XDA

Ben Whitford (never heard of him either--he looks about 25) in the Comment is Free section of the UK Guardian on line urges us to take another look at the statistics on crime since the 1997 complete ban on private ownership of all handguns (other than flint locks). He first outs John Lott for having used a female sock puppet on the web (hmmmm?) and then quotes him:

"Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned in 1997. Yet, since 1996 the serious violent crime rate has soared by 69%: robbery is up by 45% and murders up by 54%. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50% from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost back to their 1993 levels."

Then Mr. Whitford says that's all bunk-- "...in 1998 - just after the UK banned handguns - the police changed the way they counted crimes. Crimes like common assault and harassment were reclassified as violent crimes; the underlying crime rates stayed the same, but the recorded crime rate almost doubled overnight. Further changes came in 2002, when police introduced a national standard for recording crime; the Home Office estimates the move inflated violent crime figures by at least another 20%."

He bases his conclusions on a crime survey (the gold standard?) rather than police statistics, but OK, I'll use them as well. However, I don't actually follow the logic of his statements--there was unreported violent crime which only changes in the police bureaucracy brought to light? Or there were violent crimes, but they are overreported now due to changes in statistical classifications? Difficult to fathom. Well, let's just stick with a certain type of violent crime which seems pretty black and white and unlikely to be inflated in the crime statistics--murder. Is that up or down since the complete handgun ban? Up (although last year was better, as he points out). How about robbery--up or down? Way up! Now it occurs just about twice as often as at the time private ownership of handguns was criminalized.

Yet despite the clear rise in these traditional violent crimes (murder and robbery) using his "gold standard" statistics, Mr. Whitford writes: the people of Britain are at less risk of being the victim of a crime today than at any point since the survey began in 1981. Violent crime rates have fallen by 43% since 1995.

Less likely to be a victim of any crime is red herring. I doubt that guns in any way could stop short changing at the chemists, but if murder and robbery are up (and sexual offenses have doubled, and 'more serious wounding or other act endangering life' has nearly doubled--the catch all 'violence against the person' is nearly 3 times as high ) then how can violent crime be down by nearly half? What else is there? Is it the use of the word 'rates' which is the misdirection? The actual number is way up but it peaked in 2003 so the rate lately has been down. Who's manipulating the statistics now?

He then states, utilizing, I think, the less than perfectly reliable statistics from Private Guns Public Health that: People with guns in their home are three times more likely to commit suicide. Even if that is true, is it the siren song of the gun that causes the suicide? Do the inanimate metal machines have some mysterious way to manipulate human behavior? I have used firearms since before I could drive and I have not yet had my mind taken over by the gun.

Final words: We in America would kill for a murder rate as low per capita as the one in Britain. We are too violent a society, but banning guns has never helped and it never will for the obvious reasons I already stated here.

UPDATE: The Say Anything blog (out of South North Dakota) has an interesting post on an FBI investigation of where 40 cop-shooters got their guns. Short answer--illegally. None at a gun show. So much for the gun show loophole.