Gun Crimes Increase 89% in UK

How's that "gun control" working out for the UK?

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year  -  a rise of 89 per cent.  

In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.  

In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled. 

The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place. 

How can that be?  How could gun violence and "the carrying of a firearm" "become increasingly common place" in a country that declared itself a "gun-free zone"?  Isn't that what "gun control" is supposed to prevent?

At the same time, violent crime has dropped steadily in the US since its peak in 1991.  As I wrote recently...

the murder rate in the US was far lower in 2011 at 4.7/100,000 than its 1991 peak of 9.8/100,000.  

In other words, murder rates have decreased steadily since 1991, even though gun sales increased.

Still, there are millions of Americans who don't get it, and do things like make schools "gun free zones".  How's that working out?

Dressed in black fatigues and a military vest, a heavily armed man walked into a Connecticut elementary school Friday and opened fire, shattering the quiet of this southern New England town and leaving the nation reeling at the number of young lives lost. 

Within minutes, 26 people were dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School -- 20 of them children. Among the six adults killed were Dawn Hochsprung, the school's beloved principal, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach.

Once again, an evil, depraved person broke the law (surprise!) and took loaded guns into a "gun-free zone" and killed his defenseless victims at will and with zero opposition.

Young students described being ushered into bathrooms and closets by teachers as the first shots rang out. Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher, locked her classroom doors, covered the windows and read a story to her 19 students to keep them calm.  

What if the government hadn't violated those teachers' Second Amendment rights?  What if at least one teacher had the ability to fight back?  How many of the people who are now dead would still be alive?

Glenn Reynolds highlights the insanity of "gun-free zone"-thinking.

"After a shooting spree," author William Burroughs once said, "they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."

There are a lot of problems with this approach, but one of the most significant is this one: It doesn't work. One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well. 

In a way, this is no surprise. If there's someone present with a gun when a mass shooting begins, the shooter is likely to be shot himself. And, in fact, many mass shootings — from the high school shooting by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Miss., to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., where an armed volunteer shot the attacker — have been terminated when someone retrieved a gun from a car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter. 

Policies making areas "gun free" provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren't stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it's the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.

 Gosh.  Maybe "gun control" has nothing to do with preventing crime!

UPDATE: Psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, writes... 

One other thing:  Those who call for gun control after incidents like this contribute nothing to the solution.  Gunmen like Friday’s plan their actions, right down to wearing military garb.  They could certainly procure illegal firearms or use incendiary devices to kill.  I only wish the kindergarten teacher and principal in Connecticut had been armed.

I suspect that those who call for gun control after incidents like this don't actually want solutions.