I had plans for a full post using this article, but I’m just not feeling it. Still if you haven’t read it you should!
Again, read the whole thing, but just for a taste, here’s the closing paragraph:
That’s a 17,544% increase in England’s assault crime over the past 100 years. In truth, there is no explicit correlation between gun control laws and murder rates between countries (Switzerland and Israel “have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.”) It is the case that handguns used in crimes in the UK have doubled since they were banned in 1997. Guns can’t account fully for the drop in crime throughout the 20th century, nor can they account fully for the rise in violent crime over the past 100 years, but there is no doubt that accessibility to firearms has worked as a successful deterrence against criminals in progressive societies and that bans have ensured that any handguns in England are only falling into criminal hands.
Should we proliferate handguns around England tomorrow? Probably not. (Obviously we should begin with firearm training sessions – safety first!) But liberalizing gun laws should not be off the table. Historically, they’ve earned it.
