Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [ACUS 10] at [WACCVM.SPS.MOT.COM] (Mark Fuller)
Subject: [Gun World] How Britain Lost its Gun Rights
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1993 23:47:53 GMT

                          THE GREAT LIE

[From Gun World, Sept. 93
Kopel's Komment]

by David Kopel

        This article continues our look at the how the British
people lost their right to bear arms, a tale with ominous
implications for the United States.

        "War is the health of the state" observed one historian,
and it was World War I that set in motion the growth of the
British government to the size where it could begin to destroy
the right to arms which the British people had enjoyed with
little hindrance for over two centuries.

        After "The Great War" broke out in August 1914, the
British government began assuming "emergency" powers for itself.
"Defense of the Realm Regulations" were enacted which required a
license to buy pistols, rifles or ammunition at retail.

        As the war came to a conclusion in 1918, many British
gunowners no doubt expected that the wartime regulations soon
would be repealed, and Britons would again enjoy the right to
purchase the firearm of their choice without government
permission. But the government had other ideas.

        The disaster of World War I had bred the Bolshevik
Revolution in Russia. Armies of the new Soviet state swept into
Poland, and more and more workers of the world joined strikes
called by radical labor leaders who predicted the overthrow of
capitalism. Many Communists and other radicals thought the
Revolution was at hand; all over the English-speaking world
governments feared the end.

        The reaction was fierce. In America, Attorney General A.
Mitchell Palmer launched the "Palmer raids." Aliens were deported
without hearings, and American citizens were searched and
arrested without warrants and held without bail. While America
was torn by strikes and race riots, Canada witnessed the
government massacre of peaceful demonstrators at the Winnipeg
General Strike of 1919.

        In Britain, the government worried about what would
happen when the war ended and the gun controls expired. A secret
government committee on arms traffic warned of danger from two
sources: the "savage or semi-civilized tribesmen in outlying
parts of the British Empire" who might obtain surplus war arms,
and "the anarchist or 'intellectual' malcontent of the great
cities, whose weapon is the bomb and the automatic pistol."

        At a Cabinet meeting on January 17, 1919, the Chief of
the Imperial General Staff raised the threat of "Red Revolution
and blood and war at home and abroad." He suggested that the
government make sure of its arms. The next month, the Prime
Minister was asking which parts of the army would remain loyal.
The Cabinet discussed arming university men, stockbrokers and
clerks to fight any revolution.

        The Minister of Transport, Sir Eric Geddes, predicted
"revolutionary outbreak in Glasgow, Liverpool or London in the
early spring, when a definite attempt may be made to seize the
reins of government.

        "It is not inconceivable," Geddes warned, "that a
dramatic and successful coup d'etat in some large center of
population might win the support of the unthinking mass of
labour." Using the Irish gun licensing system as a model, the
Cabinet made plans to disarm enemies of the state and to prepare
arms for distribution "to friends of the Government."

        Although popular revolution was the motive, the Home
Secretary presented the government's 1920 gun bill to Parliament
as strictly a measure "to prevent criminals and persons of that
description from being able to have revolvers and to use them."
In fact, the problem of criminal, non-political misuse of
firearms remained minuscule.

        Of course, 1920 would not be the last time a government
lied in order to promote gun control. In 1989 in the United
States, various police administrators and drug enforcement
bureaucrats set off national panic about "assault weapons" by
claiming that semi-automatic rifles were the "weapon of choice"
of drug dealers and other criminals. Actually, police statistics
regarding gun seizures showed that the guns accounted for only
about one percent of gun crime.

        Many Americans swallowed the 1989 lie about "assault
weapon" crime, and most Britons in 1920 swallowed the lie about
handgun crime. Indeed, the carnage of World War I (caused in good
part by the outdated tactics of the British and French general
staffs) had produced a general revulsion against anything
associated with the military, including rifles and handguns.

        Thus the Firearms Act of 1920 sailed through Parliament.
Britons who had formerly enjoyed a right to bear arms were now
allowed to possess pistols and rifles only if they proved they
had "good reason" for receiving a police permit. Shotguns and
airguns, which were perceived as "sporting" weapons, remained
exempt from control.

        In the early years of the Firearms Act, the law was not
enforced with particular stringency, except in Ireland, where
revolutionary agitators were demanding independence from British
rule. Within Great Britain, a "firearms certificate" for
possession of rifles or handguns was readily obtainable. Wanting
to possess a firearm for self-defense was considered a "good
reason" for being granted a firearms certificate.

        The threat of Bolshevik revolution -- the impetus for the
Firearms Act -- had faded quickly as the Communist government of
the Soviet Union found it necessary to spend all its energy
gaining full control over its own people, rather than exporting
revolution. Ordinary firearms crime in Britain -- the pretext for
the Firearms Act--remained minimal. Despite the pacific state of
affairs, the government did not move to repeal the unneeded gun
controls, but began to expand the controls further.

