Violence in the UK and the US
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
It is common knowledge that our gun-toting, vigilante, society has a much higher crime rate than England, right?
Well….
I found this article, Gun Control’s Twisted Outcome, from Reason Magazine, fascinating.
Here are excerpts from the article, written in 2002:
Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America’s has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was “in startling free-fall.” We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.
and
Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London’s Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was “rocketing.” In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.
In fact, England is now facing a rash of stabbings! While we definitely have our share of problems, at least in the US, we get a chance to fight back against criminal culture. Plus, the people who “have all the answers” about crime are typically politicians or academics who live in the best areas of town, not exactly people who have a grasp on the problem.
Why am I writing about this? Well, I have gotten a little more interested in politics again. I think the Democrats being in control of Congress has pushed me to think about about a variety of issues. One issue of politics that interests me is crime. Why is crime so high in many areas? Why isn’t it considered a national crisis that in so many neighborhoods people can’t even walk the streets in daylight? The high rate of crime in major cities is a problem that I believe we need to tackle, but unfortunately band-aid solutions and increased regulation seem just to punish law-abiding citizens, while criminals still do their thing.
