Michael Peach, the home educating house dad, doesn’t only write about home education. He has this to say about the current state of British gun control:
Two teenage girls have been shot dead in Birmingham. Details are sketchy as nobody wants to talk to the police but it seems they were shot outside a party and a car was riddled with bullets, at least thirty shots were fired. Already the call has gone out for stricter gun control with the government now considering a minimum sentence of five years for carrying an illegal weapon.
This misses the point completely. The situation is this … the bad guys have got guns. No amount of extra sentencing is going to change this. It is time to stop messing around and let the good guys have guns too. Would the gunman or gunmen have been able to fire at will if he thought someone else was going to fire back. He / they had a gun and could just take their time and fire at will knowing they were totally unthreatened. Just the thought that he might get shot himself would have made him think twice before going on the rampage.
As is now being proven everyday on the streets of the UK Gun control does not work.
And yes, this was the same incident that Perry de Havilland noted here yesterday.
The significance of this is not just what Mike says, although heaven knows it’s true enough; it’s who he is. Britain’s home-educators are a less God-fearing and more string quartet playing, Labour voting, Guardian reading, vegitarian, sandal-wearing, woolly knitting, woolly wearing, woolly minded lot than those of the USA. If just a tiny number of those people even get to hear that someone like them thinks that the gun problem in Britain now is that people like us don’t have enough guns, then the long term beneficial effect could be enormous. This is, after all, an extremely simple idea to grasp, even if your first reaction to it is one of pure horror, and once someone has put the notion in your head, it is hard to shake it out.
In the USA, if I get the picture right, believing what Mike says is fairly normal, and in some parts almost de rigeur. Not everyone does believe it, but everyone knows that others do even if they don’t. Right? (Commenters feel free to correct me if I need it.) In Britain, such is the primitive state of this debate that the number of people willing to say things like this in public, such as on the radio or even in a blog, is as close to zero as makes hardly any difference. But as we all know, the difference between hardly anyone and actually no-one can be all the difference. So special kudos to people like Mike who are willing to say such things.
In general, Mike’s blog is well worth the regular attention of samizdata readers.
“In the USA, if I get the picture right, believing what Mike says is fairly normal, and in some parts almost de rigeur. Not everyone does believe it, but everyone knows that others do even if they don’t. Right?”
It’s the “in some parts” that really sums up the experience in the USA. Whether or not people may own and/or carry guns is determined at the state (and sometimes city) level, so you will find widely variable laws and attitudes.
Some examples:
In my home state of Texas, ownership of guns is widespread and no permit or registration is required to own a gun. There are no restrictions on carrying long guns (shotguns and rifles), although openly carrying one in certain areas may get you charged with disturbing the peace. Hanguns are forbidden to be carried outside the home unless you have a Concealed Handgun License (or unless you’re going to and from an activity where the gun will be used). However, Texas also has a defense of “need” where you will not be charged with a gun crime if it turns out that you needed it to defend yourself.
I once considered moving to New York state, but after studying their laws decided against it. They require a permit for each gun that is purchased (you must petition a judge for the permit). The permit determines whether you may carry the gun or not (although I think you have to know somebody to get one of those types of permits). Within New York state, New York City requires even stricter licensing to keep a gun at home (I’ve heard horror tales about trying to get a license there).
The best state with regards to carry is Vermont, where there are no restrictions on carrying a firearm. Anyone who is legally able to possess a gun can carry it.
All these different laws make travelling interesting. On my trip to California over the summer I went through New Mexico and Arizona. In New Mexico I had to put my gun in the glove box (or center console), since they didn’t recognize the Texas CHL (but they allow anyone to carry a handgun in a vehicle). Arizona had a similar law, but also recognized my Texas CHL. California was a whole other story. I ended up having to unload it and lock it in a case before crossing the border.
All bets are off when it comes to the federal government, though. You can’t take a gun into the Post Office, regardless of what kind of permit you have from the state. You also can’t take a gun into a National Park (Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.) (unless it’s disassembled and cased).
Attitudes also vary as much as the laws, but in states like New York and California, the rural population (which is often more pro-gun) is getting the shaft from the much larger cities with regards to representation (kind of a smaller version of the red map effect from the 2000 election).