        In 1934, a government task force, the Bodkin Committee,
was formed to study the Firearms Act. The committee collected
statistics on misuse of the guns that were not currently
regulated (shotguns and airguns) and collected no statistics on
the guns under control (rifles and handguns). The committee
concluded that there was no persuasive evidence for repeal of any
part of the Firearms Act. Since the Bodkin Committee had avoided
looking for evidence about how the Firearms Act was actually
working, it was not surprising that the committee found no
evidence in favor of decontrol.

        In 1973 and 1988, when the government was attempting to
expand controls still further, gun control advocates claimed that
the Bodkin Committee report was clear proof of how well the
Firearms Act of 1920 was working and why its controls should be
extended to other guns.

        A somewhat similar phenomenon takes place in the United
States, where the federal Centers for Disease Control funds
research to "prove" that guns in the hands of private citizens
are a malignant "vector" that must drastically be reduced. The
federally funded researchers write articles which cite previous
research validating the effectiveness of gun control -- and quite
often the research cited actually had found that gun control is
ineffective.

        Spurred by the Bodkin Committee, the British government
in 1934 enacted new legislation to outlaw completely (with minor
exceptions) possession of sawed-off shotguns and automatic
firearms. The law was partly patterned after the National
Firearms Act in the United States (which taxed and registered,
but did not prohibit, such guns).

        As a result of alcohol prohibition, America in the 1920s
and early 1930s did have a problem with criminal abuse of
automatic weapons, particularly by the organized crime gangsters
who earned lucrative incomes supplying bootleg alcohol. The
repeal of prohibition in 1933 had sent the American murder rate
into a nosedive, but Congress went ahead and enacted the NFA in
1934 anyway.

        In Britain, there had been no alcohol prohibition, and
hence no crime problem with automatics (or other guns). Yet the
guns were banned since, as the government explained, automatics
were crime guns in the United States, and there was no legitimate
reason for civilians to possess them.

        The same rationale is used today in the drive to outlaw
semi-automatic firearms in the United States. Since some
government officials believe that people do not "need"
semi-automatic firearms for hunting, they believe that such guns
should be prohibited, whether or not the guns are frequently used
in crime.

        Starting in 1936, the British police began adding a
requirement to Firearms Certificates requiring that the guns be
stored securely. As shotguns were not licensed, there was no such
requirement for them.

        While the safe storage requirement might, in the
abstract, seem reasonable, it has been enforced in a highly
unreasonable manner by a police bureaucracy determined to make
firearms owners suffer as much harassment as possible. In one
case, a person traveling from a range to his home left ammunition
in a locked car for an hour. When the ammunition was stolen, the
man was convicted of not keeping the ammunition in a secure
place.

        After the fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation in
1940, Britain found itself short of arms for island defense. The
Home Guard was forced to drill with canes, umbrellas, spears,
pikes and clubs. When citizens could find a gun, it was generally
a sporting shotgun -- ill-suited for military use, because of its
short range and bulky ammunition.

        British government advertisements in American newspapers
and in magazines such as American Rifleman begged Americans to
"Send A Gun to Defend a British Home -- British civilians, faced
with threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of
their homes." The ads pleaded for "Pistols, Rifles, Revolvers,
Shotguns and Binoculars from American civilians who wish to
answer the call and aid in defense of British homes."

        Pro-Allied organizations in the United States collected
weapons; the National Rifle Association shipped 7,000 guns to
Britain. Britain also purchased surplus World War I Enfield
rifles from America's Department of War.

        Prime Minister Winston Churchill's book _Their Finest
Hour_ details the arrival of the shipments. Churchill personally
supervised the deliveries to ensure that they were sent on fast
ships, and distributed first to Home Guard members in coastal
zones. Churchill thought that the American donations were
"entirely on a different level from anything we have transported
across the Atlantic except for the Canadian division itself."
Churchill warned his First Lord that "the loss of these rifles
and field-guns would be a disaster of the first order.

        "When the ships from America approached our shores with
their priceless arms special trains were waiting in all the ports
to receive their cargoes," Churchill recalled. "The Home Guard in
every county, in every town, in every village, sat up all through
the night to receive them.... By the end of July we were an armed
nation ... a lot of our men and some women had weapons in their
hands."

        Before the war, British authorities had refused to allow
domestic manufacture of the Thompson submachine gun because it
was "a gangster gun." When the war broke out, large numbers of
American-made Thompsons were shipped to Britain, where they were
dubbed "tommie guns."

        As World War II ended, the British government did what it
could to prevent the men who had risked their lives in defense of
freedom and Britain from holding onto guns acquired during the
war. Troop ships returning to England were searched for souvenir
or captured rifles, and men caught attempting to bring firearms
home were punished. Guns that had been donated by American
civilians were collected from the Home Guard and destroyed by the
British government.

        And yet, large quantities of firearms slipped into
Britain, where many of them remain to this today in attics and
under floor boards. At least some British gunowners, like their
counterparts in today's gun-confiscating jurisdictions such as
New Jersey and New York City, were beginning to conclude that
their government did not trust them, and that their government
could not be trusted to deal with them fairly.