-Caveat Lector-
Via www.worldtribune.com/index-so2-text.html
> The true effect of Britain's gun control laws
>
>
> By David Morgan
> SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
>
>
> Monday, September 27, 1999
>
> No country is more often referred to as a model for gun control than is Britain.
> Somehow the popular media has fostered this quaint vision of a civil society
> with few guns floating around. This image has quite an appeal to U. S. gun
> control advocates, the basis being that fewer guns make for a more civilized
> society. However, a close analysis shows that there is a good deal more to it
> than that.
>
> However, Britain is not totally disarmed. Actually there are some two million
> legal shotguns in Britain and several hundred thousand handguns as well as some
> two million firearms that are illegally owned.
>
> In order to understand gun laws in Britain it is necessary to look at their
> society in terms of some of their other laws. A fundamental axiom in Britain
> that one writer often remembers a British woman saying to an American is that
> "We're subjects. You're citizens." This is no minor difference.
>
> According to David Kopel in his book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy
> "In the American system, the individual citizen is the 'starting point and
> motivational power of the political process.' Government is delegated to the
> people, and it remains subordinate to the people. Indeed, the Constitution and
> the Bill of Rights were intended to keep the government inferior to the people
> in terms of physical force. As James Madison's friend Tench Coxe explained, the
> federal government could never successfully tyrannize America, for 'The
> unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state
> government, but where I trust in God will ever remain, in the hands of the
> American people.'"
>
> By contrast, the parliament in Britain is the supreme entity. A clearly
> expressed act of Parliament cannot be questioned on constitutional grounds by
> any British court of law. A "majority" in Parliament means virtually the control
> of the entire government. It is a democracy by consent and not by delegation. In
> actuality the system in Britain does not mean legislative supremacy. It means
> executive supremacy. The leader of the dominant party in Parliament faces no
> effective opposition or checks and balances.
>
> It is noteworthy that American criminal cases are prosecuted in the name of "the
> people," while British cases are prosecuted in the name of the monarch. One
> nation is the United States while the other is the United Kingdom. According to
> Kopel "What America calls 'domestic tranquility' Britain calls 'the Queen's
> Peace. The different phrasing reflects the British assumption that the
> government is not simply an arbiter between individuals, but an independent
> power, sufficient unto itself with the authority to take whatever steps it needs
> to protect its own interests in peace. As a result many rights that are
> fundamental in America are less than secure in Britain."
>
> The "rights of Englishmen" that developed from the 1689 English Bill of Rights
> were an important basis for the American Bill of Rights. These American rights,
> and not only the right to bear arms, have "flourished in America and withered in
> Britain."
>
> For instance, the grand jury in Britain was abolished in 1933. Civil jury trials
> have been abolished for all cases except libel. Criminal jury trials are rare.
> America has the Miranda rules, while in Britain police are allowed to continue
> to interrogate suspects who have asked that the interrogation stop, and the
> police are even allowed to bar defense attorneys from seeing suspects under
> interrogation for limited periods. Britain allows the use of testimony derived
> from leads developed in a coerced confession. Even the standard of proof beyond
> a reasonable doubt has been eroded. Suspected terrorists now carry the burden of
> proving their innocence. In addition wiretaps do not need judicial approval. The
> British Criminal Justice Act of 1967 abolished the necessity for unanimous jury
> verdicts in criminal trials and eliminated the requirement for a full hearing of
> evidence at committal hearings.
>
> Freedoms guaranteed Americans in the First Amendment that uphold freedom of
> speech and the right to assemble are also subject to qualifications from the
> British Parliament. The government frequently bans books on national security.
> British libel laws tend to favor those who bring suit against the free press.
> And, in addition, in Britain the government may apply for a prior restraint of
> speech, asking that the court censor a newspaper without the newspaper even
> having notice or the opportunity to present a counter argument.
>
> The Official Secrets Act makes the unauthorized receipt of information from any
> governmental agency illegal and even allows the government to forbid publication
> of any "secret" it pleases. The U.S. government carries the burden of proving
> that a document was appropriately classified as secret, whereas the British
> subject carries the burden of proving it should not be secret. These laws create
> a chilling effect on the British media in whatever its efforts may be to expose
> governmental wrongdoing. In 1988 Prime Minister Thatcher forbade television
> stations to broadcast in-person statements which the government construed as
> supportive of a legal political party, Sinn Fein. A joint press/government
> committee sends "D-notices" to editors, requesting self-censorship of specific
> national security subjects. The British press almost always obeys.
>
> The Security Service Act of 1989 states that "no entry on or interference with
> property shall be unlawful if it is authorized by a warrant from the secretary
> of state." Upon an order from the executive branch ( the secretary of state)
> theft, damage to property, arson, procuring information for blackmail, and
> leaving planted evidence are not crimes.
>
> The quest for security has been and is eating away at many of the traditional
> rights of British subjects. In the United States we are fortunate enough to have
> a written Constitution that spells out many of the checks and balances required
> to maintain the sovereignty of its citizens' rights. Among these are a separate
> legislative, judicial, and executive branch. In addition to that, just as the
> Constitution carefully protects an independent press in the First Amendment to
> act as a checking function on the government by keeping the people informed, the
> Second Amendment provides the ultimate check against tyranny by guaranteeing the
> citizens their individual right to bear arms. In the United States these five
> checks and balances are clearly spelled out.
>
> The British are less fortunate. When the Law Lords upheld a temporary injunction
> against the publication of the book Spycatcher, one of the Lords who dissented
> complained: "Having no written constitution, we have no equivalent in our law to
> the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America." Human
> rights are built into American life by the Constitution.
