[extropy-chat] The Consensus

Sun Nov 30 21:29:32 UTC 2003

--- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
> > Alex, being a denizen of Britain, which is under assault nationwide
> by
> > the criminal class liberated by victim disarmament laws, suffers
> from a
> > popular notion that criminals are the product of society and that
> they
> > deserve "a fair go" in getting away with their crimes.
> 
> 
> Live here do you?
> While our crime is high our murder rate is only a fraction of that of
> the US.
> Ditto rapes.
> And innocent people who get shot in the course of a crime still make
> national headlines here. Do they in the US?

England -- Licenses have been required for rifles and handguns since
1920, and for shotguns since 1967. A decade ago semi-automatic and
pump-action center-fire rifles, and all handguns except single- shot
.22s, were prohibited. The .22s were banned in 1997. Shotguns must be
registered and semi-automatic shotguns that can hold more than two
shells must be licensed. Despite a near ban on private ownership of
firearms, "English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and
police statistics have all risen since 1981. . . . In 1995 the English
robbery rate was 1.4 times higher than America`s. . . . the English
assault rate was more than double America`s." All told, "Whether
measured by surveys of crime victims or by police statistics, serious
crime rates are not generally higher in the United States than
England." (Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Crime and Justice in the
United States and in England and in Wales, 1981-1996," 10/98.) An
English doctor is suspected of murdering more than 200 people, many
times the number killed in the gun-related crimes used to justify the
most recent restrictions.

"A June 2000 CBS News report proclaimed Great Britain `one of the most
violent urban societies in the Western world.` Declared Dan Rather:
`This summer, thousands of Americans will travel to Britain expecting a
civilized island free from crime and ugliness. . . (But now) the U.K.
has a crime problem . . . worse than ours.`" (David Kopel, Paul
Gallant, and Joanne Eisen, "Britain: From Bad to Worse," America`s
First Freedom, 3/01, p. 26.) Street crime increased 47% between 1999
and 2000 (John Steele, "Crime on streets of London doubles," London
Daily Telegraph, Feb. 29, 2000.) See also
www.2ndlawlib.org/journals/okslip.html,
www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment071800c.html, and
www.nraila.org/research/19990716-BillofRightsCivilRights-030.html.

While America is quite different from certain countries in terms of
firearms laws, we are just as different from those countries in other
respects which have a much greater influence on crime rates. Attorney
David Kopel explains, "There is little evidence that foreign gun
statutes, with at best a mixed record in their own countries, would
succeed in the United States. Contrary to the claims of the American
gun-control movement, gun control does not deserve credit for the low
crime rates in Britain, Japan, or other nations. Despite strict and
sometimes draconian gun controls in other nations, guns remain readily
available on the criminal black market. . . . The experiences of
(England, Japan, Canada, and the United States) point to social control
as far more important than gun control. Gun control (in foreign
countries) validates other authoritarian features of the society.
Exaltation of the police and submission to authority are values, which,
when internally adopted by the citizenry, keep people out of trouble
with the law. The most important effect of gun control in Japan and the
Commonwealth is that it reinforces the message that citizens must be
obedient to the government." (The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy:
Should America adopt the gun controls of other democracies?, Buffalo,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1992, pp. 431.)

Kopel notes that crime is also suppressed in some foreign countries by
law enforcement and criminal justice policies that would run afoul of
civil rights protections in the U.S. Constitution and which the
American people would not accept. "Foreign gun control comes along with
searches and seizures, and with many other restrictions on civil
liberties too intrusive for America," Kopel observes. "Foreign gun
control . . . postulates an authoritarian philosophy of government and
society fundamentally at odds with the individualist and egalitarian
American ethos. In the United States, the people give the law to
government, not, as in almost every other country, the other way
around." Following are details for two countries which anti-gun
activists often compare to the U.S.:

Parliament increasingly has given the police power to stop and search
vehicles as well as pedestrians. Police may arrest any person they
"reasonably" suspect supports an illegal organization. The grand jury,
an ancient common law institution, was abolished in 1933. Civil jury
trials have been abolished in all cases except libel, and criminal jury
trials are rare. . . . While America has the Miranda rules, Britain
allows police to interrogate suspects who have asked that interrogation
stop, and allows the police to keep defense lawyers away from suspects
under interrogation for limited periods. Britain allows evidence which
has been derived from a coerced confession to be used in court.
Wiretaps do not need judicial approval and it is unlawful in a British
court to point out the fact that a police wiretap was illegal." (Kopel,
1992, pp. 101-102.)

Recently, London law enforcement authorities began installing cameras
overlooking selected intersections in the city`s business district, to
observe passers-by on the sidewalks. The British Home Office has
introduced "`Anti-Social Behaviour Orders` -- special court orders
intended to deal with people who cannot be proven to have committed a
crime, but whom the police want to restrict anyway. Behaviour Orders
can, among other things, prohibit a person from visiting a particular
street or premises, set a curfew or lead to a person`s eviction from
his home. Violation of a Behaviour Order can carry a prison sentence of
up to five years. Prime Minister Tony Blair is now proposing that the
government be allowed to confine people proactively, based on fears of
their potential danger to society." (Kopel, et al., 2001, p. 27.)

"The British government frequently bans books on national security
grounds. In addition, England`s libel laws tend to favor those who
bring suit against a free press. Prior restraint of speech in the
United States is allowed only in the most urgent of circumstances. In
England, the government may apply for a prior restraint of speech ex
parte, asking a court to censor a newspaper without the newspaper even
having notice or the opportunity to present an argument. . . . Free
speech in Great Britain is also constrained by the Official Secrets
Act, which outlaws the unauthorized receipt of information from any
government agency, and allows the government to forbid publication of
any `secret` it pleases. . . . The act was expanded in 1920 and again
in 1989 -- times when gun controls were also expanded." (Kopel, 1991,
pp. 99-102.)

Britain Now Crime Capital of the West

http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=1792

7/15/2002
England and Wales now top the Western world`s crime league, according
to United Nations research. The UN Interregional Crime and Justice
Research Institute reveals that people in England and Wales experience
more crime per head than people in the 17 other developed countries
analyzed in the survey. The findings are expected to cause further
embarrassment to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has pledged to
have street crime under control by September.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=314832

British Gun Crime Soars After Handgun Ban
2/25/2002
Gun crime has almost trebled in London during the past year and is
soaring in other British cities, according to Home Office figures
obtained by The Telegraph. The new gun crime figures also show that
handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane
massacre of 1996 and the ban on the handguns that followed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/24/nguns24.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/02/24/por_right.html

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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