parties, the police, the media and (taking their cue
from them) public opinion? This is not an area which can be addressed
with anything like scientific precision, but I believe it can be largely
summed up, first, by a 20th-century official British attitude one
might describe as "political fetishism". Britain has for
centuries been, on the whole, a "law-abiding" and deferential
country in the sense that the bulk of the population will go along
with virtually anything the authorities demand; many, indeed, will
go beyond that. This therefore creates in the authorities a fallacious
assumption that the act of removing or restricting by law an object,
or tool, that is used for something they disapprove of, will of itself
remove the intention of and ability to perform the unapproved act. Even
if only a small minority are committing the unapproved act, the large
majority must be punished in advance for the actions of the few -
must, in short, be punished for doing something that they as individuals
have not done. That this is a peculiarly British attitude is demonstrated
by a comparison with France.
France is by no means a free country - the absence of individual civil
rights against the police and the criminal justice system would rightly
appall any informed Englishman, as would the bureaucratic interference
which, for instance, requires parents to name their children only
from a state list of approved names - but this "fetishistic"
attitude is largely absent. There is a liquid which can be used to
remove the ink stamps on official documents, season tickets, and so
on, without damaging the design of the paper underneath. Freely available
at any stationers' in France, it is banned in Britain. In Britain,
the taxation on alcoholic drink is continually increased to discourage
its consumption, and the hours at which it can be bought still restricted,
yet the incidence of drunken violence continues to rise, a phenomenon
almost unknown in France, where alcoholic drinks are much cheaper
(and which has diminished drastically in Scotland, where licensing
hours are almost unrestricted). Again, France has no film censorship
and most television channels regularly show "pornographic"
material that would be unthinkable on British television, yet the
believed link between pornography and sexual crimes, taken for granted
here, hardly exists in France (which has a much lower rate of sexual
crime): at rape trials in Britain, for instance, the defendant usually
attributes partial blame to having seen a pornographic film; this
is a rare defence in French rape trials. This sharp difference is
clearly visible in weapon control. In any knife shop in France,
the visitor can find freely available for sale all manner of "offensive
weapons" that it is a criminal offence to buy or possess in Britain,
from flick-knives (known as switchblades in America, where they are
banned in every state but Oregon) to Mace and nunchakas and other
Kung Fu weapons. Yet France has a rather lower rate of violent crime
than Britain.
Another broad characteristic, specific to British socialism since
at least the First World War, is a belief that the common people whom
socialism was supposed to help were purely an object, not a subject. The
experience of the "working class" under capitalism, as (incorrectly)
interpreted by the early 20th-century socialists, led them to believe
that they were not capable of spontaneously organising themselves,
and had to have their lives completely reorganised for them by bureaucrats
and "experts". The "slums" in which the working class
lived could not be improved and had to be destroyed and replaced by
high-rise, concrete-jungle council estates. The masses were incapable
of acting as informed customers in health, education and welfare,
and the "welfare state" therefore gave very little individual
choice or control to the people who were made dependent on it and
whose taxes financed most of it.
It is this general attitude, now recognised as disastrous in so many
areas (surviving 19th-century "slum" houses in east London
are selling for UKP 200,000 long after high-rise blocks from the
1960s have either collapsed or been demolished), which has helped
to introduce such harsh firearms control in Britain. In his excellent
Libertarian Alliance essay /Gun Control in Britain/ (1988), Sean
Gabb, after demonstrating the absurdities of firearms restrictions,
concluded on a pessimistic note:
"The Firearms Bill will become law, and after a decent
interval will be followed by another, and then by another, until guns
are in theory outlawed among the civilian population. There is no
opposing the general will on this point. There is no place for fantastical
schemes of deregulation. All that can usefully be done is to observe
and record the progress of folly - and hope that its worst consequences
will be felt by a later generation than our own."53
Surely, however, one cannot allow such ill-informed, ill-thought out,
irrational, repressive and unjust laws to continue to oppress the
people without challenge. History provides many examples of repressive
state actions, such as the witch mania of the 16th and 17th centuries,
which commanded general approval in spite of their appalling consequences.
