Friday, August 13, 2010

[Guns; Crime] Proportional or inverse proportional.

A piece on what happens when lawful gun ownership is introduced and subsequently banned from a society.

There are few gun free societies in the world today. However, if we
look back in history to the time before the invention of firearms, we
can judge for ourselves whether those societies were tranquil and
safe. Remarkably good homicide data is available for England,
beginning in the 1200’s. Those data indicate a pre-gun homicide rate
in England of roughly 20 per 100,000 [roughly four times greater than
the U.S. today]

...

The introduction of the flintlock coincided with the largest decline
in homicide in English history. The homicide rate plunged to 6 per
100K in the 1600’s. The English homicide rate continued to decline
slowly and steadily until well into the 20th century. For example, in
1900 the homicide rate was 0.96 per 100K.



....

According to the more guns more crime hypothesis, all this restriction
of civilian guns should have resulted in England enjoying lower and
lower rates of violent crime. Unfortunately, the facts reveal a
pattern that is almost opposite. [as of 2000 England had twice the
violent crime rate of the U.S.]


So over a hundred years of banning guns (that really kicked off in the
last fifty), the UK went from roughly 1/100k to roughly 10/100k. Yup
violent crime went up 10 times per capita in the UK.

But now they don't have to worry about the serfs having those dangerous arms.


Hat tip Says Uncle

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