Date: 10 Mar 1995 11:05:02 -0800
From: "Johann Opitz" <Johann_Opitz@smtp.svl.trw.com>
Subject: A real Brit's view on gun c
To: "Firearms Alert" <firearms-alert@shell.portal.com>


reposted from newsgroups: can.talk.guns,talk.politics.guns

From: glasgow@bnr.ca (Barry Glasgow)

With all the crap being spewed on the net about how the English
experience dictates that we need more gun control, I thought it
fitting to relay this bit of info;

Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood of the West Yorkshire
Constabulary spent six months at Oxford, 
studying gun control laws in many countries.

He concluded:

"At first glance, it may seem odd or even perverse 
 to suggest that statutory controls on the private
 ownership of firearms are irrelevant to the problem
 of armed crime; yet that is precisely what the
 evidence shows.
 Armed crime and violent crime generally are products
 of ethnic and social factors unrelated to the
 availability of a particular type of weapon.

 The number of firearms required to satisfy the crime
 market is small, and these are supplied no matter
 what controls are instituted.
 Controls have had serious effects on legitimate
 users of firearms, but there is no case, either in
 the history of this country or in the experience of
 other countries in which controls can be shown to
 have restricted the flow of weapons to criminals,
 or in any way reduced crime."

   While the number of legal firearms owners in Britain
   has been declining due to a hostile gun control 
   bureaucracy, crimes involving firearms increased
   196% between 1981-1992.

     "Criminal Statistics England and Wales 1992, p.34,65

====================

 

== Johann Opitz      e-mail:  johann_opitz@smtp.svl.trw.com ==
== All Disclaimers Apply (so as to protect my employer) ==