Post by Woody Williams on Feb 19, 2006 19:09:44 GMT -5
PUBLICATION: The Daily Telegraph - UK
DATE: 2006.02.19
PAGE: 02
SECTION: Features
NOTE: Leading Article
WORD COUNT: 512
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Outlaw arms and you arm outlaws
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Strangely enough, no one seems to feel any safer. When the laws on gun
ownership were tightened after the Dunblane tragedy in 1996, we kept
being told that the whole idea was to prevent such things happening
again. How meaningless those assurances must seem to the family of
Rachael Bown, the conscientious police officer whose first words, after
being shot by a gangster in Nottingham last week, were of self-reproach:
"I've let everyone down and I didn't get him.''
When the Firearms Bill was passing through Parliament, the Sunday
Telegraph was a lonely voice railing against the proposed restrictions.
A ban, we argued, would have done nothing to prevent the atrocity. We
protested that proscribing guns would affect peaceable citizens, not
villains. Indeed, its main effect would be to ensure that criminals came
to enjoy a monopoly of firepower.
In the aftermath of the massacre, no one was much minded to listen. Tony
Blair made a disgraceful speech, telling Labour activists that opponents
of a total ban on pistols somehow cared less than he did about the
murdered children. The tabloids took up the same theme, running a nasty
campaign against the few MPs brave enough to argue that pistol-shooting
should be allowed to continue in safe, licensed premises.
Gun-owners, who had waited patiently to give evidence to the official
inquiry, found that they had been forestalled: by the time Lord Cullen
produced his eminently sensible report, all three parties had pledged to
go beyond it.
Nearly nine years on, opponents of the ban have been comprehensively
vindicated. Gun crime, far from falling, has increased. The only people
who have been affected by the legislation are law-abiding shooters.
Handguns have been outlawed, and our Olympic pistol-shooters have been
forced to train abroad. Meanwhile, owners of shotguns have found
themselves having to wade through a good deal of extra paperwork.
As so often, the full force of the law has fallen upon the respectable
bourgeoisie, not upon the villains. It is easier to go after a parking
offender than a money-launderer; easier to prosecute your Auntie Jean
for losing her ID card than to stop the suspicious foreigner (who will,
in any case, be exempt from having to carry a card if he has been in the
UK for less than six months); easier to arrest the farmer who is late
renewing his shot-gun licence than to tackle the Yardie - as the
horrible case of WPc Bown reminds us.
The Firearms Act was passed for the worst possible reason - not in order
to secure a specific objective, but do show how strongly MPs felt about
something. Alas, it was only the beginning. A frightening array of Bills
has since been passed on the same premise: laws on religious hatred,
police powers, detention without trial and, most recently, identity
cards. In each case, the chief purpose is to look tough rather than to
achieve anything.
Will we never learn?
DATE: 2006.02.19
PAGE: 02
SECTION: Features
NOTE: Leading Article
WORD COUNT: 512
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Outlaw arms and you arm outlaws
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Strangely enough, no one seems to feel any safer. When the laws on gun
ownership were tightened after the Dunblane tragedy in 1996, we kept
being told that the whole idea was to prevent such things happening
again. How meaningless those assurances must seem to the family of
Rachael Bown, the conscientious police officer whose first words, after
being shot by a gangster in Nottingham last week, were of self-reproach:
"I've let everyone down and I didn't get him.''
When the Firearms Bill was passing through Parliament, the Sunday
Telegraph was a lonely voice railing against the proposed restrictions.
A ban, we argued, would have done nothing to prevent the atrocity. We
protested that proscribing guns would affect peaceable citizens, not
villains. Indeed, its main effect would be to ensure that criminals came
to enjoy a monopoly of firepower.
In the aftermath of the massacre, no one was much minded to listen. Tony
Blair made a disgraceful speech, telling Labour activists that opponents
of a total ban on pistols somehow cared less than he did about the
murdered children. The tabloids took up the same theme, running a nasty
campaign against the few MPs brave enough to argue that pistol-shooting
should be allowed to continue in safe, licensed premises.
Gun-owners, who had waited patiently to give evidence to the official
inquiry, found that they had been forestalled: by the time Lord Cullen
produced his eminently sensible report, all three parties had pledged to
go beyond it.
Nearly nine years on, opponents of the ban have been comprehensively
vindicated. Gun crime, far from falling, has increased. The only people
who have been affected by the legislation are law-abiding shooters.
Handguns have been outlawed, and our Olympic pistol-shooters have been
forced to train abroad. Meanwhile, owners of shotguns have found
themselves having to wade through a good deal of extra paperwork.
As so often, the full force of the law has fallen upon the respectable
bourgeoisie, not upon the villains. It is easier to go after a parking
offender than a money-launderer; easier to prosecute your Auntie Jean
for losing her ID card than to stop the suspicious foreigner (who will,
in any case, be exempt from having to carry a card if he has been in the
UK for less than six months); easier to arrest the farmer who is late
renewing his shot-gun licence than to tackle the Yardie - as the
horrible case of WPc Bown reminds us.
The Firearms Act was passed for the worst possible reason - not in order
to secure a specific objective, but do show how strongly MPs felt about
something. Alas, it was only the beginning. A frightening array of Bills
has since been passed on the same premise: laws on religious hatred,
police powers, detention without trial and, most recently, identity
cards. In each case, the chief purpose is to look tough rather than to
achieve anything.
Will we never learn?
