Tag Archives: Self-Defense

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Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy paper: gun control doesn’t lower murder rate

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Doug Ross linked to this study published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

He writes:

The Harvard study attempts to answer the question of whether or not banning firearms would reduce murders and suicides. Researchers looked at crime data from several European countries and found that countries with HIGHER gun ownership often had LOWER murder rates.

Russia, for example, enforces very strict gun control on its people, but its murder rate remains quite high. In fact, the murder rate in Russia is four times highertahn in the “gun-ridden” United States, cites the study. ”Homicide results suggest that where guns are scarce other weapons are substituted in killings.” In other words, the elimination of guns does not eliminate murder, and in the case of gun-controlled Russia, murder rates are quite high.

The study revealed several European countries with significant gun ownership, like Norway, Finland, Germany and France – had remarkably low murder rates. Contrast that with Luxembourg, “where handguns are totally banned and ownership of any kind of gun is minimal, had a murder rate nine times higher than Germany in 2002.

The study found no evidence to suggest that the availability of guns contributes to higher murder rates anywhere in the world. ”Of course, it may be speculated that murder rates around the world would be higher if guns were more available. But there is simply no evidence to support this.”

The authors also took a look at the effect of gun control laws in various U.S. states, gun ownership in rural and urban areas, and across racial lines. The long and short of it is that a small number of extremely active criminals with lengthy criminal records are responsible for the overwhelming super-majority of all gun crimes, and these criminals are psychopaths that ignore all laws.

The study also cited a previous report that was unable to find a single gun control law implemented in the United States that is proven to have reduced violent crime.

This is not the first time that a study in a presitigious journal has challenged the liberal gun control narrative. People who oppose guns oppose them because of feelings. Guns are scary and guns are loud, they say. That’s their reasoning. But if you actually look at the data, you’ll find that guns do reduce crime rates.

The peer-reviewed research

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.

Excerpt:

Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).

Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.

And the result of the 1997 gun ban:

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.

[…]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.

I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people. The book by economist John Lott, linked above,compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, but both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.

If you still think that guns are somehow bad for reducing crime, why not check out a formal academic debate featuring 3 people on each side of the debate?

News

UK business owner on trial for tackling burglars on his own property

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From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

A businessman who confronted a burglar raiding his premises appeared in court yesterday accused of attacking him.

Andrew Woodhouse, 43, was chasing thieves off his property when he claims one of them ‘came at’ him with a wooden stick.

Father-of-five Woodhouse allegedly used the stick to injure the man’s legs before holding him down while his wife called the police.

But when officers arrived they arrested Woodhouse and held him in a cell for 18 hours.

He appeared at Newport Crown Court yesterday charged with grievous bodily harm with intent which has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Andrew Taylor, defending, said: ‘Mr Woodhouse apprehended two of the burglars at his tyre depot.

‘It happened after two or three men decided they were going to remove a large quantity of diesel from his premises.

‘Mr Woodhouse has been interviewed by police and has provided a full explanation about what happened.

‘There is a CCTV recording of the incident and we are waiting to see the footage.’

[…]Woodhouse was in bed with his wife Lisa at their detached home in the village of Govilon, near Abergavenny, when his burglar alarm went off at about 12.30am.

[…]Woodhouse drove to his business premises where the alleged assault happened.

[…]His wife Lisa said her husband was prepared to go through the legal process to clear his name.

She said: ‘But I fail to see where there was any intent on Andrew’s part.

‘He didn’t intend to get up in the middle of the night to assault anyone. All he did was protect his property.

‘People may think he took the law into his own hands but what was he supposed to do, stand by and watch?’

Woodhouse employs six staff including two of his sons at the family business, which was set up 20 years ago.

The firm has lost £15,000 in recent years to thefts of diesel and tools.

Two fuel thieves who stole £50 worth of diesel from Woodhouse’s premises on the night of the alleged assault have been dealt with in court.

Timothy Cross, 31, and Kevin Green, 52, took two jerry cans of diesel from Woodhouse’s tyre depot in Abergavenny.

Cross and Green both admitted theft and were fined £75 by Cwmbran magistrates.