In all that long-winded stuff I said above, I forgot to mention that I feel for all of you in Britain right now. If I were you I would have probably left the country long ago, given my personal proclivities on the subject of self-defense.
Sometimes it takes a horrible event to shake people up and get them to thinking about other alternatives. That’s how we came to have a concealed carry law in Texas. There was a mass shooting by a deranged man at a resturant in Killeen, TX where a woman watched her parents being killed and she could do nothing because her gun was in the car (she was following the law at the time). That woman went on to become a state representative and campaigned for the new law (her name is Suzanna Gratia-Hupp). Of course we also had to replace the governor to get it done (failure to sign the concealed carry law was one of the primary reasons for the defeat of Ann Richards by George W Bush, who promised to sign it if it was presented to him).
I hope that you can turn the tide on this one before more innocent teenagers are killed.
Forgive me if I’m missing something, but if the good guys carrying guns is so effective at reducing shootings, why are there proportionately so many more shootings in the United States than in Britain?
I’m From Florida and we have quite a bit of Transplanted New Yorkers and Nerjerseyites here. most of them understand the right to bear arms, and it is often one of the reasons that they moved. So, no its usually NOT the majority of the people in an area with bad gun laws who support it. Its usually the vocal minority who vote.
The white gun crime rate in the US is in line with the rest of the western world.
Mark asked: “[W]hy are there proportionately so many more shootings in the United States than in Britain?”
Because, as Aubrey Turner amply demonstrated, guns laws differ from state to state and even from city to city. In some places it’s easy for the good guys to buy and carry; in others, it’s nearly impossible — and the cities with the highest rate of gun crimes (D.C., New York) are the ones with the most restrictive gun laws.
Also, gun crimes are not the sole evil on this earth. If a rapist threatens his victim with a gun or a knife, what matter?
You are going to have a distorted view of crime if gun crime is your only window on it.
If arming the populace increases gun crime, but reduces overall crime, then this is a good thing. (But the New York Times will hype the former and ignore the latter, surely as night follows day)
I *want* rapists to fear what my sister might have in her purse. I want them to tremble in their little rapist booties… and then go home, deciding the risk of getting their rapist head blown off of their rapist neck ain’t worth it.
And Europeans call *us* barbarians? I think not.
Does anyone remember those maps showing the counties that voted for Gore in one color and those for Bush in another after the last Presidential election? Well, those colors also reflect the parts of the US which have liberal gun control laws versus those with conservative (lack of) gun control laws.
Someone put together some statistics comparing the two groups, one of which was the average murder rate per 100,000 residents. Among Gore counties it was 13.2, and among Bush counties it was 2.1.
Gun control is to violent criminals what Hans Blix is to Saddam Hussein.
Regarding government calls for stricter gun control and minimum sentencing, it is the same old labour/liberal idea “if it doesn’t work, just try harder.” Think about (disastrous) public education and (pour more) money.
Ken Hagler, smart guy that he is, beat me to the punch on my favorite point in this debate; where firearms ownership is widespread, violent crime is much lower. Pretty much stands to reason; if you are a criminal and you are unsure as to getting shot for committing a crime, you move on to greener pastures.
England and the “Red States” are an example of an inherent contradiction in liberal thinking; i.e.: law abiding people cannot be trusted to remain law abiding if they own the best means of defending themselves. I know it’s not logical, but the only other arguments for “gun control” is that the firearm and not the person using it is to blame for “gun violence.”
Gun control is just a legislative fantasy designed to garner votes from the factually unsophisticated. It works a treat in New York where most liberals (socialists and quasi socialists) believe that taking guns from the law abiding will solve the problem. They are like turkeys voting for Christmas.
If the liberals really believed the nonsense they peddle, they would argue for disarming the police, especially as we now have such powerful laws to remove guns from the big bad world out there. Since liberals hate the cops why aren’t they asking the cops to hand in their Barretas and Glocks?
“Say no more, say no more,” as they used to say in the old Monty Python days.
In the halcyon days, when I would put on my wig and gown and battle for the common criminal, I knew the law was an ass, but over here the political party in favour of this arrant nonsense (gun control law writing) symbolizes itself with a dissipated donkey.
