New crime statistics from the United Kingdom showing that crime has climbed 10 percent across England with gun-related crime climbing a startling 23 percent could poke a serious hole in arguments from liberal gun prohibitionists that the United States should follow England’s example on gun control.
According to The Guardian, the spike in crime is “the largest annual rise for a decade.” Data backing this claim comes from the Office of National Statistics, the publication said. Here’s what U.S. gun rights activists might find interesting:
“Ministers will also be concerned that the country is becoming increasingly violent in nature, with gun crime rising 23% to 6,375 offences, largely driven by an increase in the use of handguns. Knife crime has also jumped by 20% to 34,703 incidents – the highest level for seven years. The largest increase in knife crime came in London, which accounted for 40% of the rise.”
Robberies at knife-point have risen sharply, and overall knife crime has jumped 20 percent, the newspaper said. All this translates to a demonstration that even if criminals do not have guns in a virtually disarmed society, they will find another weapon.
The Telegraph reported that, “London is now more crime ridden and dangerous than New York City, with rape, robbery and violent offences far higher on this side of the Atlantic.”
A day earlier, the Telegraph had reported 5.2 million crimes had been logged in the 12 months from June 2016 to this past June. That was up 13 percent, the Telegraph said.
Following the 1996 Dunblane massacre in which 16 children and a teacher were gunned down by a madman who subsequently took his own life, the British government cracked down on law-abiding gun owners. Three years ago, responding to knife-related crime, the Brits launched a campaign for knife turn-ins for which the campaign slogan was “Save a Life, Surrender a Knife.”
All these efforts appear to have accomplished is to disarm the wrong people, which is the observation that many American rights activists have repeated over the years.
Great Britain does not have a constitutionally-delineated Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Many in the gun prohibition movement would like that to be the case here, frequently trying to compare the homicide numbers of other nations with the United States. This new crime data revelation just might set that effort back.
