Outlaw arms and you arm outlaws
19 February 2006 THE TELEGRAPH [edited]
LONDON (UK) - Strangely enough, no one seems to feel any safer. When
the laws on gun ownership were tightened after the Dunblane tragedy in
1996, we kept being told that the whole idea was to prevent such things
happening again.
How meaningless those assurances must seem to the family of Rachael
Bown, the conscientious police officer whose first words, after being
shot by a gangster in -Nottingham last week, were of self-reproach:
"I've let everyone down and I didn't get him."
When the Firearms Bill was passing through Parliament, the Sunday
Telegraph was a lonely voice railing against the proposed restrictions.
A ban, we argued, would have done nothing to prevent the atrocity.
We protested that proscribing guns would affect peaceable citizens, not
villains. Indeed, its main effect would be to ensure that criminals
came to enjoy a monopoly of firepower.
In the aftermath of the massacre, no one was much minded to listen.
Tony Blair made a disgraceful speech, telling Labour activists that
opponents of a total ban on pistols somehow cared less than he did
about the murdered children.
The tabloids took up the same theme, running a nasty campaign against
the few MPs brave enough to argue that pistol-shooting should be
allowed to continue in safe, licensed premises.
Gun-owners, who had waited patiently to give evidence to the official
inquiry, found that they had been forestalled: by the time Lord Cullen
produced his eminently sensible report, all three parties had pledged to
go beyond it.
Nearly nine years on, opponents of the ban have been comprehensively
vindicated. Gun crime, far from falling, has increased. The only people
who have been affected by the legislation are law-abiding shooters.
Handguns have been outlawed, and our Olympic pistol-shooters have been
forced to train abroad. Meanwhile, owners of shotguns have found
themselves having to wade through a good deal of extra paperwork.
As so often, the full force of the law has fallen upon the respectable
bourgeoisie, not upon the villains.
It is easier to go after a parking offender than a money-launderer;
easier to prosecute your Auntie Jean for losing her ID card than to
stop the suspicious foreigner (who will, in any case, be exempt from
having to carry a card if he has been in the UK for less than six
months); easier to arrest the farmer who is late renewing his shot-gun
licence than to tackle the Yardie - as the horrible case of WPc Bown
reminds us.
The Firearms Act was passed for the worst possible reason - not in
order to secure a specific objective, but do show how strongly MPs felt
about something. Alas, it was only the beginning.
A frightening array of Bills has since been passed on the same premise:
*** . In each case, the chief purpose is to look tough rather than to
achieve anything.
Will we never learn?
--
Will Brink @ http://www.brinkzone.com/