>
> British gun control first became a real factor with the Firearms Act of 1920,
> which allowed the sale of pistols and rifles only to those who showed "good
> reason" for receiving a police permit. Further restrictions were put in place in
> the 1930's. Ironically, at around the same time that Hitler was disarming the
> Jews, Britain, especially after the fall of Dunkirk, found itself short of arms
> to defend its island. The Home Guard was even drilling with canes and umbrellas!
> A great cry went out for guns. The British government ran ads throughout the
> U.S. saying "Send a Gun to Defend a British Home." Those pleas did not fall on
> deaf ears. The National Rifle Association shipped 7,000 guns to Britain, and
> thousands of U.S. citizens donated their own weapons. `Winston Churchill stated
> that over one million guns were eventually donated for the defense of Britain.
>
> After the war, with the lessons of the past having been forgotten, the British
> passed the Criminal Justice Act of 1967. Among the features this bill fostered
> was that self-defense was no longer considered a good reason for owning not only
> a gun but even nonlethal chemical defenses such as Mace. The bill also further
> regulated the ownership of shotguns and regulated what firearms, what quantity
> of firearms, and how much ammunition of what type a licensee may own. In 1987
> another big push to further restrict arms included a bill to license bows as
> well as to restrict people who carried knives for self-defense. Even dogs have
> been established as legitimate targets for "control" advocates. Under 1991
> legislation, all pit bulls must be neutered or euthanized. A ban on one form of
> self defense leads to new forms of self defense and then to new bans.
>
> What has been the true effect of all these gun controls and commensurate social
> controls? With regard to the gun laws' overall impact on gun misuse, there is
> unfortunately an enormous lack of criminological data and practically no
> academic analysis. Most of the laws resulting in stringent gun controls were
> done on a kneejerk basis with little hard evidence to support that the controls
> would and have done any good, other than to disarm law abiding British subjects.
> The number of illegal guns shows no signs of shrinking. Some 300,000 illegal
> handguns have been surrendered since the end of WWII, which indicates a large
> existing pool of such guns.
>
> Whatever the exact numbers may be, there is certainly a large underground market
> for such guns. A handgun can be "rented" for a crime for $150; if the gun is
> fired, the criminal keeps the gun and forfeits his additional deposit. During
> the 1970's the criminal misuse of firearms skyrocketed some 450 percent. But,
> the key question is, have British gun controls appreciably protected the
> ordinary citizen? Not really. David Kopel states that "from the 1950s to the
> 1970s the British murder rate tripled, while the percentage of firearms or
> explosives used in murder stayed constant, at about 8 to 10 percent. Indeed, the
> percentage is approximately the same as it was at the turn of the century, when
> there were no gun controls."
>
> Since then, in the next two decades, the picture of gun control in Britain might
> show that homicides have declined slightly, have had very little effect on
> robbery, and have, in fact, increased burglary in occupied residences. A 1982
> survey showed that 59 percent of attempted burglaries took place against an
> occupied home, compared with just 13 percent in the U.S. Fear of being shot
> convinces most burglars in America to hit empty dwellings.
>
> Overall it would appear that culture matters more than various laws about guns.
> According to U. S. Department of Justice and Interpol figures, total deaths per
> 100,000 from suicide and homicide were 20.1 in the U.S. versus 9.7 in Britain.
> In contrast, burglaries in the U.S. were 1264 per 100,000 versus 1640 per
> 100,000 in Britain. However, where some of the particular cultural factors in
> the U.S. are taken into account, the figures show that American blacks have an
> annual homicide rate of 34.4; Hispanics a rate of 19.9; and non-Hispanic whites
> a homicide rate of 3.3 per 100,000. Another factor to be considered are other
> external controls imposed on criminal behavior. In London, about 14% of all
> robberies end in a conviction, whereas only 10% of Chicago robberies lead even
> so far as an arrest.
>
> America in general seems to be a more violent country than Britain. But all the
> evidence shows that there is little factual basis to infer that it is guns that
> make American society more violent. Rapes in America run at a rate of 35.7 per
> 100,000, but in Britain at only 2.7 per 100,000. However, only 7 percent of
> American rapists use guns. Indeed, the incident of rape in the U.S. drops
> dramatically in those areas where women are allowed to carry concealed weapons.
>
> If "human rights" and "civil liberties" are the mark of "civilization", America,
> with all of its freedoms, is the most civilized of nations, and its
> Constitutional right to bear arms is one of the magnificent threads holding
> together its gorgeous fabric. Wars throughout "civilized" Europe have in this
> century alone killed over 60 million people, a number far higher than all the
> collective killings in America over its entire history. Was it guns that caused
> WWII or was it Hitler? Genocide is unheard of against an armed citizenry.
>
> The real problem with any nation that focuses on "gun control" to combat crime
> is that such a focus serves as a distraction from the core problems needing
> attention. When "doing something" about crime means "doing something" about guns
> the result is often more harmful than beneficial. The necessary efforts really
> needed are often swept aside in the euphoria of having "done something." There
> is very little hard evidence to show that Britain's extensive gun control laws
> did much other than to deprive British subjects of some of their basic civil
> liberties in favor of greater government authority.
>
> (The writer is indebted to David Kopel's book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the
> Cowboy as well as to John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime for many of the
> facts and data in this article.)
>
> David Morgan is publisher of the Asheville (N.C.) Tribune where this column was
> first published. The Tribune can be contacted by calling 828-254-1311 or email
> at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
> Monday, September 27, 1999
A<>E<>R
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