How’s the UK gun control working out?

In 2009 the headline was UK is violent crime capital of Europe with reports of:

Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.

The total number of violent offences recorded compared to population is higher than any other country in Europe, as well as America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

That was over seven years ago.

Today, some police forces in the UK are underreporting crime by 10s of thousand of cases:

Dru Sharpling from HMIC said: “Despite making some progress following our 2014 inspection, the force is failing some victims of crime. We estimate that the force fails to record over 38,000 reported crimes each year. The reported crimes that go unrecorded include serious crimes, such as violence and sexual offences.

Even so the numbers tell a frightening story with the headline today being Sexual offences convictions in England and Wales hit record levels in the past year:

The number of prosecutions brought for sexual offences has risen to its highest level ever, jumping 22.5 per cent on last year.

In total 11,995 defendants were prosecuted in 2015-16 for sexual offences other than rape, up from 9,789 the year before. The figure has steadily increased since 2012, but never as steeply as in the past year.

Sexual offences range from non-consensual sexual touching to serious sexual assault.

I’m reminded of what John Fogh said nearly 20 years ago that was true decades before and will probably be true until we have handheld phasers:

Nothing says, “Please don’t rape me.” like multiple jacketed hollowpoints.

John Fogh
Insights Self Defense Instructor
February 23, 1999

Why would women ever want to visit, or especially live, in places without easy access to guns?

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33 thoughts on “How’s the UK gun control working out?

  1. It’s not just the gun control laws, either. It’s the ridiculous laws which make it nigh impossible to defend yourself. Some thug whips out a knife on you, and you piledrive him for his temerity? Better hope he doesn’t sue and that the garda’s in a good mood!

    To hell with the UK. As long as they criminalize self defense I won’t go there.

    • The Garda are the Irish police. The Republic of Ireland stopped being part of the UK 100 years ago.

      Hint: Michael Collins

      Self defence is legal in the UK. What is not legal is the US practice of shooting someone who is posing no threat, and then calling it self-defence. OK?

        • What about Zimmerman? Under UK law, what he did was not self-defence. Under US law, he won his case.

          If someone knocks on someone’s door loudly, as has been the situation in some cases, the householder thinks that they have a right to shoot.

          Something is amiss.

          • “Under UK law, what he did was not self-defence.”

            All the more reason we Americans are tremendously thankful that we are no longer part of the United Kingdom either.

            As for self-defense supposedly being legal in the UK… well, that’s cute.

            http://www.naturalnews.com/037166_self_defense_homeowners_violent_criminals.html

            http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20398432

            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1461346/Five-years-in-prison-for-acting-in-self-defence.html

            And those are exclusively where “castle doctrine” would probably apply here in the states. In once-Great Britain, though, you either give the criminal what he wants, or *you* go to jail. Even in your own home.

          • “http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1461346/Five-years-in-prison-for-acting-in-self-defence.html”

            The guy was given bad advice, if we take the story at face value (and we know little of the facts from that account). He should have pleaded ‘not guilty’, because no jury would have convicted him. In a parallel case, the owner of a corner shop was cutting the string off a bundle of newspaper with a pair of scissors, when he was attacked by an armed robber. He stabbed the armed robber, killed him, he went to court & was found not guilty.

            The law says – you may not arm yourself (the article used must be something that comes to hand), you may not use more force than the other person, and you can’t keep going when the other person quits.

            The same law applies to guns. A farmer can get a shotgun for pest control, he might then be attacked, and he then (legally) shoots the assailant in self defense. But he cannot buy a shotgun for self-defense, nor shoot the other person in the back where they are running away (as tempting as it may be).

            There was a case in the 1960s. A bouncer was working on the front door of a night-club, in a period where there was an increasing number of stabbings of bouncers. He took a cosh for ‘protection’. He turned a young man away at the front door, who then decided to stab the bouncer. The bouncer used the cosh to decisively put the man on the sidewalk.

            The police were called to investigate. They just couldn’t ignore the man lying, all but dead, on the sidewalk.

            Policeman (after taking details of name and address): “Where did you get the cosh from?”
            Bouncer: “I brought it in from home”.

            So, he armed himself, which is against the law. The policeman wrote nothing down, but continued the investigation.

            Policeman: “Where did you get the cosh from?”
            Bouncer: “I brought it in from home.”
            Policeman: “Where did you get the cosh from?”
            Bouncer (slowly figuring it out): “I picked it up off the ground.”
            Policeman: “Fair enough, sir.”

            And that was that. Easier, of course, without a dead body.