They should always be opposed, however difficult the odds may seem to be.
Firearms control in Britain is one of those areas where a rigidly
statist regime has been introduced which has become almost universal
orthodoxy without being introduced on behalf of some ideology or other.
As we saw above, firearms legislation was introduced on the basis of
unclear thinking, ignorance about the purposes and results of previous
legislation, political trade-offs and temporary hysteria. It is precisely
for this reason that it is a difficult area to reform. With other
areas of statism, such as the nationalisation of industries, or the
development of council estates in the form they took, the measures
were carried out in accordance with a specific ideology and with specific
ends in mind, such as to make industry more efficient and accountable,
or to creat an ideal urban living environment. At least when the
measures fail to produce the ends for which they were introduced,
this can be demonstrated, and the policies altered, as has happened
to some extent in recent years. With firearms control, however, no
such objective standards by which it can be judged were ever proposed,
yet firearms control commands more general political support than
nationalisation or council estates ever did.
It also encourages the most officious and bloody-minded forms of policing,
which undermine civil liberties. Several years ago a 16-year-old
boy who habitually dressed in top hat and tails and carried a long
walking cane with a large spherical handle was, as I remember reading,
arrested by the police and charged with "carrying an offensive
weapon". On 30 June 1989 Robert Manning, aged 31, was lawfully
shooting pigeons with a shotgun in a field near Coventry when he saw
a police helicopter overhead, which contained three policemen, one
of them filming him with a video camera. He put the gun down and
made querying gestures to the policemen, who told him through a loudhailer
to walk to a clearing, remove his jacket and shirt and turn round. He
did this, and found himself facing 20 to 25 policemen with police
dogs and two with Armalite rifles. One of them told him to march
towards them and lie down, whereupon they handcuffed him and removed
his boots. The helicopter landed, and he was taken in it to a police
cell despite explaining what he had been doing. The police contacted
the farmer who owned the field and confirmed that Mr Manning had had
permission to shoot there. The police then allowed Mr Manning to
leave the station, but refused to return his shotgun, even though
he was licensed and had not used it unlawfully. He refused to leave,
and returned to the cells until the police finally agreed to let him
take the gun.54
It might be objected that if the right of the individual to own weapons
is conceded, where does it stop? Are we to accept the right of individuals
to have private armies, for example? I would reply that it does indeed
follow, while accepting that in tactical political terms the climate
is not yet right to put that forward as an immediate demand. Those
who express horror at the idea of private armies seem unaware that
there already is a legal standing private army, fully equipped and
trained as a fighting force with sophisticated, modern weapons and
other equipment. Comparatively small though it is, it belongs to
the Duke of Argyll, who is the only individual in the United Kingdom
legally allowed to keep a private army (the privilege was granted
by the Crown to one of his ancestors). Yet I have never heard any
report of this army creating any kind of danger to the public peace,
or indeed, of anybody making any political objection to it. Given
that His Grace's right to maintain an army is given such universal
acceptance, if only by default, one could envisage a "Fabian"
political process whereby it is extended, over a period of years,
first, to all hereditary peers above the rank of baronet, then to
the lesser aristocracy, and finally to us common folks, in a process
analogous to the progress of the 19th-century Reform Acts and subsequent
legislation extending the franchise.