Mark (see above) should perhaps update himself on gun crime in the US. We now regularly have articles in the US and New York press drawing the point that gun crime is gathering speed at an alarming pace in the UK and even outpacing the American experience. There are liberals now wondering if there might be votes to lose in the gun issue after the UK gun crime boom.
Gun laws destroy trees and have little firepower suppression value, save only for the trees cut down for newsprint that won’t go up in flames next dry season.
One other point, why are the UK police forces (sorry police services) increasing the number of guns and occasions that they carry and use them?
I am a home-educating, gun-owning libertarian from what is arguably the reddest part of the “Red Zone” of the US (Utah). Here, gun controllers generally are exotic species found only on university campuses and in the liberal, Californicated enclaves of Park City, Moab, and east Salt Lake City. The overwhelming majority of Utahns accept the premise that gun control is at best ineffective.
Polls here have shown about 60% of Utah households admit to owning at least one gun; there are over 50,000 concealed weapon permittees in the state (about 2.5% of the adult population); and Utah law strongly favors self-defense. Yet our homicide rate just hit a 30-year low and continues to decline (about 1.7 per 100,000 population this year).
If the premise that gun ownership promotes crime were true, Utah should have homicide rates far above the national average. Yet its rate is comparable to, if not lower than, the rates of most European countries.
In other words, we can own guns AND have low crime.
Sorry to rub it in.
Kevin
It all depends whether you think 20,000 gun related deaths per year are OK (for 300m people) or 100 (for 60m people). On balance I think I prefer the latter. Yes, some criminals have guns and so do some police. But letting every paranoid schizo have a gun wouldn’t help the situation.
Toby
Putting the question of principle to one side and just focusing on the outcomes, what about the homicides that were avoided because of gun ownership? To put it another way, surely the question is not how many homicides are caused by guns, the question is how many homicides there are, period. If areas with gun ownership have fewer homicides than areas without, one possibility (I agree, not the only one) is that gun ownership had lead to fewer deaths. And that must be a good thing.
As I say, I put entirely to one side the question of principle.
Sorry, I think I have just repeated a point made by about 50 people before me 🙂
It was very heartening (but not all that surprising) to read the views of the Home Educating Dad on gun control. Both attitudes stem from the same source, acceptance (embraceance) of personal responsibility, that quality that The State would rather usurp than entrust to The People it purportedly exists to serve.
I live in New York City, where ownership of a personal firearm has never really been something I’ve considered. But I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with this scenario. My 34-year-old son JP now lives in Texas, at least in part due to its policy towards personal self-defense, and I’m grateful to him for enlightening me to Samizdata and other Libertarian resources.
Those who fear the consequences of letting “every paranoid schizo have a gun” display their own brand of paranoia with such statements. The succinct Life/Death Clock provided by the NRA puts it very clearly. Public apprehension towards firearms has been fueled by the bias of the fear-mongering media, which play up every violent homicide while rarely reporting on instances of successful self-defense. If media coverage reflected the proportion of “Death by Firearm Homicide” vs. “Lives Saved by Accesible Firearm” indicated by the statistics shown, public opinion may not be as skewed towards passive abrogation of the right (and responsibility) of defending oneself against crime. Ah, but reporting of successful self-defense with a firearm is regarded as “un-PC,” and such stories frequently provoke protests from anti-gun nuts.
In all this talk of crime and self-defense, the original motivation for inclusion of the 2nd Amendment in the US Constitution is often overlooked. Those wise founders of this Republic weren’t as concerned with violent crime as they were wary of the abuses of power which inevitably creep up when governments become increasingly powerful. Well aware of human tendencies, they included the 2nd Amendment to ensure that The People would retain the power to protect their other Rights against encroachment by increasingly intrusive governments of the future – hence the common labeling of the right to keep and bear arms as “The First Freedom.” Their foresight has been validated in countless situations in various parts of the world over the past two centuries. As vital as it is to address the reality of personal self-defense against crime, we must remember that only by thinking the unthinkable can we avoid the kinds of abuses made possible where a well-armed State rules a totally disarmed Populace.
