The Myth of A Safer Britian
by Paul Peake
Australian Shooters Journal
December 1998
Preventing Australia from supposedly going down the 'American path' has been one of the chief arguments put forward to justify the Howard government's anti-firearm laws. Britain, on the other hand, has often been hailed as the model Australia should follow. Several jurisdictions have based their current 'safe storage' requirements on arrangements already in place in the United Kingdom and, since the early 1930s, a number of Australian states have used contemporary British legislation as the archetype for their own regulatory measures, (1) a trend which has continued up to the present. However, a newly released report entitled Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-96, prepared by Cambridge University criminologist Professor David Farrington and Department of Justice statistician Dr Patrick Langan, demonstrates that the notion of a largely disarmed and apparently safer Britain is a complete myth.
The 110-page Department of Justice review shows that serious crimes such as assault, robbery and burglary are considerably higher in England and Wales compared to the United States.
Table
1. Source: Figures adapted from Crime and Justice in the United States and
in England and Wales, 1981-96.
According to Dr Langan: The robbery rate in England and Wales, including muggings, is 40% higher. The assault, burglary and automobile theft rates are getting on for double those of the US. (2)
Table
2. Source: Figures adapted from Crime and Justice in the United States and
in England and Wales, 1981-96.
The report considered both crime-victim surveys and police statistics over a fifteen-year period and found that crime rates across a range of major offences have been falling in the United States while those in England have been steadily increasing.
Table
3. Source: Figures adapted from Crime and Justice in the United States and
in England and Wales, 1981-96.
In what may be a vindication of US initiatives such as the so-called zero-tolerance policies and 'three strikes and you're in' legislation, the report also found that since 1981 the chances of being caught and convicted of a serious offence have risen significantly in the United States, but have fallen in England for most major crimes. (3) Incarceration time for most violent offences is also much lower in England and Wales than in the US.
The findings raise considerable doubts about harsh firearm laws and their efficacy in reducing serious crime. Between 1981 and 1996 the number of US states which allow firearms to be carried for self defence increased from a handful to more than thirty. At the same time, however, British shooters had to endure some of the most draconian anti-gun laws in the developed world, with further restrictions on handgun ownership imposed in 1996. Yet between 1981 and 1996 the homicide rate in the US decreased significantly, while in England it rose from 0.011 per 1,000 population to 0.013. (4) Recently released British police figures for the year ending April, 1998, show an alarming 26% increase in the murder rate in London and an incredible 85% increase in Northumbria. (5) Severe firearm regulations and forcing hundreds of thousands of law-abiding shooters to surrender their private property has obviously had no more positive effect on serious crime in Britain than it has had here in Australia.
The issue of burglary is particularly important, especially given Australia's increasing incidence of home invasion. The report indicates that burglary rates are considerably higher in England and Wales than in the United States. Work done by Chicago University professor John Lott, with the help of David Mustard, shows that firearms in the home have a major deterrent effect on what their study refers to as 'hot burglary', a situation where a criminal robs a residence when the occupier is home. A 1986 study of convicted felons in the United States conducted by Wright and Rossi found that most were far more worried about running into an armed victim than they were about being caught by the police. (6) The proof lies in the fact that fewer than 13% of burglaries in the US are carried out on occupied premises, while in Britain it is in the order of 50%. (7) Not only are average Britons far more likely to be robbed, but it is much more likely to occur when they are at home.
This presents an awkward question for the anti-gun lobby. If more firearms supposedly equate to more crime, then why have a range of serious offences been decreasing in the United States as gun laws have been liberalised to allow private citizens to defend themselves, while ratios for similar crimes have increased in Britain as laws have been tightened?
The question applies equally to Australia. Despite the forced confiscation of over 640,000 lawfully owned firearms, the incidence of unlawful entry has increased considerably across the country as a whole.
Table
4. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics data. (Note: Figures include Unlawful
Entry With Intent
involving the taking of property, together with Unlawful Entry With Intent
'other').
Other serious crimes such as murder, armed robbery, assault and motor vehicle theft have also risen markedly in the wake of the government's 'buy-back' scheme.
Farrington and Langan's research highlights the fact that the availability or otherwise of firearms has little to do with violent crime. While 5% of robberies in England and Wales involve the use of a gun, the overall rate of offences is nevertheless much higher than in the United States where the degree of private firearms ownership is much greater. In other words, the fact that most people in Britain do not have legal access to guns has little bearing on the number of robberies actually committed. It appears that English criminals simply rely on other means, and when it comes to being held up and deprived of property or seriously assaulted, ultimately what difference does it make what instrument is used?
For the better part of this century shooters in the United Kingdom have endured steadily tighter restrictions. Paranoia over Russia's Bolshevik Revolution and its possible effect on the British working class greatly influenced the regulatory measures of the early 1920s. By the start of the Second World War, however, the result was a disarmed Britain unable to defend itself and reliant upon the generosity of American gun owners. Increasing regulation in the postwar period, culminating in the 1996 total ban on handguns, has seen private firearms ownership in the UK severely depleted, but as Farrington and Langan's report shows, by and large it has made little difference to serious crime.
The plight of British gun owners carries valuable lessons for Australian shooters. Capitulation on important regulatory questions such as comprehensive registration and unreasonable restrictions often only encourages even tighter limitations later. Similarly, allowing policies based on dubious assumptions to be implemented with little if any discussion is a recipe for disaster. The idea that Australia should avoid going down the 'American path' in deference to the British model invariably begs the question of the tangible benefits, all the more so when hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people are forced to give up their property in the process. With Farrington and Langan's work as a guide, the idea of a safer Britain, and by extension a supposedly safer Australia, has been shown up as total fiction.
1. Western Australian Parliamentary Debates, Volume 86, p3432.
2. Rufford, N. (1998, Oct. 11), "Official: more muggings in England than US",
The Sunday Times, http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/98/10/11/stinwenws01035.html?2656660
3. Farrington, D. and Langan, P. (1998), Crime and Justice in the United States
and in England and Wales, 1981-96. US Department of Justice, piii.
4. Ibid, p5.
5. Rufford, N. (1998, Oct. 11), "Official: more muggings in England than US",
The Sunday Times, http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/98/10/11/stinwenws01035.html?2656660
6. Wright, J. and Rossi, P. (1986), "Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey
of Felons and Their Firearms", as cited in Lott, J. and Mustard, D. (1997)
"Crime, Deterrence, And The Right-To-Carry Concealed Handguns", Journal of
Legal Studies, vol. XXVI (January 1997).
7. Ibid, p3.
Home > Research archive > 1998 > The Myth of A Safer Britian