THE FOLLOWING PIECE WAS WRITTEN IN
RESPONSE TO A REQUEST FROM
PROGRESS FOR AN ARTICLE TO BE POSTED
ON THEIR WEBSITE:
In America, where guns are easily
available and the firearms laws are liberal, thirty people are shot and
murdered every day. In Great Britain, where gun ownership is restricted
and the firearms laws are strict, there have been thirty gun homicides
in the last ten months. The UK’s gun death rate, one of the lowest
among industrialised countries, is nearly one-fiftieth of that of the
US. This huge difference reflects the fact that there is a direct
correlation between the level of gun ownership in a country and its gun
death rate. Given this, one has to question why anyone, and especially
anyone associated with a major political party, would suggest that
Britain adopts America’s liberal gun ownership laws. But this is just
what Donal Blaney has been advocating.
Blaney is the leader of the Young Britons’
Foundation, an offshoot of the Conservative party’s youth wing. At
least 11 Tory parliamentary candidates have been involved with the YBF,
which has organised radicalising trips to the US that have included
firearms training courses.
No one doubts that gun crime remains a
worrying problem in the UK, but its scale is often exaggerated and the
contribution of weapons such as airguns and imitation guns downplayed.
It is claimed that tightening the British gun laws, especially the
prohibition of handguns, has failed to stop gun crime, indeed that gun
crime here has been “spiralling out of control”. But that flies in the
face of all the recent data which show the total number of firearm
offences falling steadily for the last five years, the number of gun
homicides at its lowest for at least twenty years and the number of gun
injuries down by more than half in the last six years. These trends
have been ignored, not just by Blaney and those who want wider gun
ownership but also by senior Conservatives who use distorted gun crime
data to push their Broken Britain agenda. The fear of gun crime is very
strong, and whatever the motives it is cynical to play on this and
inflate these fears.
At the heart of Blaney’s position,
however, is the idea that it is good for individuals to own guns, yet
there is no objective evidence that this makes for a safer society. A
gun in the home actually increases the risk that a member of the
household will be shot and killed. The slaughter of thousands of US
citizens each year shows just how poorly widespread gun ownership
protects the population as a whole. Ultimately the arguments used by
those advocating liberal gun laws are based on their own obsessions,
their need to possess and handle weapons whatever the cost to others.
Firearms legislation should have little to
do with individual rights and all to do with public safety. Until 1996
this country’s policy on gun legislation was unduly influenced by the
shooters who felt their needs should be put before the safety of the
general public. All that changed when a gun club member shot a class of
infants at Dunblane Primary School, killing sixteen of them and their
teacher. Legally-owned guns are not immune from abuse, indeed they are
still frequently used in school and workplace shootings in the US and
elsewhere. Widening gun ownership would simply expand not restrict
their unlawful use.
The views of Donal Blaney and the
gun-toting activities of the YBF are a reminder to those who care about
protecting the public from guns that we need to remain vigilant. The
risk of being a victim of gun crime in the UK is thankfully very low, a
situation which must never be compromised by a radical libertarian
agenda.
For more background information see the
following articles in The Guardian:
GCN has also sent a letter to Conservative
leader David Cameron seeking reassurances that
an incoming Conservative government will
not tamper with or 'liberalise' the UK's gun laws.
Posted: 11 March 2010