LET US ASK THE QUESTION
That, I accept, lies in the future. But right now the newspapers
are full of tragedies in which the availability of a firearm would
have saved lives or enabled people to defend themselves. In two cases
in 1989 families living on crime-ridden council estates have been
burned to death because they have installed such heavy security, including
locked steel bars at the windows and multiple-locked steel doors,
that they were unable to escape form their own homes when fires broke
out. If they have been allowed to possess firearms for the defence
of their home from burglars and attackers, such precautions would
have been less necessary. Not content with herding people into the
violent, inhuman environments of so many council estates, the state
removes even their right to defend themselves with weapons against
the crime it has exposed them to. Every week, many shocking cases
of violent crime are reported, but I was particularly appalled by
a recent case in which three men broke into the home of a 54-year-old
Cypriot woman in south London, trying to obtain her life savings of
UKP 900, which were hidden in her brassiere. They tortured her for
several hours in the most horrifying ways, one of which was thrusting
an air pistol up her nostril and firing it, as a result of which she
lost the sight of one eye. Nonetheless she never revealed the location
of the money, which was all she had in the world. It was reported
that the police had no clue as to the attackers' identity.
Who could doubt that the outcome would have been different if the
victim herself had been armed - with a firearm? By what right do
those who make our laws deny such people as this woman the natural
right to self-defence? Let us ask this question of our political
masters, and put the onus on them to explain why they are denying
us the most fundamental human right of all, without which any others
are not rights at all but merely temporary privileges granted by the
powerful on their sufferance and removeable at will - the right of
the individual to arm against all aggression.
Type of firearms used in robberies in England and Wales, 1966-1969
Sawn-off shotguns
Shotguns Pistols (S1 firearm) Others Total
Year No. % No. % No. % No. % No.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1966 53 15.5 18 5.2 269 79.3 340
1967 59 21.3 126 45.6 11 3.9 80 29.2 276
1968 98 25.3 140 36.1 37 9.5 112 29.1 387
1969 100 20.6 173 35.7 30 10.3 161 33.4 464
[From C. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, p. 244.] 25
Robberies in England and Wales in which firearms were used
Total Firearms Cases involving Cases involving
Robberies Pistols Shotguns
Year No. % No. %
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
1970 475 163 34.3 88 18.5
1971 572 203 35.4 133 25.2
1972 533 175 32.8 116 21.7
1973 484 181 37.3 112 23.1
1974 645 258 40.0 129 20.0
1975 949 365 38.4 184 19.3
[Extracted from C. Greenwood, "Comparative Statistics",
in D. B. Kates, /Restricting Handguns/, North River Press, np, 1979]
(26)
NOTES
1. W. Marina, "Weapons, Technology and Legitimacy",
in D. B. Kates, /Firearms and Violence/, Pacific Institute for
Public Policy Research, San Francisco, 1984, p. 429.
2. /Daily Telegraph/, 7 April 1987.
3. See D. B. Kopel, "Trust the People", Cato Institute
Policy Analysis 109, 11 July 1988.
4. /Evening Standard/, 10 July 1989.
5. C. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London, 1972, p. 7.
6. /Ibid/., p. 9.
7. /Ibid/., p. 11.
8. /Ibid/., p. 13.
9. /Ibid/., p. 14.
10. /Ibid./, p. 15.
11. /Ibid./, p. 15.
12. /Ibid./, p. 16.
13. /Daily Telegraph/, 5 November 1988.
14. Greenwood,/ op. cit./, p. 23.
15. /Ibid./, p. 25.
16. /Ibid./, p. 25-26.
17. /Ibid/., p. 38.
18. /Times/, 15 September 1988.
19. Greenwood, op. cit., p. 46.
20. /Ibid/., p. 54.
21. /Ibid./, p. 72.
22. /Ibid./, p. 86-87.
23. /Ibid./, p. 243.
24. /Ibid./, p. 243-244.
25. /Ibid/., p. 244.
26. Extracted from C. Greenwood, "Comparative Statistics",
in Don B. Kates, ed., /Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics
Speak Out/, North River Press, np, 1979, p. 54.
27. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 246.
28. T. Jackson, /Legitimate Pursuit/, Ashford Press, Southampton,
1988.
29. /Times/, 26 August 1987.
30. /Times/, 7 January 1988.
