Why I Carry, Part III

Gun control doesn't do much at all to control crime, it empowers violent criminals who no longer need to fear an encounter with an armed victim. While the media howls for stricter measures regulating the sale and possession of firearms, it is vital that we step back and examine what these measures have accomplished in other countries and what unintended consequences have emerged.

ENGLAND
The citizens of the UK are denied possession of any handguns. Rifles and shotguns are also tightly regulated.

It hasn't helped. Crime got so bad in England that they had to revamp the way their criminal justice crime statistics are reported. Here is one way the Brits’ bastardized their crime stats.

More recently, a 2000 report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary charges Britain’s 43 police departments with systemic under-classification of crime – for example, by recording burglary as “vandalism.” The report lays much of the blame on the police’s desire to avoid the extra paperwork associated with more serious crimes.

Britain’s justice officials have also kept crime totals down by being careful about what to count.

“American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide rates are based on the final disposition.” Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. “With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham,” the report concludes.

Don't kid yourselves; this also happens in America. I have seen it myself.

The newest "Methodological Note" issued by the Office of National Statistics on 24 JAN 13 throws more light on inept crime reporting in the UK:

A critical report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) in 2000 (Povey, 2000) was influential in the development of the NCRS which was subsequently introduced in April 2002. The HMIC inspection, that preceded the NCRS, showed there was a problem with differing interpretation of the HOCR which resulted in inconsistent recording practices across forces. Research undertaken during the Inspection showed:

• offences wrongly classified;
• the inappropriate ‘no criming’
• the failure to record the correct number of crimes; of a record subsequent to it being recorded;
• an error rate of between 15% and 65% of the crime records examined [WTH?~sig94]
• inappropriate reclassifying of recorded crimes.

AUSTRALIA

One year after the possibly staged Port Arthur incident in 1996, the Aussie government banned all semiautomatic rifles, conducted a mandatory gun buyback, and imposed strict limits on who could own a firearm. Researchers at the University of Melbourne found no improvement in firearm related deaths as a result of the 1997 gun control measures. While Australia has had no mass shootings since Port Arthur, mass shootings are such a tiny share of all homicides that any connection may be purely a matter of chance.

The following graphs are available here, at the 

Australia's overall murder rate has been reduced but the firearm murders increased slightly in 2009-10.  As 39% of 2010 murders were by knife, this means there was a significant increase in knife usage (87 of 225 murders) from 2007 when there was less than 50.

MURDER

Australia's sexual assault stats were up by about 50% in 2007. The chart shows sexual assaults reported per month. They peaked in 2008 at nearly 20,000 and in 2010 fell to 17,800. in the US, 2010 forcible rape rates were 27.5 per 100,000 population; it is difficult to compare US forcible rape to Australian sexual assault, but they reported 76 sexual assaults per 100,000. Obviously the Aussies use a broader definition for that crime category, but that still seems high.

SEXUAL ASSAULT

The chart shows Aussie robberies reported per month. Since 2001 robberies have declined by 31%, from 21,305 to 14,582. In the US, we experienced a 26% decrease.  In 2010, approx. 7% of Aussie robberies were committed with a firearm of some kind (estimated at 1,024 out of 14,582 robberies). In the US,  firearms are used in 41% of all robberies. For 2010 the US had 119 robberies per 100,000 population. In Australia the rate is about half that, 65 per 100,000.

ROBBERY

Felony assaults have increased dramatically.  What is graphed below reflects reported assaults per month. From the gun ban, 1997, through 2010,  assaults have increased by 38%, from 124,500 to 171,083. During the same period of time, US assaults declined by 24%. The Australian assault rate alone (766 per 100,000) is almost twice as high as the entire US violent crime index rate (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) of 404 per 100,000.

ASSAULT

I much prefer a data-driven solution to crime. The relentless, emotional presentation of slaughtered innocents has but one purpose, to shut down the dispassionate analysis of criminal causality and allow liberal politicians to proceed with their agenda under the umbrella of public outrage.

Criminals and nut-jobs are gonna do what criminals and nut-jobs do. They are not going to turn in their firearms.

Apparently our government is trying to make it easier for them by forcing the rest of us to surrender our weapons..