The Failed Experiment
Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales
Widely televised firearm murders in many countries during the 20th Century have spurred politicians to introduce restrictive gun laws. The politicians then promise that the new restrictions will reduce criminal violence and ―create a safer society.‖ It is time to pause and ask if gun laws actually do reduce criminal violence.
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The United States provides a valuable point of comparison for assessing crime rates because the criminal justice system there differs so drastically from those in Europe and the Commonwealth. Not only are criminal penalties typically more severe in the United States, often much more severe, but also conviction and incarceration rates are usually much higher. Perhaps the most striking difference is that qualified citizens in the United States can carry concealed handguns for self-defence. During the past few decades, more than 25 states in the United States passed laws allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed handguns. In 2003, there are 35 states where citizens can get such a permit.
The upshot is that violent crime rates, and homicide rates in particular, have been falling in the United States. The drop in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world. In 18 of the 25 countries surveyed by the British Home Office, violent crime increased during the 1990s. This contrast should provoke thinking people to wonder what happened in those countries where they introduced increasingly restrictive firearm laws.
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AUSTRALIA
Following shocking killings in 1996, the Australian government made sweeping changes to the firearm legislation in 1997. Unfortunately, the recent firearm regulations have not made the streets of Australia any safer. The total homicide rate, after having remained basically flat from 1995 to 2001, has now begun climbing again. The decline in homicide rate in the gun-permissive United States stands out against the trend in Australia.
The divergence between Australia and the United States is even more apparent with violent crime. While violent crime is decreasing in the United States, it is increasing in Australia. Over the past six years, the overall rate of violent crime in Australia has continued to increase. Robbery and armed robbery rates continue to rise. Armed robbery has increased 166% nationwide. The confiscation and destruction of legally owned firearms cost Australian taxpayers at least $500 million. The costs of the police services bureaucracy, including the hugely costly infrastructure of the gun registration system, has increased by $200 million since 1997. And for what? There has been no visible impact on violent crime. It is impossible to justify such a massive amount of the taxpayers’ money for no decrease in crime. For that kind of tax money, the police could have had more patrol cars, shorter shifts, or maybe even better equipment. Think of how many lives might have been saved.
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Gun crimes may dominate the news but violence involving guns is not qualitatively worse than other violence: being bludgeoned to death is not less horrific than being shot to death. In this study, the United States stands out in that most murders (63%) are committed with firearms, while in Australia, Canada or England relatively few murderers use firearms (9%–31%).9 In the Commonwealth, knives are usually preferred to guns by murderers.10 For example, at least as many murders are committed with knives as guns in Canada and in Australia twice as many murders involve knives as guns (Dauvergne 2001: 8; Mouzos 2001).
Although suicide is not a violent crime, it is often included in the discussion of violence involving guns. Relatively few people (between 4% and 20%) use guns to commit suicide in the Commonwealth countries examined here. As usual, the United States is unique, with slightly more than half of suicides involving a gun (56%). Despite the higher percentage of gun suicides, the United States has a lower total suicide rate than either Australia or Canada (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002; Preville 2003; NCIPC 2003).
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―Gun death‖ is a red herring, as it conflates two very different phenomena, homicide and suicide, to produce a large and misleading number (Mauser and Stanbury 2003). It is inappropriate to use ―gun deaths‖ to evaluate gun laws for several reasons. First, guns are not involved in the bulk of criminal violence, so ―gun deaths‖ ignores much of importance for evaluating public safety. Second, even though few people use guns to commit suicide, suicides by gunshot constitute the lion’s share of ―gun deaths‖ in developed countries. For example, 80% of gun deaths in Canada are suicides, while 76% of gun deaths in Australia are suicides. Third, there is little support for the claim that gun laws of any sort reduce the suicide rate (Kleck 1997: 288; Jacobs 2002: 6).
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CONCLUSION
This brief review of gun laws shows that disarming the public has not reduced criminal violence in any country examined here: not in Great Britain, not in Canada, and not in Australia. In all cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive, and often counter productive. In all cases, the means have involved setting up expensive bureaucracies that produce no noticeable improvement to public safety or have made the situation worse.
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Only the United States has witnessed a dramatic drop in criminal violence over the past decade. The justice system in the United States differs in many ways from those in the Commonwealth but one of the important reasons for the drop in violent crime may be that responsible citizens are increasingly carrying concealed handguns (Lott 2000). In contrast, authorities in the Commonwealth insist upon a monopoly of force. If the goal is deterring criminal violence, perhaps it is time for Commonwealth countries to encourage more individual self-reliance.
Gun laws may not reduce violent crime but criminal violence causes gun laws—at least, well-publicized crimes do. The only winner in this drama is bureaucracy. The rest of us lose liberty as well as safety. It is an illusion that further tinkering with the law will protect the public since no law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. There have always been criminals, and there have always been deranged people. Murder has been illegal for thousands of years: we need only remember the saga of Cain and Abel. The mass media find gun crimes more newsworthy but multiple civilian murders by arson have historically claimed more lives than incidents involving firearms. The truth is we live in a dangerous world and the government cannot protect us, if for no other reason than the police cannot be everywhere. We must ultimately rely upon ourselves and it is only right we have the necessary tools to do so.