31. Combined from data in Greenwood, /Firearms Control/,
op. cit., p. 235, 236 and /Times/, 3 November 1988.
32. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 237.
33. M. Bateman, /This England/, Penguin, London, 1969, p.
112.
34. /Times/, 15 September 1988
35. Jackson, op. cit., p. 45.
36. /Daily Telegraph/, 27 July 1989, p. 1.
37. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, op. cit., p. 173.
38. Kopel, op. cit., p. 2-3.
39. /Ibid./, p. 3.
40. Quoted in Kates, /Restricting Handguns/, op. cit., p. 185.
41. /Ibid./, p. 185.
42. R. A. I. Munday, "Civilian Possession of Military Firearms",
/Salisbury Review/, March 1988, p. 45-49.
43. /Times/, 26 August 1988, p. 3.
44. Munday, op. cit.
45. /Times/, 26 August 1988, p. 3.
46. /USA Today/, 18 April 1984.
47. Greenwood, "Comparative Statistics", op. cit., p. 37-38.
48. /Ibid./, p. 35-36.
49. Munday, op. cit., /passim./
50. /Ibid./
51. Kopel,/ op. cit./, p. 18.
52. /Ibid/., p. 3.
53. S. Gabb, /Gun Control in Britain/, Political Notes No. 33,
Libertarian Alliance, London, 1988, p. 4.
54. /Sunday Telegraph/, 30 July 1989, p. 20.
FURTHER READING
C. Greenwood, /Firearms Control/, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London,
1972. The definitive academic study of the problem; a comprehensive
historical, legal, statistical, criminological and practical survey
of firearms control in England and Wales. Written by a former senior
police officer who now edits /Guns Review/, the leading firearms
journal in the country and is a voice of reason on the subject.
Iconoclastic and indispensable to any understanding of the subject.
Don B. Kates, ed., /Firearms and Violence/, Pacific Institute
for Public Policy Research, San Fransisco, 1984. An encyclopaedic
collection of studies by 17 academics and lawyers, covering every
area of the issue from a perspective sympathetic to gun ownership. Some
of these scholars, including Professor James D. Wright, former president
of the American Sociological Association, began their studies advocating
stricter firearms control, and became convinced of the opposite case
as a result of their researches. A complete demolition of the case
for totalitarianism in firearms.
Don B. Kates, ed., /Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics
Speak Out/, North River Press, np, 1979. Essays by eight experts
on the subject of legal controls on pistols and other firearms. Most
of the authors are American "liberals" in law and academe
who dissent here from the gun-control orthodoxy of US "liberalism",
and explain why.
T. Jackson, /Legitimate Pursuit/, Ashford Press, Southampton,
1988. Sponsored by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation
as a response to the 1988 Firearms (Amendment) Bill, and covering
only sporting guns, this short book, by one of Britain's leading experts
on the subject, gives useful technical information about different
guns and solid arguments, based on facts, against further firearms
restrictions, while being rather defensive and not challenging the
basic principles of British gun control. The use of guns for sporting
purposes has hardly been mentioned in my essay, which emphasises the
use of firearms for self-defence.
/Law and Policy Quarterly/, volume 5, number 3, July 1983. An
interdisciplinary American academic journal with contributions by
eight experts from a viewpoint critical of further restrictions. Some
of the essays were later included in /Firearms and Violence/
in extended forms.
D. B. Kopel, "Trust the People", Cato Institute Policy Analysis
No. 109, 11 July 1988. A short pamphlet by an American lawyer that
contains most of the relevant facts and arguments in an easily digested
form.
S. Gabb, /Gun Control in Britain/, Political Notes No. 33, Libertarian
Alliance, London, 1988. A short and useful critique of gun control
from a libertarian perspective.
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Political Notes No. 47
ISSN 0267 7059 ISBN 1 870614 74 7
An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance,
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Copyright 1990: Libertarian Alliance; David Botsford
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