            Tony Martin, to complete this, was a ‘prohibited possessor’, to use US terminology. He got a shotgun illegally, and shot two lads in the back. He was subsequently convicted off murder, reduced to manslaughter. This is a very different case, at face value, to the other case. It’s a pity that some US organisations, including, sadly, the US NRA (who should know better) would try to make Tony Martin out to be a martyr. Ginny Simone did an absurd piece of camera, for who knows what reason.

          • “Self defence is legal in the UK. What is not legal is the US practice of shooting someone who is posing no threat, and then calling it self-defence.”

            “What about Zimmerman? Under UK law, what he did was not self-defence. Under US law, he won his case.”

            You have a fabulous command of fantasy as perpetrated by the leftist media in the United States. The same simpletons that gave us, “Hands Up; Don’t shoot,” and the Gentle Giant lies. The ones who claim shooting an unarmed person is automatically an unacceptable act (even seen someone who was beaten to death with bare hands? I have.).

            Zimmerman did not shoot someone who posed no threat. Such a thing is murder and quite illegal in this country. Zimmerman proved in court he shot someone who was attempting to beat shit out of him.

            But you keep moving those goal posts. We’ll keep our laws, thanks. The only reason your crime numbers are being questioned here is because certain tyrants in this country are trying to use your disgusting laws as an shining example of what we should have here.

          • “The only reason your crime numbers are being questioned here is because certain tyrants in this country are trying to use your disgusting laws as an shining example of what we should have here.”

            You are right to question crime numbers, or anything else for that matter. This is the benefit of free speech, where everything can be checked, inspected, and determined. Nothing is out of bounds, or prohibited, or censored unless (in the case of ongoing legal cases or state security) there is a good reason for it.

            In my country, ‘violent crime’ includes other categories which the US figures do not include. We have a major alcohol problem, which is not getting better. If two drunken fools throw a couple of wild punches, that is a ‘violent crime’. Hence our violent crime numbers will always be difficult to compare to yours.

            However, the objective of the disparaging and bizarre comments made previously, here and elsewhere, is to make out the UK to be a lawless country, where criminals run roughshod over the law-abiding. Where self-defense doesn’t exist. Where the public have no guns / very few guns / only have shotguns (thank you, Dr. Lott). Then when someone suggests doing something UK-style, then others can say ‘Well, the UK example is so different from ours. They may only have 100 gun deaths a year compared to our 30,000, but just look at their violent crime! And they have no guns!!’

            The problem is that I am a British patriot, and I don’t really appreciate my country being dragged through the dirt, just so someone can increase their gun collection. For the record – We have a lot of guns of all kinds – including AR-15s, semi-automatic shotguns, and handguns – we have a right to bear arms, limited but effective – but equally, people are OK with not owning guns. We have a carefully considered set of laws on self-defense. We have indeed the ‘well-regulated militia’ that your 2nd Amendment only promises.

            My country is peaceful, where nobody carries guns openly in public, nor carries loaded guns concealed. People who don’t own guns don’t even think about whether their fellow citizens own guns – as the BBC demonstrated when they asked the public at random. Even Wayne LaPierre didn’t seem too frightened when he turned up in my country, in a suit, no flak jacket or handgun. Your country’s polarisation between gun owners and non gun owners – e.g. Dana Loesch vs Shannon Watts – has no analogy here. We don’t understand why you want to be so scared that you think you need a gun for protection. And, when we look to the USA for inspiration in writing our laws, as we do so often, on this subject you can’t offer us very much. Why is a careful study of our successful methods so painful for you?

            By the way, have you ever read Dana Loesch’s book called ‘Hands off my gun’? It’s an interesting read. Towards the start, she tells the story of her childhood, and in particular the story of her aunt. Grandpa took a shotgun and sat on the porch until the police turned up. Please note: not a Glock, not an AR-15 – a shotgun, taken from the (unlocked) shotgun display case. It sounds like quite a lot has changed since those days, and not necessarily for the better. Or is it just that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?

          • “The law says – you may not arm yourself (the article used must be something that comes to hand), you may not use more force than the other person, and you can’t keep going when the other person quits.”

            In other words, self-defense is not legal.

            As others, and myself, have already concluded.

          • ‘ The youths approached the kitchen window, before attempting to break into her garden shed, prompting Miss Klass to wave a kitchen knife to scare them away.

            Miss Klass, 31, who was alone in her house in Potters Bar, Herts, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, called the police. When they arrived at her house they informed her that she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an “offensive weapon” – even in her own home – was illegal. ‘
            Yeah, just wonderful.

            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/6957682/Myleene-Klass-warned-by-police-after-scaring-off-intruders-with-knife.html

      • yeah, self-defense is legal. BUT.
        “In the UK, under the law you are permitted to use “reasonable force” to defend yourself or others.

