The guns are in Britain despite gun control
Theodore Dalrymple
National Post
Friday, January 24, 2003
LONDON - It is an article of our modern faith that for every social
problem there must be appropriate and curative legislation waiting to be
enacted. If only the laws were right, all problems would go away, and we
should henceforth live in perfect peace and harmony.
When, therefore, a crazed gunman in Scotland massacred 15 children and
their teacher at the junior school in Dunblane in 1996, the British
government enacted gun control legislation in response to the natural
public emotion and revulsion against this terrible act.
Well, the evidence concerning gun control is unequivocal and conclusive:
It hasn't worked, just as its critics always said it wouldn't. The reason
for this is obvious: law-abiding people don't use guns to commit crimes,
while criminals are not likely to take any notice of licensing
restrictions and regulations.
Crimes involving the use of firearms rose in Britain last year alone by
35%. In the year 2002, 9,974 crimes were committed with the use of a gun;
the year before, there were 7,362 such crimes. In 1954, by contrast, a
princely total of four crimes were committed with the use of a gun.
Something has changed, to put it mildly.
Britain has been horrified by the gunning down of two young girls
recently in the crossfire between two rival gangs, the Johnson Crew and
the Burger Bar Boys, at a New Year's party in a hairdressing salon.
Although there were large numbers of witnesses, the police have had
difficulty in finding people to come forward, for gun law now rules in
inner-city Britain and criminals believe in the death penalty. It is
applied for such heinous crimes as giving statements to the
police.
The law has done nothing to curb the surge in gun crime. A few years ago
the surgeons in the hospital in which I work had virtually no experience
of gunshot wounds: now they are quite adept at their medical management.
Indeed, training courses are now available for surgeons in Britain on how
to treat gunshot wounds, for the treatment of such wounds is clearly a
growth area in British surgery. In our hospital, the policemen routinely
wear bullet-proof jackets, a police guard round a shot patient becoming a
not uncommon sight.
My young patients from the slums know where and how to get a gun, and
they know the current prices too (not high). It is merely a matter of
going down to such-and-such a pub and asking such-and-such a person. You
can afford a gun even on social security.
There are said now to be three million guns illegally held in Britain,
the majority of them coming into possession since the passing of the law
after the Dunblane massacre. The police estimate that up to a third of
criminals possess firearms, though, as yet, death by shooting is
uncommon.
One particularly (and characteristically) stupid measure that the British
government is contemplating in response to the killing of the two girls
in Birmingham is the proscription of imitation firearms. Quite a number
of British criminals have until now contented themselves with the
possession of imitation weapons with which to frighten shopkeepers into
parting with the contents of their tills, but since it will henceforth be
easier to obtain real firearms than imitation ones, there are no prizes
for guessing what will happen next. But the government would rather that
shopkeepers were shot dead than that it was accused of doing
nothing.
The sudden influx of guns into Britain from Eastern Europe is one
unforeseen consequence of the end of the Cold War and the war on Serbia,
though, as yet, it has been spared the trade in heavy weaponry (for
example anti-tank weapons) that French criminals now possess and use. We
have been saved from this by the fact that our cars are right-hand drive,
and so an exchange system of stolen BMWs for liberated bazookas has not
developed. However, it is only a matter of time before heavier weaponry
makes its presence felt. As it is, our police -- who had long prided
themselves on being unarmed -- are already easily outgunned by the
childish thugs of the slums.
The great majority of shootings in Britain are still connected to the
trade in illegal drugs, though occasionally innocents get caught in the
crossfire. The trade in drugs allows people who would otherwise be
unlikely to prosper to make substantial sums very quickly (though they
rarely hang on to them). Some people have used this undoubted fact as an
argument for decriminalizing the sale and distribution of currently
illegal drugs, thus destroying the profits to be made from them; but of
course, a counter-argument applies just as well. The guns are here in
Britain now, and it is unlikely that those who use them will beat their
Uzis and Kalashnikovs into ploughshares once no more money is to be made
out of drugs. They will turn them in other directions, on to people about
whom we care rather more. The plain fact is that the average person in
Britain is rather glad when he hears that a drug dealer has been shot
dead by another drug dealer. I have overheard the police
rejoice.
However, illegal drugs or not, it is unlikely that the effect of de facto
gun law can be confined forever to the slums. Perhaps capital punishment
will come back into fashion. Last week I had a patient who had just
witnessed a murder by shooting (she was too frightened to go to the
police), whose brother had been shot dead by robbers who were trying to
take his gold chain.
"What do you think should happen to people who shoot people
dead?" I asked.
"They should hang," she replied without a moment's hesitation.
She was black, incidentally.
Theodore Dalrymple is a British physician and contributing editor to City
Journal.
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