Quite often, in my travels on these here Interwebz, I find gun grabbers pontificating how cool it would be if we were just like Britain. After all, they have stringent gun control, and their homicide rates are SOOOOOO much lower than ours!
Must be the fault of the evil gunz, right?
After all, the United States, according to recent figures, has 4.7 murders per 100,000 residents, while the United Kingdom has 1.
Must be the fault of the evil gunz, right?
Ehhhh… not so fast.
While the United States does, in fact, have a higher murder rate than the UK and much more guns in circulation, anyone with a shred of an education knows that correlation does not equal causation, and that the presence of guns tells a very limited and very inaccurate story.
We have by far one of the highest per capita gun ownership rates in the world, and yet, we’re far from being the most violent country out there.
Countries such as Latvia, that have the same per capita murder rate that we do, have a much lower gun ownership rate. Whereas we boast 90 firearms per 100 people, and despite this fact, our per capita homicide rates are below those of Estonia and Lithuania, Haiti, the Cayman Islands, and Mexico, which all have gun ownership rates far below ours.
So is it really the guns?
I’m thinking not so much, especially with our homicide, accidental death and violent crime rates on the decline, while gun ownership increases.
The UK enacted its strict gun control legislation after the 1996 Dunblane massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 16 children and their teacher. The ban did not stop murders in the UK. As a matter of fact, they increased dramatically in the aftermath of the legislation, and reached their peak in 2003/2004.
That said, the nation has had historically low homicide rates to begin with, so the increase was definitely noticeable.
What also is notable are the low homicide rates prior to the enactment of the gun control legislation, which left most Britons disarmed and vulnerable to armed thugs.
So in a country with historically low homicide rates, one incident prompted a comprehensive infringement on the people’s right to bear arms, and said infringement had no appreciable effect on the already low homicide rates in this country.
Meanwhile in the United States, we finally got rid of the odious and worthless “assault” weapons ban, gun ownership rates have been climbing, and homicide rates have been declining steadily.
But if you think that the Brits are finished spanking the gun owners for incidents of violence for which they are not responsible, you would be wrong. According the latest news from the UK, if you’re a registered gun owner in Britain, you will be subject to unannounced police visits to your home, and warrantless inspections of firearms storage.
Right to privacy? Forget it.
Right to property? Screw you.
If you are a gun owner in the UK, you have no rights. And yet, we have Mommies Demanding Action for Gunsense screeching about safe storage laws… for the children.
They either don’t understand that such mandates would involve massive violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, or they don’t care.
My bet is on the latter.
They want more stringent controls. They demand universal background checks that would essentially eliminate private firearms sales, infringing on the people’s right to dispose of their property without government interference.
They want a ban on scary, black rifles for no other reason than they’re black and scary.
And all for what?
For nothing. The UK’s example shows that their gun control laws have had no effect on actual murder rates, but instead of looking at actual causes of violence, the gun grabbers in this country want to be just like the UK.
Do we want to emulate a nation that routinely infringes on its citizens’ right to privacy, right to property, and right to self defense in vain?
I would hope the answer is a resounding “NO!”
