Piers Morgan and the Failure of British Gun Control
By David Paulin On January 2, 2013 @ 12:05 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments
It’s a strange omission: liberal pundits like CNN’s Piers Morgan are fulminating over America’s “gun culture” following Newtown’s school massacre — yet they seem blissfully ignorant about what happened after Britain’s draconian handgun ban following a school massacre in Scotland, in 1996, eerily similar to Newtown’s.
After the ban, more than 160,000 law-abiding citizens gave up their handguns. The idea was to stop gun violence. But ironically, crime-related gun violence jumped a whopping 40 percent in the two years after the ban. And since then, gun crime has continued to soar at an alarming rate. Anti-gun liberals may be aghast, but as that old NRA bumper sticker stated: “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” One wonders how long before guns are used in another massacre in the United Kingdom; or perhaps next time it will be done by a madman carrying a can of gasoline.
Piers Morgan, an urbane native of England, surely knows what happened after Britain’s gun ban. But like others anti-gun media elitists and politicians (whose children are defended by armed guards at upscale private schools) Morgan avoids discussions of the complexities and nuances of gun control and their impact on ordinary people — that is, law-abiding gun owners. “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?” Morgan told Larry Pratt, director of Gun Owners of America, during a discussion about gun regulations that included proposed bans on large clips and military-style weapons like the AR-15 used by Newtown, Connecticut’s shooter, Adam Lanza. Now, an online petition demanding that the smug Brit be deported is drawing tens of thousands of signatures.
Morgan surely knows about Britain’s failed effort to reduce gun violence – and how those efforts backfired. Even the lefty BBC took notice — explaining that the 40 percent surge in gun violence suggested the handgun ban was “targeting legitimate users of firearms rather than criminals.” Specifically, the BBC explained that “The Center for Defense Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000.” Moreover, it noted there was “no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession; that “of the 20 police areas with the lowest number of legally held firearms, 10 had an above average level of gun crime. And of the 20 police areas with the highest levels of legally held guns only two had armed crime levels above the average.”
Interestingly, the massacre in Dunblane was hardly the case of an upstanding citizen inexplicably exploding into a murderous rage.
-go to link-
After the ban, more than 160,000 law-abiding citizens gave up their handguns. The idea was to stop gun violence. But ironically, crime-related gun violence jumped a whopping 40 percent in the two years after the ban. And since then, gun crime has continued to soar at an alarming rate. Anti-gun liberals may be aghast, but as that old NRA bumper sticker stated: “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” One wonders how long before guns are used in another massacre in the United Kingdom; or perhaps next time it will be done by a madman carrying a can of gasoline.
Piers Morgan, an urbane native of England, surely knows what happened after Britain’s gun ban. But like others anti-gun media elitists and politicians (whose children are defended by armed guards at upscale private schools) Morgan avoids discussions of the complexities and nuances of gun control and their impact on ordinary people — that is, law-abiding gun owners. “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?” Morgan told Larry Pratt, director of Gun Owners of America, during a discussion about gun regulations that included proposed bans on large clips and military-style weapons like the AR-15 used by Newtown, Connecticut’s shooter, Adam Lanza. Now, an online petition demanding that the smug Brit be deported is drawing tens of thousands of signatures.
Morgan surely knows about Britain’s failed effort to reduce gun violence – and how those efforts backfired. Even the lefty BBC took notice — explaining that the 40 percent surge in gun violence suggested the handgun ban was “targeting legitimate users of firearms rather than criminals.” Specifically, the BBC explained that “The Center for Defense Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000.” Moreover, it noted there was “no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession; that “of the 20 police areas with the lowest number of legally held firearms, 10 had an above average level of gun crime. And of the 20 police areas with the highest levels of legally held guns only two had armed crime levels above the average.”
Interestingly, the massacre in Dunblane was hardly the case of an upstanding citizen inexplicably exploding into a murderous rage.
-go to link-
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