LubeDude
Admiral
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2003
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The Failed Experiment <br />The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales <br />Publication Date: November 2003 <br /><br />Author(s): <br />Gary Mauser, Professor<br />Email: \4 <br />The Fraser Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada<br /><br />Executive Summary: Widely televised firearm murders in many countries during the 20th Century have spurred politicians to introduce restrictive gun laws. The politicians then promise that the new restrictions will reduce criminal violence and "create a safer society." It is time to pause and ask if gun laws actually do reduce criminal violence. <br /><br />Gun laws must be demonstrated to cut violent crime or gun control is no more than a hollow promise. What makes gun control so compelling for many is the belief that violent crime is driven by the availability of guns and, more importantly, that criminal violence in general may be reduced by limiting access to firearms. <br /><br />In this study, the author examines crime trends in Commonwealth countries that have recently introduced firearm regulations: i.e., Great Britain, Australia, and Canada. The widely ignored key to evaluating firearm regulations is to examine trends in total violent crime, not just firearms crime. Since firearms are only a small fraction of criminal violence, the public would not be safer if the new law could reduce firearm violence but had no effect on total criminal violence. <br /><br />The United States provides a valuable point of comparison for assessing crime rates because the criminal justice system there differs so drastically from those in Europe and the Commonwealth. Not only are criminal penalties typically more severe in the United States, often much more severe, but also conviction and incarceration rates are usually much higher. Perhaps the most striking difference is that qualified citizens in the United States can carry concealed handguns for self-defence. During the past few decades, more than 25 states in the United States passed laws allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed handguns. In 2003, there are 35 states where citizens can get such a permit. <br /><br />The upshot is that violent crime rates, and homicide rates in particular, have been falling in the United States. The drop in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world. <br /><br />Major conclusions:<br /><br />-England & Wales: Yet in the 1990s alone, the homicide rate jumped 50 percent, going from 10 per million in 1990 to 15 per million in 2000. While not yet as high as the US, in 2002 gun crime in England and Wales increased by 35 percent. This is the fourth consecutive year that gun crime has increased. Police statistics show that violent crime in general has increased since the late 1980s and since 1996 has been more serious than in the United States.<br /><br />-Australia: the total homicide rate, after having remained basically -flat from 1995 to 2001, has now begun climbing again. While violent crime is decreasing in the United States, it is increasing in Australia. Over the past six years, the overall rate of violent crime in Australia has been on the rise, for example, armed robberies have jumped 166 percent nationwide. The confiscation and destruction of legally owned firearms has cost Australian taxpayers at least $500 million. The cost of the police services bureaucracy, including the costly infrastructure of the gun registration system, has increased by $200 million since 1997.<br /><br />-Canada: Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted. The homicide rate is dropping faster in the US than in Canada. The Canadian experiment with firearm registration is becoming a farce says Mauser. The effort to register all firearms, which was originally claimed to cost only $2 million, has now been estimated by the Auditor General to top $1 billion. The final costs are unknown but, if the costs of enforcement are included, the total could easily reach $3 billion.<br /><br />I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning: it smells like... [sniff] freedom.<br /><br />That, and lower violent crime rates. <br /><br />Read the whole report here: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin...dExperiment.pdf <br /><br />LubeDude
<br />Great C & P.