        Here’s the rub: Other people after the fact determine what was “reasonable” at the time of the incident.

        Possession of anything “with the intent to threaten to cause injury or fear” is verboten – so if you pick up a baseball bat and stand outside your property as a deterrent to rioters, your intent is to “threaten to cause injury or fear” and you’re therefore guilty of being in possession of an “offensive weapon.”

        Apparently you’re supposed to wait until you, personally are under physical attack before you can pick up anything with which to defend yourself, and then you are restricted in how you use that item to some “reasonable” level to be determined at some future time when the jurors can reflect calmly on the situation.”
        Etc.

        http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2011/08/self-defense-in-uk.html

        • The principles of self-defence apply to defending yourself and others. Reasonable force means a) no more force than the other person is using, b) you stop when they do.

          The use of an improvised weapon is just that – improvised. You can’t have a gun or baseball bat for self-defence – but you can have a gun for target shooting, and a baseball bat for playing baseball. Just make sure you do target shoot and play baseball.

          “Other people after the fact determine what was “reasonable” at the time of the incident.”

          Yes, we believe that people should be held accountable under the law, rather than leaving things to their conscience (or lack thereof).

          • Wrong.

            “Stop when the threat is ended” is correct, and people understand that.

            However, reasonable force means force reasonably suited for the threat. It does NOT mean “no more force than the other is using”. The notion that you may use only your fists to defend against a fist attack is idiotic.

            For one thing, the fists of a 250 pound 6’4″ thug are not comparable to the fists of my 5’1″ wife. And even when the sizes are comparable, strength and skill might not be. An attacker might be skilled in knife fighting, while the victim is not.

            A fairly sane notion is that deadly force may be met with deadly force defense. A knife attacker may be stopped by a gun. Similarly an attacker with powerful fists. In civilized places (such as New Hampshire) the test is whether the victim had a reasonable fear of death or serious injury. If yes, deadly force is authorized. If no, it isn’t.

            While I prefer the NH approach over the “proportional” nonsense, I don’t consider it correct. Instead, I view deadly force appropriate in response to unlawful force against person or property. Unfortunately, the law moved away from that some decades ago, and has not yet returned.

  2. I wonder how the UK crime rate and distribution correlates to immigration of non-Western peoples and the uptick in political correctness? *cough* Rotherham *cough*

    • It is not only the UK that has problems with political correctness gone amok. Try the US. A guy turns up outside a building in which the US president is addressing a meeting. He is visibly armed, and is holding a flag about the Tree of Liberty. Arrested, you ask? No. Same reason as Rotherham.

      • Same reason? No, opposite reason. The reason the US guy doesn’t get arrested is because, in that particular situation, the authorities actually obeyed the Constitution as their oath requires.

        • I don’t see what the constitution has to do with it. If someone is threatening the president = has flag with threat on it + is carrying a gun, this is illegal.

          • Yes, making a material threat on the President is illegal.

            What he did did not satisfy those requirements.

            Perhaps you should refresh yourself on the laws before you try to tell others what does and does not violate them?

          • “Yes, making a material threat on the President is illegal.

            What he did did not satisfy those requirements.”

            So, if I stand outside your house with a flag that says, “Death to Linoge”, and I’ve got a loaded gun strapped to my waist, this is not a threat made towards you?

            I guess.

      • “a flag about the Tree of Liberty”. I’m to sure what that is, but it sounds like a quotation from Thomas Jefferson. You may not know who he is, but every American does; he is probably the foremost of the three philosophers of Liberty during the American war for independence. For one thing, he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he wrote a whole lot more in the same vein.
        I’ll give you one other quote to illustrate the point: “I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”. Perhaps such a phrase is illegal in the UK — but not here. That’s why we have a Constitution.

        • OK. Another historical quotation, this time by the Marquis de Lafayette.

          “When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

          Noblemen like himself started the French Revolution, as an experiment in Enlightenment thought. He tried to control it, failed, and had to run for his life, being arrested in Austrian territory. Many were not so lucky, and the streets ran with blood. Perhaps the followers of the snake flag / tree of liberty cult should remember this.

          As for founding fathers, I’d be surprised if your list included Locke and Paine. Paine, after all, was the author who put the colonies firmly on the road to revolution. His book, ‘Common Sense’, went through many print copies, both under his own name and as plagiarised copies.

          • Of course my list includes Paine, why would you expect otherwise? Silly man. The third one I was thinking of is Patrick Henry.
            As for La Fayette, I don’t know if he was paraphrasing Jefferson or if the two simply thought along the same lines. But the fact that the French botched their revolution doesn’t mean that revolution is never justified. Come to think of it, the British experiment with revolution didn’t go all that well either the first time, but when James II was tossed out things went better as I recall.

