One of the more frustrating aspects of the gun control debate is how those who support gun control laws just won't admit it when they are wrong.
Sure, gun control just doesn't work to reduce crime. But the anti-gun crowd just won't admit that they are advocating a failed policy. Instead they say that gun control has to be more draconian, or that it has to blanket the entire country, or that a whole group of civil liberties has to be abolished before gun control will finally begin to show some positive benefits.
Dave Hardy of the excellent Of Arms and the Law gives us the heads up. Great Britain, already an example of near absolute gun laws, is alarmed over the rising levels of violence shown by the criminal class. So called "anti-crime groups" are now pushing for increased penalties for people who carry "illegal knives".
Echoing similar claims by anti-gun groups in the United States, the Brit anti-weapon lobby say that "one child is stabbed to death every week" in Britian. Just like the dishonest way the American groups push their agenda, the British groups don't tell us what their definition of a "child" is, nor do they relate how they reached their conclusions.
One of the ways to find those who are carrying a knife is to simply conduct random police searches, they say. Lucky thing I live in the US instead of Old Blighty, particularly as I would be sure to land in jail just as soon as some felon attacked me for my wallet.
Comments (4)
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Posted by KCSteve | July 3, 2007 1:28 PM
Posted on July 3, 2007 13:28
It's all to only minor effect in the UK since they refuse to actually punish serious offenders with any kind of long sentence. Their jails are like revolving doors.
Posted by DirtCrashr | July 3, 2007 1:58 PM
Posted on July 3, 2007 13:58
I carry a scary-looking knife, a classic Spyderco Clipit, which I can have open in my hand faster than any automatic ("switchblade") I've had the opportunity to try. There isn't a day goes by that I don't use it for some mundane task, and in the thirty+ years since I started carrying a knife I've never stabbed anyone with it.
Posted by triticale | July 3, 2007 5:16 PM
Posted on July 3, 2007 17:16
James, I think you're basing your conclusion on an inaccurate assumption. Those most strenuously advocating gun control do not do so in the belief, however mistaken, that additional government controls over firearms will reduce crime.
They know that won't work, because it never has; "reducing crime" is just an attractive sales pitch for those who choose to not examine the situation or think about it in detail. The real objective is more government control over the citizenry, and has nothing to do with crime.
Posted by Homer | July 4, 2007 8:33 AM
Posted on July 4, 2007 08:33