People sometimes wonder why I think that the UK is the most wussified country in the world. This is not an arbitrary opinion that I hold. The UK is a nanny state, where the people in charge treat men as if they are toddlers in day care. This country has the least respect for men and male nature of any country that I am aware of at this time. I don’t see how you could be a man and be comfortable living in a society that basically criminalizes the righteous use of force against evil. It’s so strange to me when I hear complaints from UK women about how men are not taking responsibility any more, or making commitments, or being ambitious. Well, here’s a little newsflash for you. If you treat men like children and resent them using force to defend their homes and businesses, then you are discouraging manliness. The kinds of men you will get then are wussified, feminized men who attempt nothing and defend nothing.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who lives in the UK recently. She was explaining to me how women who are under a certain age are given government housing if they have babies out-wedlock. What kind of message is that sending? It is telling young women that men are optional, and that they don’t have to choose men wisely in order to get one who can do the provider role. So on the one hand, men are punished by the state for protecting, and on the other, they are punished by the state for providing. The state taxes men with jobs to subsidize the losers who get sex without having to commit first. And I know that young women often prefer these men because they don’t want a man who has authority from having a job to tell them what to do. (See here for some examples)

The UK has been trying to undermine and replace men who perform the traditional male roles for decades. The role of protecting has been demonized by punishing men who protect their families and businesses. The role of providing has been marginalized through higher taxes, socialized medicine and welfare benefits. And moral and spiritual leadership have been dismantled with pervasive moral relativism, multicultaralism and secularism. Everything that a strong, virtuous man could do to be recognized has been marginalized and discredited by the socialist, feminist government of the UK. UK women have no right to complain now when men act like children – they caused it by punishing men who were only doing what good men are supposed to do in any good society.

Just 70 years ago we lived in the time of British heroes like Eric “Digger” Dowling, Guy Gibson, Douglas Bader, Patrick Reid and Tommy McPherson. I learned from watching World War 2 movies as a child that British men were courageous and fierce, and able to defend Western civilization from tyranny with force, if necessary. Now all that is going, going, gone thanks to the British socialist welfare state. Men do understand what messages the feminist welfare state is sending by subsidizing single motherhood, taxing men more when their wives stay home, criminalizing self-defense and capitalism, arresting military heroes for owning handguns, discriminating against boys in schools that are dominated by women, and so on. Men understand the message that’s being sent there, and they do adjust.

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News

Former soldiers arrested by UK police for defending their business from burglar

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So this news story from the UK Daily Mail should come as no surprise to anyone who reads British writers like Theodore Dalrymple or James Hannan or Peter Hitchens.

Excerpt:

Two men were dragged to court for apprehending a Romanian they caught burgling their business.

A nine-month ordeal ended for Steven Iliffe, 54, and son Daniel, 26, yesterday when a judge threw out the case against them.

They had begged police to go on a roof to arrest career criminal Petre Ilie.

But officers were barred by their superiors, via their radio, due to health and safety rules.

Eventually, the father and son, both former soldiers, went on the roof themselves to tackle the armed man.

They were stunned when the police later arrested them on suspicion of attempted murder – and later charged them with the lesser offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Yesterday, the pair said they were considering legal action against Leicestershire Police.

Mr Iliffe senior said he had suffered a heart attack in a cell triggered by the stress of his arrest at their scrap metal business in Hinckley, Leicestershire, last December.

He added: ‘We had suffered a string of burglaries and went up onto that roof only because the police had refused to do so.’

The criminal is in the country illegally, too:

Leicester Crown Court was told yesterday that Ilie, 39, already had ‘a number of convictions for burglary, failing to surrender and breaching court orders’ in the UK under the name Christopher Tudor.

In 2010 he was deported but sneaked back into the UK.

He was then arrested again alongside the Iliffes.

I hope that the United States doesn’t ever get to the point where the government prevents law-abiding citizens from defending themselves from criminals. The UK is a very liberal country, so they are very much into the idea that evil is good, and good is evil, so that everyone is “equal” and liberals can feel compassionate.

I know that formerly liberal countries like Canada have been pushing back hard against crime, with measures like abolishing the long gun registry, a tough “omnibus” crime bill, and renewed protections for self-defense. I guess that’s why their crime rates are at a 40-year low. Canada is serious about stopping crime. They do what works, and then they get the results that they expect to get.