  3. According to a couple of UK police bloggers I used to read, the local forces there faked the low numbers by refusing to take crime reports on various types of offenses. Did you know that a death in the UK is not considered/recorded as a murder until a court conviction?
    Generally speaking, MOST other countries around the world lie about crime statistics. The other problem is that they may not record them in the same categories as we do, so the numbers aren’t equivalent. In other words, crime numbers are not reliable in the rest of the world, for the most part, when compared to the US.

    • “The other problem is that they may not record them in the same categories as we do, so the numbers aren’t equivalent. In other words, crime numbers are not reliable in the rest of the world, for the most part, when compared to the US.”

      Exactly. “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.” In my community, a big deal is when a van is broken into. Despite desperate efforts by NRA supporters to argue otherwise, my country is not the 4th July, each and every day. Unlike Chicago.

        • “Lee Rigby was unavailable for comment.”

          I’m not surprised. He’s dead.

          He was run over with a car. So a handgun wouldn’t have done him any good. The hacked to pieces.

          The armed police arrive and shot (wounded) both suspects. They are now serving 45 years and life.

          It remains a mystery that the so-called ‘experts’ were not able to deal with Anjem Choudary sooner.

          • Our police stop cars with handguns, by shooting the driver, when they try to hit the officer.

            Did you ignore the fact that it took about 20 MINUTES for armed coppers to show up to shoot that Jihadi?

  4. “According to a couple of UK police bloggers I used to read, the local forces there faked the low numbers by refusing to take crime reports on various types of offenses.”

    I see you conveniently ignored this bit of data. What these British cops were saying is that NO crime data could be considered accurate, at all, anywhere in the UK. Why would crime numbers be hidden, unless they were considered unacceptable to people that mattered?
    BTW, the number one reason that crime data around the world is artificially rated low is to keep from scaring off the tourists and business interests. In other words, money talks. Of course, this generally requires the acquiescence of the news media. In the UK, this compliance would be helped along by the laws that restrict what can be said about people, and the government.

  5. “The number of prosecutions brought for sexual offences has risen to its highest level ever, jumping 22.5 per cent on last year.”

    It may not be that the number of actual offences increased. What it may be is that prosecutions have increased.

    When I was in high school, a man exposed himself to a friend and I while we were checking something in a classroom window. We reported it and it was brushed off. “We were making it up” they said. We were not.

    These days, the police would have been called and a sketch would have been made of the man so others would know to “be on the lookout.” If he had been caught, he would go on a list of sexual predators. Instead, nothing happened.

    I just offer that as an example of “how times change” and how it can affect the number of crimes reported and prosecuted.

    • I’d like to see what those prosecutions entailed, myself. I’ve seen more than a few stories about so-called ‘sex offenses’ which turned out to be idiot teenaged girl sending idiot teenaged boyfriend a picture of her boobs.

      And because the DA office is often seen as a springboard for a political career… you get the idea.

      • What those offenses entail is often bullshit:
        ‘Ms Saunders warned of a “growing trend” of offences perpetrated on or through social media.

        “The use of the internet, social media and other forms of technology to humiliate, control and threaten individuals is rising,” she said.

        However in recent months the CPS has been criticised for prosecuting cases than have ended in collapse.

        In May a judge criticised a police officer and the CPS for their handling of accusations of gang rape against four agricultural students, which fell apart just as the trial was due to start. He said they bore responsibility for failing to disclose “game-changing” evidence to the defence teams of the men.’
        So if you say the wrong thing(however they decide to define that) in a post or tweet, you can be prosecuted for a ‘sexual offense’.

        And even when there’s video evidence that a charge is bullcrap, they can still prosecute:
        ‘Despite video evidence showing the male artist had a newspaper in one hand and was holding the strap of his backpack in the other, he was tracked down using his electronic public transportation card and charged. Furthermore, Pearson was in range of sexagenarian Faress’ body, let alone her genitals, for no more than about half a second. In January 2015, police appealed for help (archive) in finding the then 66-year-old’s “attacker”. At this stage, Mr. Pearson’s image began to circulate in the public domain.

        Yet it gets worse. Faress, to try and bolster her fraudulent account, said she screamed and no one helped her. CCTV footage conclusively disproved this. To boot, Pearson did not break stride, discrediting her other claim that he smashed into her shoulder. Most shockingly of all, the lying thespian could not even point him out in an “identity parade.” That did not stop the Crown Prosecution Service from prosecuting Pearson until its representatives were rebuked by the judge and a jury quickly exonerated him.’
        http://www.returnofkings.com/80351/game-of-thrones-actress-souad-faress-falsely-accuses-man-of-rape-for-walking-past-her

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