I don’t own a gun, by choice, but I very much cherish that it is still my choice. And when a bunch of guys with guns tell me it’s no longer my choice, I start to feel like I might need one!
Praise to clear and free thinkers like the Home Educating House Dad, Samizdatans, and others who refuse put their fate into the hands of The State.
(Tentatively) unarmed New Yorker
Someone in the Mother Country please explain this situation to us backwards excolonials:
A Scottish shooters’ club warns its local Scottish constabulary that one of its Scottish members is mad; the Scottish constables ignore them and the mad Scottish member picks off a bevy of wee Scottish bairns.
The Scottish (or at least Scottish-named) Prime Minister drafts a severe law, and hires a washed-up Scottish actor to go round touting it to the public.
And so ends the centuries-old right of ENGLISHMEN to own pistols?
The Scots are said to be significantly more murderous than the English, but actually most of the UK’s “gun crime” is imported from another country with a big X on its flag.
Despite the way it might seem, there are still a few of us Brits who agree with Brian’s comments.
I’ve got so fed up with all the illiberal propaganda in the mass media that I’ve set up a little website of my own.
(PS if you’re an American, you’d better check out the site before you write it off on the basis that it’s “liberal”)
Sorry – I’m still confused. US states differ from each other in gun laws and killing rates, accepted. But then why are their murder rates _all_ higher than Britain’s?
So if law-abiding people owning guns is so effective at reducing murder rates, then why is the “low and falling” homicide rate quoted above (Utah) of 1.7 per 100,000 or 17 per million still rather a lot higher than Britain’s murder rate (closer to ten per million)?
What’s the idea exactly? If every single person in Utah is armed the Utah murder rate might eventually fall to the level Britain has already?
Serious question: is there a single US state with murder rates as low as Britain?
And if not, what is all this stuff about Britain being overrun with shootings and therefore a need for honest folk to have guns? Please clarify!
mark,
According to the Home Office there were 850 recorded homicides in England & Wales in the year 2001.
From a population of roughly 50 million, I make 1.7 homicides per 100,000.
David
Interesting result. I wasn’t aware that the rates were that close.
Which would imply that gun ownership has no effect on homicide rates.
And since Utah does not have the lowest homicide rate in the US, that would mean other states (Wyoming, Dakotas) have *lower* homicide rates than England/Wales.
Also, the US homicide rate includes things like “manslaughter,” a crime where one person kills another that is different from “murder.” I’ve read that the statistics for the UK only include murder, not manslaughter. If that’s true, the rate of people killing each other unlawfully in the UK is actually higher.
Hmm, that leads to another difference in statistics. Here in the US if someone kills someone else in self-defense, it’s not a crime and therefore not considered in crime rates. I know the UK persecutes people who defend themselves, so their murder rate probably includes some number of people who were convicted of a crime but didn’t actually do anything wrong.
Ah – my apologies! 850 is definitely higher than it used to be. I was remembering the “good old days” of around 600 to 700 murders a year….
Mind you, the UK is 60 million people these days, so Britain’s murder rate [doubts about definitions aside] is not yet as high as 1.5 per 100,000, never mind 1.7.
Important points about manslaughter and self-defence though. Maybe I can find the successor of Social Trends by HMSO on the web. Obviously differences of definition of unlawful killing could hide a lot of issues either way.
Thanks!
Regarding gun rate deaths in the uk and us. The us has lots of guns and lots of killing. The uk used to have some legal guns, some illegal guns and hardly any killing. Now the uk has no legal guns ,an increasing number of illegal guns and an increasing amount of killing.
In what way does this show that the us banning guns is a good idea? Or that the uk banning guns was a good idea?
I’m giving a speech in college in a couple of weeks. It’s a persuasive speech. I would love to give it on gun control in America. So far these are the most intelligent comments I have ever hesrd on the issue.(except for my Dad’s, of couse) If anyone would like to help me prepare please send whatever info. you have of just some really good ideas to my e-mail adddress shamby@axp.flcc.edu Thank you very much, I’m looking foward to hearing from you
hey man, just want to say hi
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what has happened to michael peach blog?